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Turned On
Mass Market Paperback
First published September 1, 1967
10 people want to read
About the author
Dick Schaap
52 books4 followersRichard Jay Schaap was an American sportswriter, broadcaster, and author.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 30, 2021
I can't believe I forgot to write a review for this. This is one of the books that reward you for digging as deep as you can in the mountains of forgotten books.
Schaap has the perfect journalistic voice to bring out this true-crime story with just the right amount of contextual information plugged in at the right moments. Truly a great book, perhaps not astounding as pure literature, but definitely a very strong and evocative book. Perfect for a short holiday.
To give a notion of how much I enjoyed it, this is one of the books with the most lines underscored by me. There are so many awesome quotes and one-liners. But then again, I've got a knack for this kind of stuff.
Still, I seldom read true-crime / non-fiction and I loved this!
(Kinda similar to this, also great, would be "Prince of the City", by Robert Daley.)
Schaap has the perfect journalistic voice to bring out this true-crime story with just the right amount of contextual information plugged in at the right moments. Truly a great book, perhaps not astounding as pure literature, but definitely a very strong and evocative book. Perfect for a short holiday.
To give a notion of how much I enjoyed it, this is one of the books with the most lines underscored by me. There are so many awesome quotes and one-liners. But then again, I've got a knack for this kind of stuff.
Still, I seldom read true-crime / non-fiction and I loved this!
(Kinda similar to this, also great, would be "Prince of the City", by Robert Daley.)
December 31, 2020
From the archive. Unavailable. If you see this book at a bargain book sale, buy it. Superb. Another journalist book.
June 14, 2018
Written by Dick Schaap, better known as a sports journalist, TURNED ON is an interesting true crime book involving the unintentional death of Celeste Crenshaw of a heroin overdose and the subsequent arrest of her boy friend Robert Friede, who was caught driving around with her body in the trunk of the car. The setting is New York City, 1966-1967, which is when the book was written, and the story plays out over a background of wealth and social privilege, justice system inequities, undercover police work, and information/opinion about the rise of drug use in the sixties among middle and upper class white young white people.
Schaap writes professionally. As noted above he is a journalist, and TURNED ON is written journalistically and has the feel of a lengthy magazine article. As the book was written over 50 years ago, some of the language is understandably dated. For example African-Americans are referred to as Negroes, and the book's title, TURNED ON, a term for using drugs, is no longer in currency. There is also one glaring piece of misinformation presented as fact: that amphetamines are not physically habit forming. I can't imagine that anyone regardless of the time period could believe that.
Schaap writes professionally. As noted above he is a journalist, and TURNED ON is written journalistically and has the feel of a lengthy magazine article. As the book was written over 50 years ago, some of the language is understandably dated. For example African-Americans are referred to as Negroes, and the book's title, TURNED ON, a term for using drugs, is no longer in currency. There is also one glaring piece of misinformation presented as fact: that amphetamines are not physically habit forming. I can't imagine that anyone regardless of the time period could believe that.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews