On his twentieth birthday, sportswriter Jay Weiner was unexpectedly taken to the farmhouse where Patty Hearst was hiding. His decision not to testify about what he saw eventually sent him to federal prison for four months.

Coming this fall from the
University of Minnesota Press

His surprise six hours with Hearst—the heiress-turned-kidnap-victim-turned-urban-guerrilla—are at the heart of Jay Weiner's coming-of-age memoir. It's a deeply personal, exhaustively reported tale of idealism, mistakes, power, betrayal, consequences, and redemption in 1970s America.
Jay Weiner is an award-winning journalist and author whose writing career spanned sports, politics, public affairs, and higher education. “A More Dangerous Game” is his fourth book.

"Jay Weiner has written a coming-of-age story unlike any I have ever read. With the wisdom acquired over a half-century of distance, and with the storytelling skills of a master journalist, he has revisited both the bracing idealism and the dangerous self-delusions of the New Left. Weiner may have been only a bit player in the saga of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army, but even that fleeting proximity endows this book with its drama and its tragedy."—Samuel G. Freedman, author of Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Rights
"Jay Weiner is an award-winning former sports journalist who never abided by the admonition to ‘stick to sports.’ To read his intriguing memoir is to find out why. A More Dangerous Game tells the story of a surprising slice of American history with a compelling cast of characters, famous and infamous. Even though it happened decades ago, it’s a story worth retelling to this day."—Christine Brennan, USA Today columnist and author of On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports

What People Are Saying