On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army; a month later, she shocked the nation by joining her captors' organization and assisting them with robberies and terrorist operations. Based on more than a hundred interviews and thousands of previously secret documents, Jeffrey Toobin's biography re-creates one of America's most chaotic eras, following Hearst throughout her year on the lam to her circus-like trial—recalled for its courtroom confrontations and a dramatic last-minute reversal—with a cast of characters ranging from Bill Walton and F. Lee Bailey to the Black Panthers and Ronald Reagan.