The Smoking Gun: A Dossier of Secret, Surprising, and Salacious Documents (Paperback)

by William Bastone (Author), Daniel Green (Author), Barbara Glauber (Author) "While journalism is generally regarded as "history's first draft," that distinction actually belongs to the primary-source documents on which many of those news accounts are..." (more)
Key Phrases: view thereof, present invention, right testicle, New York, Los Angeles, Michelle Smith (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
From the creators of the highly popular website thesmokinggun.coma wildly entertaining collection of previously unpublished documents (court transcripts, FBI files, morgue and police reports, etc.) that hilariously illuminate some of the most important, scandalous, or bizarre news stories of recent years.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company; 1st edition (September 20, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0316611107
• ISBN-13: 978-0316611107
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #845,754 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Gallery of the Weird, December 16, 2001

By	Jason N. Mical (Bellevue, WA, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

If there's that one person on your Christmas list for whom it's impossible to buy a gift - say, your conspiracy-theorist, rubber-necking, fascinated-by-the-strange kind of friend - the search for the perfect present may be over. The Smoking Gun, a website dedicated to bringing people actual copies of government documents about celebrities and normal people involved in a variety of strange situations, released a "best-of" book, The Smoking Gun: A Dossier of Secret, Surprising, and Salacious Documents from the Files of the Smoking Gun. Chock-full of all kinds of dirt, human stupidity, and general hilariousness, this is exactly the book for the person who has "everything."

Want to know the details of Marilyn Monroe's autopsy? What about Martha Stewart's attempt to run down a gardener who refused to take her advice? The police report of the first officer on the scene of Kurt Cobain's suicide? President Nixon's background check from when he was thinking of joining the FBI? Tim Allen's sobriety test from 1997? The details of every attempt Dennis Rodman made to force himself on a woman? It's all here, in its original black-and-white glory, ready for your perusal.

Like a train wreck, you just can't tear your eyes away from The Smoking Gun's insane offering of all that makes our species better than the monkeys - or so we think, anyway. It's amazing, sick, and fascinating all at the same time. And, you've got the stocking stuffer for the person who has it all - because, chances are, they don't have Mike Tyson's arrest report. Just don't stay up all night reading it yourself.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars outrageous!, October 4, 2001

By	Mangy Fox "dreadlock goddess" - See all my reviews

Sorry to gush but I absolutely loved this book. The smoking gun gives you the inside skinny on all sorts of things you didn't even know you wanted to know about. It's a book that is made up of documents: arrest reports on the famous, infamous and simply bizarre, contracts, memos, all sorts of stuff. I laughed out loud and my jaw dropped several times. A very fun read.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Can you handle the truth?, October 8, 2001

By	Rob Reiner (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

Bastone, Green & Glauber's book enters the leagues of Ripley's Believe It or Not, Ricky Jay's examination of con artists and circus folks, and Woodword & Bernstein's investigation into Watergate. In other words, it's fun, outrageous and incredibly revealing. Meticulously researched and entertainingly presented, the team paints a decidedly different picture of what we know and what we think we know. Fans of the web site will not be disappointed with what they find here; a must for muckrakers, malcontents and truth seekers.