Technical Difficulties

We Is Got Him: The Kidnapping that Changed America by Carrie Hagen

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is a better book about the Ross kidnapping than Zierold's Little Charley Ross, but it is not a substantially different book. Hagen doesn't have any new information, although she does offer a better analysis of the political response to Charley Ross' kidnapping and she does have a theory about what happened to him that is perfectly plausible, at least arguably supported by the evidence, and greatly advantageous in that it offers both an explanation and a resolution for Charley Ross' complete and utter disappearance. But of course none of that means that it is correct.

She makes no attempt to analyze, or even come to terms with, the bizarre ransom letters (even though she uses them for her chapter headers and the title of her book), which is definitely a weakness in the book, but if you're interested in the history of kidnapping for ransom in America, or in unsolved missing persons cases, or just in the particular kidnapping of Charles Brewster Ross, age 4 and never seen again, this is a good place to start.



View all my reviews