In a dramatic account of violence and espionage, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter Ronan Farrow exposes serial abusers and a cabal of powerful interests hell-bent on covering up the truth. At any cost.
In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood’s most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, … predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family.
All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance they could not explained-until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood to Washington and beyond.
This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it’s the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement.
Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook the culture.
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This is a terrific non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow, who was undaunted in his attempt to expose Harvey Weinstein. It reads like a thriller, and I couldn’t put it down.
Riveting book about Farrow’s investigation into Harvey Weinstein, making it easy to see why he’s a Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist. Brilliant reporting. I listened to the audiobook, which Farrow himself impressively narrates. Looking forward to listening to his podcast now too.
Catch and Kill book is utterly fascinating reading. The story rockets along at a break-neck pace, making the reader unable to look away even as you wince at what you’re learning. I’d expected this book to tell the story of the Harvey Weinstein case and the fallout that followed, but it encompasses so much more than that. This story makes the Deep Throat/Watergate scandal look like a kindergarten spat by comparison.
It’s non-fiction, but the pacing is like a mystery thriller. Even if you’ve followed most of this stuff in the news, it’s still worth reading. Highly recommended.
There’s nothing like a few lies, a group of foreign spies and a conspiracy to protect sexual predators
Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow, published by Hachette Book Group.
Sexual assault is not new—it’s existed since biblical days. As then, it remains very well hidden from view by its victims who, for untold numbers of reasons, feel what happened to them was their fault.
Because that’s what society has told them.
Because that’s what the perpetrator—and those in power who aided and abetted the rapists/abusers in their “careers”—have reminded these victim-survivors again and again in an effort to keep silent.
No more.
As Ronan Farrow and his gutsy, tireless team undertook to seek out, then interview of women assaulted and abused by Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein, he exposed a decades-long cover up by friends and associates. Most actively helped Weinstein continue his abusive behaviors by not taking a stand and say “Enough!”. Others abetted by their silence or looking the other way, thus excusing rape, sodomy, coercion, libel, slander:
Why? Because he could. Because others helped him.
Along the way of Farrow’s exhaustive investigation, the names of other prominent men came to light. Again behaviors were excused, denied, ignored and by the use of something called an NDA—non-disclosure agreement—one more way to keep a woman in her place, and silent. Somehow we’ll never view NBC in quite the same way again. Shame on you Noah Oppenheimer, Andy Lack, Steve Burke and Matt Lauer.
God bless Ronan Farrow and the women who came forward to speak the unspeakable. Catch and Kill is their story, the anthem of the #MeToo movement.
On a scale of 1-5, Catch and Kill deserves a 10.
Kat Henry Doran, Two Wild Women Reviews
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators
by Ronan Farrow
Wow! A true thriller with spies, serial rapists, conspiracies, and cover ups. This is told in a fascinating way that kept me interested and infuriated at the same time.
I am well aware of Farrow’s family story with a powerful sexual abuser. It’s no wonder Ronan took on many other projects like this. But this one blew the lids off Hollywood!
Farrow’s investigation was what brought Weinstein down!
Excellent story!
Farrow’s prose makes this easy to read, even when it isn’t easy to read. The depths of the stories, the lengths that the the men went to… terrifying.
This was a bit of an expose. The author was working on a story about Harvey Weinstein for NBC news. The author describes many of the people he worked with and felt he could trust at NBC. As he digs deeper he starts getting blowback that he doesn’t understand. It seems that others have pursued the story before with nothing coming of it. If he were not a lawyer and the son of two people of the movies (Mia Farrow and Woody Allen) he might have had more trouble with the story. As the book progresses people such as Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, and any number of NBC and CBS people are brought down. Catch and kill refers to the National Enquirer’s practise of buying and not publishing embarrassing stories for a consideration from the subject. The book makes one think that if it is this difficult to find information about individuals, are there stories about companies that get squashed because of the big bucks in advertising or squads of lawyers that might keep them off the evening news.
A very sobering and very important read. It details the systemic and long standing sexual abuse of women by powerful men, and also the way in which huge corporations conspire to cover up such abuses to protect the rich male perpetrators. Farrow’s research and commitment to the often dangerous task of uncovering Harvey Weinstein’s crimes is both harrowing and inspiring; he kept trying when everyone made it as difficult for him as possible and long after most of us would have stopped. Thank goodness he didn’t stop.
This was the first book of Farrow’s that I had read, and I found it totally mesmerizing. It was an informative and frightening look at the power of one man, Harvey Weinstein, over the world of media. Ronan Farrow writes with a voice that is at once massively informed yet self-deprecating and humorous. I will be buying all his books in future.
Eye opening to what has been hiding for too long! Shame on us!
It would be enough if Farrow were simply an ace reporter with unwavering principles and devastating good looks; he’s also a fantastic writer of prose. The tale of his now-famous investigation is grippingly paced and peppered with both pathos and subtle wit. He palpably conveys the sympathy, frustration, paranoia, and self-doubt he felt as he doggedly pursued the story in the face of Harvey Weinstein’s apparatus of intimidation and NBC News’s Kafkaesque justifications for quashing his reporting.
An interesting and gripping book that shows the power of men in certain areas and gives credence to the phrase “a predator know how to chose its victim”. Throughout the book there were repeated instances where the women who were assaulted felt they had to play along with the attacker in order to continue to work in the field that they had studied and gotten years of experience in or be denied future opportunities. In most instances they were correct and even when they were offered payments and forced to sign non disclosure agreements they were never able to continue to advance in at the pace they were before in their profession again. It was eye opening the lengths the men would go through to protect themselves from their actions, drawing their companies into the conspiracy based on how much they made for those organisations. If I did not know this was a factual book I would have thought it was a thriller. I recommend this book it is interesting and has an easy to read writing style
I listened to the podcast first and then decided to check the book out at the library. Even though I have followed the story in real life AND I’ve listened to Ronan Farrow telling the story on the podcast, I was still sucked into the book, that reads as fast and as gripping as a spy/suspense novel but has the added elements of being true life.
Ronan Farrow is no stranger to controversy and perhaps is one of the few who will court it because he is emotionally intelligent enough to be aware of that escape is futile. He has built an emotional wall built around him like the walls of Jerusalem. Catch and Kill is the first book I have ever read of Ronan’s, and I would rate this book at 3.5 stars, that is, somewhere between okay and good, but it was so close to being great.
My reason for liking it and not loving it is that Ronan packs three stories into one book without a transition or a real sense of the logic of how it transitions. I am not going to be a person that gives spoilers because what is the point in reading it? Ronan Farrow is well known for his Pulitzer prize-winning article on Harvey Weinsteins’ assault on innocent women for decades. We all have watched the news, so that is less interesting to me, and the graphic description was a bit much for me to read, but I understand that every victim deserved to have her story told. He often cites his family background as that motivation to keep going while clearing stating he is looking at this through a neutral investigative lense. I am not sure if I genuinely believe the altruism in the pursuit of journalism, but I have no choice to go with it.
What hooked me is the saga that he went through to get this story out in the open. The Media/Entertainment Industrial Complex has self-assumed the mantel of moral authority in our country. To read about the massive hypocrisy is worth reading his book alone and the aftermath once the story was published. Ronan goes on an unnecessarily 20-page circuitous route of Donald Trump campaign finance scandal of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal. It doesn’t fit and it does not belong in this story. Ronan also feels the need to clearly state that he was the person who broke the Harvey Weinstein story and not Jodi Kantor or Megan Toughy from the New York Times. There is thinly veiled journalistic jealousy within his book, even though he is championing the free press to get the story out in the open. His competitiveness and slight jealousy are some of the few instances that make him human, along with anecdotal stories of his partner.
I wouldn’t pay an excessive amount to read this book. If you can get it on a deep discount or check it out from a library, it is probably worth your read.
Catch & Kill is the wrenching news account of how reporter Ronan Farrow and others combined to help bring sexual predator Harvey Weinstein to justice. Working at NBC Dateline and then for The New Yorker magazine, journalists like Farrow assiduously worked to get women to share their heartbreaking stories. The reporting is raw and the stories really make you want to put your fist through a wall. Some of what these men do fits a repeated pattern that is truly sick.
One irony is that Farrow was trying to expose this sordid tale through NBC, while one of the network’s top celebrity hosts, Matt Lauer, was himself a serial philanderer and basically a corporate rapist. Toward the end, the saga also envelops political candidate Donald Trump who had his own seamy affairs to hide.
There are times in the telling when it’s fair to ask: “Why didn’t these women simply leave? What were they doing in this guy’s hotel room? Why did they cry ‘rape’ and yet still accept movie roles and even continuing sexual advances from a creep like Weinstein?” These unfolding stories do take many forms, and there are plenty of foolish choices on both sides. But nothing in the universe can excuse the tawdry stalking and flat-out sicko behavior often protected and even abetted by entire corporate armies.
“Catch and Kill” refers to a tactic used by news organizations to get rid of stories they don’t like. They spend a (HUGE) sum of money to buy the rights to the story, which they then NEVER publish, broadcast or share in any way. Instead the inconvenient truth is completely buried.
I was not sure what I was getting into with this audiobook, as I usually read sordid tales of greed and hypocrisy that happened in the past, not at NBC news and not in the present. To say that Farrow’s tale was shocking is an understatement. His narrative begins with his attempts to report on the story about Harvey Weinstein, when some heroically brave women finally decided to speak up in 2017, despite their fear of retaliation and character assassination. However, the higher-ups at NBC had a problem with this reporting. It wasn’t the quality of the reporting. It wasn’t the facts. It wasn’t the sources. Or the ethics. It was…well they had a very hard time actually saying what it was.
One of Farrow’s sources tipped him off by saying that there were more Harvey Weinstein’s at NBC. And so Farrow’s narrative stopped being an account of the Harvey Weinstein story, and instead became an account of Matt Lauer’s abuse of subordinate women, in particular one woman (whose name I will not mention) whom he savagely raped, hurting her so much that she couldn’t walk properly for a time.
I guess it was this story about Matt Lauer that shocked me the most, and made me furious that a group of people (women who depended on Lauer for their career prospects) should be forced to work at their “dream job” in an environment that was positively hazardous to inhabit.
I have written one novel about the Middle Ages, and so am familiar with macho, male-dominated cultures, where women are afraid to speak up, are routinely brutalized, and are seen (mostly) as rented wombs for the getting of male children. I watched “Game of Thrones” and didn’t flinch. But Lauer’s unprovoked savagery against this young woman made me sick.
Five stars.
Ronan Farrow provides us with the courageous taking down of a former Hollywood producer. who used his power to bully and rape women Art film and the stories we produce our meant to elevate entertain and provoke thought Weinstein’s attempt to suppress the truth damages all of society I salute the brave men and women who risked their careers to stop this perverse behavoirYou are true hero’s and my admiration for your strength and bravery is boundless
Farrow deserves another Pulitzer for this book. It’s chilling and jaw dropping to the point I had chills while I read. When the author is afraid for their life and thinks they might be murdered for interview subjects and finding the truth about a horrible individual who has ruined so many lives, you think it’s fiction. But this is non-fiction. I felt like I was reading a suspense thriller and was on the edge of my seat. One of the best books to come out of 2019. Farrow has an engaging writing ability, as well as great wit an sympathy on each page. A great read that will stay with you long after you finish.
I knew this story, but the not to the full extent detailed in Farrow’s book. This fast, gripping read is worthwhile to uncover the full extent of Weinstein’s predations and, even worse, the network of powerful men (and a few women) who protected him and squelched exposure.