A unique historical snapshot of most interest to those just learning about the nation’s highest court.
The sitting Justices and various experts discuss the Supreme Court and its work.
For a documentary originally intended to focus on the gleaming marble temple designed by Cass Gilbert, the C-SPAN producers persuaded all the current Justices and the retired Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter—Souter later declined to have his remarks printed here—to sit for interviews. The Court’s unprecedented cooperation resulted in an invaluable piece of televised history about the least understood branch of the federal government, but for at least two reasons these transcripts make for a frustrating, occasionally tedious reading experience. First, the Justices are, of course, barred from discussing any of the past or present cases before them or what happens in their exclusive conference. Second, because they are so frequently asked the same questions about process—how cases come to the Court, how they’re selected for review, how opinions are assigned, etc.—the responses are necessarily identical. Moreover, they give strikingly similar answers to questions about life on the bench. They all revere the Court’s traditions—the robes, the handshake before oral argument and the group lunches that follow, the quill pens given to attorneys who argue before them—treasure the collegiality of their peers, admire the professionalism of the Supreme Court Bar, appreciate the assistance of their clerks and fully recognize the steep learning curve imposed on any new appointee. Occasionally, as with the garrulous Stephen Breyer or the guileless Sonia Sotomayor, some genuine personality breaks through. More satisfying are the discussions with Court specialists, including veteran court reporter Lyle Denniston, historian James B. O’Hara and especially appellate attorney and former law clerk Maureen Mahoney. A helpful appendix provides short biographies of the Justices, a listing of all previous Court members and the answers to a poll revealing only dim public understanding of the Court. Other, similar C-SPAN projects—e.g., Lamb and Swain, Abraham Lincoln: Great American Historians on Our Sixteenth President, 2008—have translated into more pleasurable and edifying reading, but these dismal poll results reinforce the need for this elemental civics lesson.
A unique historical snapshot of most interest to those just learning about the nation’s highest court.Pub Date: May 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-58648-835-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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