From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

Jon Krakauer,

Mozhan Marnò (Narrator)

Start date: June 18, 2015

Finish date: June 24, 2015

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Oct 04, 2015 Erin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club, true-crime, nonfiction

I love Jon Krakauer (see the steady stream of five star reviews I've given to his books) and the subject matter of this book is extremely interesting to me. I think my problem with it (to the extent there was a problem....I maintain that three stars is still a "good" rating) was twofold: first it was a bit too long, often covering the same information multiple times. Second, I read it too closely in time to the (to me) far superior Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Ca I love Jon Krakauer (see the steady stream of five star reviews I've given to his books) and the subject matter of this book is extremely interesting to me. I think my problem with it (to the extent there was a problem....I maintain that three stars is still a "good" rating) was twofold: first it was a bit too long, often covering the same information multiple times. Second, I read it too closely in time to the (to me) far superior Asking for It: The Alarming Rise of Rape Culture and What We Can Do About It.

Actually, ASKING FOR IT was like the text book and MISSOULA was like the case study applying it, focusing on many of the rape myths outlined at length in ASKING FOR IT as well as the nature of a college sports town and the failures of a prosecutors office (I wonder if Fred Van Valkenburg and Kirsten Pabst can even continue to live in Missoula). Krakauer, as always, does an excellent job giving us all the relevant statistics then boiling them down to a few brave (and sometimes not-so-brave) victims and perpetrators and, as in ASKING FOR IT, tries to determine why so few victims seek help from the police, prosecutors and, here, school administrators (Krakauer does actually take a side on one issue and that is that universities should be allowed to continue to have their own judicial fora for alleged sexual assault cases) - and finds the same set of answers.

However, what remains key, and what Krakauer never forgets is that "women don't get raped because they were drinking or took drugs. Women do not get raped because they weren't careful enough. Women get rapes because someone raped them. Jessica Valenti The Purity Myth. We shouldn't either.

***EDITED TO ADD December 2024: visited Missoula this summer for a couple of days (as part of my race to visit all 50 states. My husband and I went to Boise, Idaho (45), spent a couple of days there then drove to Missoula (46) (mistake. We should have flown, stayed there for a couple of days then onto Whitefish and Glacier for the largest part of our trip.

We had a nice time but when we were in Missoula I kept thinking of this book. The odd thing is that when I was reading online sites people kept praising Missoula as a blue oasis in deeply red Montana, and saying how racist and sexist other areas in Montana were compared with Missoula. Then you compare that with what Krakauer had to say about the town and it made me look at the rest of the state with a side eye. I come from an incredibly red state but maybe that means something different on the east coast? I don’t know, but I couldn’t get the book out of my mind the whole time I was there, the same way that Wyoming just means Matthew Shepard to me, which clearly isn’t fair, but there it is. Books stick with you. I didn’t want a sweatshirt. ...more

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