An exemplary biography of a true public servant, especially refreshing in today’s toxic political climate.
A well-worth-the-effort doorstop study of an indispensable American jurist.
In this powerhouse portrait, Snyder, a professor of constitutional law and legal history, offers a definitive life of Felix Frankfurter (1882-1965), the often misrepresented justice appointed by Franklin Roosevelt who served during an era of liberal sea change in the Supreme Court—best illustrated by Brown v. Board of Education. Born in Vienna, Frankfurter moved to the U.S. with his family when he was 12, and he graduated first in his class from Harvard Law School. Throughout his career, he was known for his judicial restraint. He believed that socio-economic change should be primarily effected through the democratic process, via legislative action by elected representatives. Though he was reluctant to allow the highest court to “enter [the] political thicket,” Frankfurter believed its power was essential in securing civil rights for Black Americans. Snyder delves into every aspect of his subject’s extraordinary life: his earliest days as an immigrant immersed in New York City public schools and trying to learn English; his remarkable success in law school and as editor of the Harvard Law Review; his service under his mentor, Henry Stimson, when he was still in his 20s and eager to join Theodore Roosevelt’s crusade for “robust federal government.” As the author writes, “Roosevelt was the leader who could implement James Bradley Thayer’s ideas about limiting judicial review while empowering the federal government.” Other powerful influences included Frankfurter’s “judicial idols,” Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and Louis D. Brandeis, who championed the notion that law could serve the public good. Above all, Snyder capably demonstrates how Frankfurter “played a major role in the creation of a liberal establishment.” His far-reaching legacy, which the author masterfully captures, can be seen in his writings in the fledgling New Republic, his lifelong mentoring at Harvard Law, and his long career advising presidents and top players across the political spectrum.
An exemplary biography of a true public servant, especially refreshing in today’s toxic political climate.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-324-00487-5
Page Count: 1008
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A memoir of vivid detail and understandable ambivalence.
The bassist for Prince during the Purple Rain era provides glimpses into the kingdom.
BrownMark—who was born Mark Brown in 1962—describes his rise from a single-parent home in a city of racial discrimination (Minneapolis) to success with the musical supernova. Yet there were plenty of bumps along the way. For example, in 1982, even a big raise only brought his salary to $425 per week; later, he quit after discovering that his Purple Rain Tour bonus that he’d imagined might be $1.5 million was in fact only $15,000. Those looking for a memoir awash in sex, drugs, and the seamier sides of Prince’s private life will instead discover hard work and rigid discipline under a stern taskmaster, an artist who became what he was through minute attention to detail as well as genius. The author ably chronicles his own life growing up Black in a city so White he thought of it as a “Scandinavian Mecca.” As a boy, his family didn’t have a TV, and his early experiences playing music involved a makeshift guitar constructed out of a shoe box and rubber bands. Before he auditioned for Prince, he had never been to the suburbs, and before he joined the band, he had never been on a plane. His life changed dramatically at a time when the world of music was changing, as well. Disco was breaking down walls between Black and White, and punk was bringing a new edge and urgency. As Prince’s star was ascending, he demanded the full spotlight and resented any response his young bassist was generating. The author left the band in the mid-1980s feeling that he lived “in a world of filth, greed, and deception.” Still, the connections and impressions he made as a member of The Revolution launched his career, and he notes that “working with Prince was like going to the finest music school in the land.” One of Kirkus and Rolling Stone’s Best Music Books of 2020.
A memoir of vivid detail and understandable ambivalence.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5179-0927-7
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Univ. of Minnesota
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A...
Valediction from the late neurologist and writer Sacks (On the Move: A Life, 2015, etc.).
In this set of four short essays, much-forwarded opinion pieces from the New York Times, the author ponders illness, specifically the metastatic cancer that spread from eye to liver and in doing so foreclosed any possibility of treatment. His brief reflections on that unfortunate development give way to, yes, gratitude as he examines the good things that he has experienced over what, in the end, turned out to be a rather long life after all, lasting 82 years. To be sure, Sacks has regrets about leaving the world, not least of them not being around to see “a thousand…breakthroughs in the physical and biological sciences,” as well as the night sky sprinkled with stars and the yellow legal pads on which he worked sprinkled with words. Sacks works a few familiar tropes and elaborates others. Charmingly, he reflects on his habit since childhood of associating each year of his life with the element of corresponding atomic weight on the periodic table; given polonium’s “intense, murderous radioactivity,” then perhaps 84 isn’t all that it’s cut out to be. There are some glaring repetitions here, unfortunate given the intense brevity of this book, such as his twice citing Nathaniel Hawthorne’s call to revel in “intercourse with the world”—no, not that kind. Yet his thoughts overall—while not as soul-stirringly inspirational as the similar reflections of Randy Pausch or as bent on chasing down the story as Christopher Hitchens’ last book—are shaped into an austere beauty, as when Sacks writes of being able in his final moments to “see my life as from a great altitude, as a sort of landscape, and with a deepening sense of the connection of all its parts.”
If that promise of clarity is what awaits us all, then death doesn’t seem so awful, and that is a great gift from Sacks. A fitting, lovely farewell.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-451-49293-7
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2015
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