Real Anita Hill (Paperback)

~ (Author) "On the day before the scheduled public testimony of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, four Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent a private..." (more)
Key Phrases: sex harasser, sexual harassment story, anonymous charge, Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, Supreme Court (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Brock's thorough investigation of the evidence in the Thomas-Hill hearings concluded that there was no reason to believe Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas. Brock's book--a national sensation which landed on the New York Times bestseller list--is the definitive rebuttal of Hill's charges.

Product Details

• Paperback: 472 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Edition Thus. edition (March 7, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0029046564
• ISBN-13: 978-0029046562
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,270,658 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

36 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars valuable only as example of, December 1, 2002

By	cecil (nacirema) - See all my reviews

this book is of course dreadfully bad as journalism; read it only as a window on the recent upsurge of rightist political fantasia, and as a supplement to brock's latest, *blinded by the right*.

in reading his latest, he will explain what the score is for this one, what he called "character assassination."

i am somewhat disturbed by some of the other reviews, here, though....witness brock: "i could see that my reportorial method for *the real anita hill* was shoddy, not only in the sources i had trusted, but in the obvious fact that i had missed significant evidence that showed that hill's testimony was more truthful than thomas' flat denials after all. my version of the thomas-hill controversy was wrong, my belief in it as truth was a delusion. perhaps the errors of *the real anita hill* could be attributed to journalistic carelessness, ideological bias, and my misdirected quest for acceptance from a political movement. in the review of *strange justice*, however, to protect myself and my tribe from the truth and consequences of our own hypocrisy, smears, falsehoods, and cover-ups, i consciously and actively chose an unethical path. i continued to malign anita hill and her liberal supporters as liars. i trashed the professional reputations of two reporters for reporting something i knew was correct. i coerced an unsteady source, i knowlingly published a lie, and i falsified the historical record" (brock, d. *blidned by the right* ny: crown, 2002. p. 248).

as can be seen here, the author of *the real anita hill* is admitting that it is not true.

34 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Well, well, well, well, well........, July 3, 2001

By A Customer

It was difficult to take this book seriously to begin with. There were gaping holes in logic a fourth grader could have picked out; sources for important information were either vague or nonexistent; and on the whole, the scenario painted by Mr. Brock -- that Ms. Hill was an opportunistic, even somewhat unbalanced participant in a vast left-wing conspiracy -- was far less believable than the commonsensical notion that Clarence Thomas actually did what she said he did.

Now, Mr. Brock, a former darling of the extreme right, has recanted and admitted that the entire book was little more than a smear job, in which even the most absurd and unsubstantiated "evidence" was included so long as it fit the right-wing's own image of Ms. Hill. In fact, according to Mr. Brock, at least one of the claims reported in his book as absolute fact came from Thomas himself, via an intermediary, with positively no corroborating evidence whatsoever. He also admits to deliberately burying evidence (provided in a Wall Street Journal article and another book, "Strange Justice," that Brock savaged as a "left-wing hit job") buttressing Ms. Hill's claims that Thomas was addicted to pornographic films.

Of course, Brock still should not be absolved. His crimes against truth and honest journalism are so extensive (remember, this is the man largely responsible for breaking the Troopergate "scandal") that it will be years before his reputation can be considered rehabilitated. Still, Brock's recantation of this book provides further corroboration of what most objective observers have long since realized -- that Anita Hill was telling the truth and Clarence Thomas was lying. Unfortunately, that realization came too late to prevent Thomas' lifetime appointment to our land's highest court, where he has dutifully served as a lapdog of the extreme right and Antonin Scalia, doing his best to undo everything his illustrious predecessor, Thurgood Marshall, had fought and stood for.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars David Brock Admits to Smearing Anita Hill, August 23, 2007

By	sclairet - See all my reviews

Reader beware: In David Brock's later book, Blinded by the Right, he admits to smearing Anita Hill in this book. "Doubts about (Anita Hill's) testimony were furthered by the widely publicized and later recanted claims of David Brock, who coined the phrase "a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty" to describe Professor Hill. Later, in his book "Blinded by the Right," Brock confessed that, to please his conservative backers, he had deliberately gone after Anita Hill's reputation in a smear campaign that relied on false and unfounded information." Wikipedia entry on Anita Hill, August 24, 2007