Overview

The first comprehensive book about Michael Stewart, the young Black artist and model who was the victim of a fatal assault by police in 1983, from Elon Green, the Edgar Award-winning author of Last Call. At twenty-five years old, Michael Stewart was a young Black aspiring artist, deejay, and model, looking to make a name for himself in the vibrant downtown art scene of the early 1980's New York City. On September 15, 1983, he was brutally beaten by New York City Transit Authority police for allegedly tagging a 14th Street subway station wall. Witnesses reported officers beating him with billy clubs and choking him with a nightstick. Stewart arrived at Bellevue Hospital hog-tied with no heartbeat and died after thirteen days in a coma. This was, at that point, the most widely noticed act of police brutality in the city's history. The Man Nobody Killed recounts the cultural impact of Michael Stewart's life and death. The Stewart case quickly catalyzed movements across multiple communities. It became a rallying cry, taken up by artists and singers including Madonna, Keith Haring, Spike Lee, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, tabloid legends such as Jimmy Breslin and Murray Kempton, and the pioneering local news reporter, Gabe Pressman. The Stewart family and the downtown arts community of 1980s New York demanded justice for Michael, leading to multiple investigations into the circumstances of his wrongful death. Elon Green, the Edgar Award-winning author of Last Call, presents the first comprehensive narrative account of Michael Stewart's life and killing, the subsequent court proceedings, and the artistic aftermath. In the vein of The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace and His Name is George Floyd, Green brings us the story of a promising life cut short and a vivid snapshot of the world surrounding this loss. A tragedy set in stark contrast against the hope, activism, and creativity of the 1980's New York City art scene, The Man Nobody Killed serves as a poignant reminder of recurring horrors in American history and explores how, and for whom, the justice system fails.

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9781250898227

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Reviews

""The murder of Michael Stewart remains, after more than forty years, an unstanched wound in the city's side. The incompetence, obfuscation, prevarication, corruption, and racism that prevented a resolution is documented in exacting detail by Elon Green, whose gift for pacing gives The Man Nobody Killed the feeling of a thriller. I've been following the story since 1983, and there is plenty here I didn't know."" --Lucy Sante, award-winning author of Low Life and I Heard Her Call My Name ""Elon Green's The Man Nobody Killed is a must read and just as riveting as his debut, Last Call. Prescient doesn't begin to cover the scope and many layers of New York society as police corruption, racial discrimination, music, and club culture all come under intense focus because of the untimely and unjust murder of Michael Stewart, someone who could have been as great and renowned like his contemporary, Basquiat."" --Morgan Jerkins, New York Times bestselling author of This Will Be My Undoing ""What Elon Green achieves in The Man Nobody Killed is extraordinary--a long- overdue and riveting biography of Michael Stewart; a searing examination of the systemic forces that unjustly took his life; and a kaleidoscopic and luminous portrait of an entire city. This is a monumental work that will grip and haunt you."" --David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Wager ""In The Man Nobody Killed, Elon Green takes us back--vividly, viscerally--to the New York City of the early 1980s and a case of police brutality, institutional incompetence and malfeasance, and justice pointedly undone that echoes maddeningly and infuriatingly our own era. Green deftly sketches the young Black artist Michael Stewart and the world in which he lived and died, and as the awful saga swirls and expands to include the likes of Madonna, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Robert Morgenthau, Jimmy Breslin, Eleanor Bumpurs, Bernhard Goetz, and even Toni Morrison, one feels oneself fully and persuasively--and harrowingly--immersed."" --Benjamin Dreyer, New York Times bestselling author of Dreyer's English

Author Information

Elon Green has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker, and appears in Unspeakable Acts, Sarah Weinman's anthology of true crime. Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York was his first book and won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime.

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