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Sign up todayGod’ll Cut You Down
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Learn moreGod'll Cut You Down combines an unlikely journalist, a murder case in Mississippi, and a fascinating literary true crime story in the style of Jon Ronson.
A notorious white supremacist named Richard Barrett was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 2010 by a young black man named Vincent McGee. At first the murder seemed a twist on old Deep South race crimes. But then new revelations and complications came to light. Maybe it was a dispute over money rather than race—or, maybe and intriguingly, over sex.
John Safran, a young white Jewish Australian documentarian, had been in Mississippi and interviewed Barrett for a film on race. When he learned of Barrett's murder, he returned to find out what happened and became caught up in the twists and turns of the case. During his time in Mississippi, Safran got deeper and deeper into this gothic southern world, becoming entwined in the lives of those connected with the murder—white separatist frenemies, black lawyers, police investigators, oddball neighbors, the stunned families, even the killer himself. And the more he talked with them, the less simple the crime—and the people involved—seemed to be. In the end, he discovered how profoundly and indelibly complex the truth about someone's life—and death—can be.
This is a brilliant, haunting, hilarious, unsettling story about race, money, sex, and power in the modern American South from an outsider's point of view.
John Safran is an award-winning documentarian and radio storyteller on a wide range of subjects, including the media, religion, and race. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Tom Bromhead grew up in Australia and England, which gave him an ear for accents and characters. He has appeared in commercials and performed voices for animation and video games.
Reviews
“Imagine In Cold Blood written not by Capote by an Australian, higher-brow Johnny Knoxville.”
“A sharp sense of humor, wise pacing, and plain, powerful writing, makes this book into a deeper experience than you suspect…A kind of mesmerizing psychosocial-cultural drama…I do not remember a nonfiction book that seemed to bring me so close to its subjects.”
“Safran does a great job of looking at the murder from multiple perspectives and brings in his own experience learning about the culture, which is in itself a character.”
“It’s not often that the retelling of a brutal murder is full of laughs but documentarian and debut author Safran is an entertaining writer…weaving a tale that is simultaneously about race, failed systems, money, sex, family, and simple rage.”
“A hilarious and bizarre story that leads where you least expect it. John Safran has for years been one of my favorite journalists—forever pushing the boundaries, funny, startling, a hurricane.”
“John Safran’s captivating inquiry into a murder in darkest Mississippi is by turns informative, frightening, and hilarious. It is enlivened by a swarm of creepy locals and a torrent of astonishing details—such as hedge clippers put to surgical use in the performance of an official autopsy.”
“A murdered white supremacist sparks a remarkable investigation that is anything but straightforward…Weaving a tale that is simultaneously about race, failed systems, money, sex, family, and simple rage, Safran truly did lose a year in Mississippi, and getting lost with him is a joy.”
“Originally published in Australia as Murder in Mississippi in 2013, this stranger-than-fiction true crime story finds Safran—a white, Jewish documentary filmmaker from Australia—relocating to Rankin County, Mississippi, to dig deep into the grisly stabbing murder of a sixty-seven-year-old white supremacist in April 2010…The result is a bizarrely unsettling yet often witty book that paints a disturbing picture of the deep South today.”
“Funny and gripping and wonderfully weird.”
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