Robert Rand

Discover the definitive book on the Menendez case—and the disquieting true story behind Netflix’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. A successful entertainment executive making $2 million a year. His former beauty queen wife. Their two sons on the fast track to success. But it was all a façade. The Menendez saga has captivated the American public since 1989. The killing of José and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills didn’t make the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their sons seven months later, when the case developed an intense cult following. By the time the first Menendez trial began in July 1993, the public was convinced that Lyle and Erik were a pair of greedy rich kids who had killed loving, devoted parents. The real story remained buried beneath years of dark secrets. A culmination of more than 30 years of journalist Robert Rand’s relentless reporting, this updated edition of The Menendez Murders shares these intimate, breakthrough findings, including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual molestation in the Menendez family going back generations, as well as exclusive new revelations linking the 1980s boy band Menudo and the Menendez family, a first-hand account of the emotional reunion between Erik and Lyle Menendez, and surprising insights into how the Menendez brothers remain resilient and live with purpose despite a life sentence without parole. Rand has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as both trials. With a unique vantage and unparalleled access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after their arrest, Rand has uncovered extraordinary details that would certainly have changed the fate of the brothers’ first-degree murder conviction in 1996. Today, his discoveries give the brothers new hope for reopening the case.

Examines Japan’s war generation—Japanese men and women who survived World War Two and rebuilt their lives, into the 21st century, from memories of that conflict Since John Hersey’s Hiroshima—the classic account, published in 1946, of the aftermath of the atomic bombing of that city—very few books have examined the meaning and impact of World War II through the eyes of Japanese men and women who survived that conflict. Tattered Kimonos in Japan does just that: It is an intimate journey into contemporary Japan from the perspective of the generation of Japanese soldiers and civilians who survived World War II, by a writer whose American father and Japanese father-in-law fought on opposite sides of the conflict. The author, a former NPR senior editor, is Jewish, and he approaches the subject with the sensibilities of having grown up in a community of Holocaust survivors. Mindful of the power of victimhood, memory, and shared suffering, he travels across Japan, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meeting a compelling group of men and women whose lives, even now, are defined by the trauma of war, and by lingering questions of responsibility and repentance for Japan’s wartime aggression. The image of a tattered kimono from Hiroshima is the thread that drives the narrative arc of this emotional story about a writer’s encounter with history, inside the Japan of his father’s generation, on the other side of his father’s war. This is a book about history with elements of family memoir. It offers a fresh and truly unique perspective for readers interested in World War II, Japan, or Judaica; readers seeking cross-cultural journeys; and readers intrigued by Japanese culture, particularly the kimono.

This book provides a compelling inside view of the Soviet justice system in the Gorbachev era, from the perspective of the practicing lawyer, advokat, who advises citizens in the USSR of their legal rights and defends their interests in courts.

Soviet leaders and commentators now are placing great emphasis on the need to create a socialist “law-based state†in the USSR in order to free people from the repressive legacy of Stalinism and enable them to contribute more fully to rebuilding their economy and society. But to what extent is the public discussion bringing about actual change in

In this engaging memoir, Robert Rand tells the tale of how dancing freed him from the grip of panic disorder. Rand was a serious, shy, and intense scholar who had achieved national recognition in a writing and radio production career. In the midst of his success, panic attacks overwhelmed him. For more than two years, he suffered their debilitating effects; the disease flattened his spirits and stripped him of self-confidence. Then he discovered social dancing and, in particular, Cajun and zydeco dance and music. Dancing became a cathartic and liberating endeavor, helping him beat back his panic disorder to discover a world of passion and romance and to gain control of his life.