Rogues

There's some really great information packed into these 12 chapters. Each chapter discusses the transgressions of a different person/company that fits the theme, and the author (a journalist himself) does a great job at doing a deep dive on the subjects, with interviews aplenty. This book was the exact opposite of being dry; the author is phenomenal at grabbing your attention in each chapter and holding it until the very end when he caps things off with a short epilogue of sorts.

Because it's 12 different subjects in under 400 pages, expect to do a lot of ping-ponging in terms of subject matter. My favorite chapter, by far, was, surprisingly, the chapter on Trump, Mark Burnett, and how The Apprentice created a monster, but each chapter had something really interesting going on that kept me listening. The only potentially strange inclusion here was the very last chapter on Anthony Bourdain, because up to that point it had been by and large grifter/illegal activity discussed, but I guess he needed someone in the 'Rebel' category to complete the title collection.

Just a really interesting book, highly recommend for true crime/literary journalism fans. I'll definitely be checking out more from this author/journalist.

Some of these essays were better, or more to my taste, than others. While the audiobook is excellent (Radden Keefe is a wonderful reader/speaker), the individual essays often contain so many characters that I couldn't keep track. This may be easier to separate in print form.

This was great! I like Keefe's writing and while some pieces I liked more than others - the wine one because I love to see rich people getting scammed and Amy Bishop - others weren't quite as interesting but still good.

Patrick Radden Keefe is a long-form journalist, an old-time investigative reporter, who digs deep into a story, and the stories he chooses to investigate thoroughly are stories of bad guys. Rogues is a collection of twelve of Keefe's most fascinating stories of those who kill and steal and cheat others. My favorites were the story of a man who, mysteriously, was able to find and sell rare fine wines; the world's most notorious drug lord, El Chapo; the man who revived the image of Donald Trump through a tv reality show; the woman who feels compelled to defend “the worst of the worst;” and a woman who became a mass shooter.

This is tricky. Some of the chapters I would rate a 5, some of them a 1. Like the New Yorker articles that this collects, if the topic is something that I'm not already innately interested in, the writing needs to do some work to get me there. These ones didn't do it.

I feel like if the subject themselves aren't complex or interesting on their own, this author wasn't able to craft something of worth.

That said, at least half of the chapters were great. For those, I would recommend this book.