Emily Bazelon is critical of Jon Krakauer's book about campus rape.

A review in the NYT of "Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town":

The university had used the standard of “preponderance of the evidence” (or more likely than not) to find Johnson culpable, but the standard for a criminal conviction is higher — beyond a reasonable doubt.... Krakauer presents [the acquittal] not as a reflection of the differing evidentiary standard, and a jury’s best effort to resolve a difficult and confusing set of facts, but as a bitter failure of the adversarial process....

[I]t’s not clear that he spoke to any prosecutors or police officers in Missoula, or to university officials... [T]he book feels one-sided. It also lacks texture.... Krakauer doesn’t take us inside the student culture at the university or the community of Missoula. He lets his contempt for certain city officials show, but they’re neither memorable villains nor three-dimensional characters afforded the opportunity to explain themselves. And strikingly, the women who should be at the book’s emotional center don’t really come to life either... [H]e... reduc[s] them... to victimhood...

More generally, Krakauer doesn’t fully grapple with the complexities of campus sexual assault. He notes the heavy drinking that leads up to some of his book’s most wrenching episodes without exploring the role alcohol plays in making perpetrators dangerous or victims vulnerable... Instead of delving deeply into questions of fairness as universities try to fulfill a recent government mandate to conduct their own investigations and hearings — apart from the police and the courts — Krakauer settles for bromides....