Murphy moves case by case in an evenhanded, thoroughgoing study.
A deeply probing biography of the controversial Supreme Court justice.
Civil rights historian Murphy (Civil Rights/Lafayette Coll.; Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas, 2003, etc.) begins by giving the long-serving justice Scalia the benefit of the doubt as a brilliant legal scholar and vigorous textualist. Ultimately, though, he becomes as incredulous and frustrated by the justice’s oppositional “originalism” and personal pugnacity as his oft-quoted observers, colleagues and critics. In setting out the life’s journey of this extraordinarily driven character, who carefully situated himself as an academic, writer, Republican team player and judge on the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals from which the pool of Supreme Court justices were frequently plucked, the author notes an entrenched pattern of solipsistic self-righteousness that was engrained early on. Scalia was the only child (b. 1936) of Italian-Americans in Queens; his intellectual father taught romance languages at Brooklyn College and was himself a “literalist” in textual interpretation. A brilliant student, Scalia absorbed the rigor and competitiveness of his Jesuit education, delighting in debate, and was later inculcated by the political conservatism of Harvard Law School in the 1950s. From private practice in Cleveland to teaching to moving into the reaches of power under President Richard Nixon, Scalia proved his conservative bona fides by trying to scuttle the Freedom of Information Act. A founding member of the Federalist Society, Scalia’s strict adherence to an originalist (rather than “living”) interpretation of the Constitution won him appointment to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986. However, Scalia would not become a “consensus builder.” Rather, his confrontational style, especially in attacking the very conservative justices, like Sandra O’Connor and Anthony Kennedy, he hoped to sway, only alienated the middle, especially regarding such issues as freedom of speech, reproductive rights, and the separation of church and state.
Murphy moves case by case in an evenhanded, thoroughgoing study.Pub Date: June 10, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9649-6
Page Count: 736
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Her biographer, James Westcott, once said: “every time she tells a story, it gets better,” and one can’t help but wait in...
Legendary performance artist Abramovic unveils her story in this highly anticipated memoir.
When she was growing up, the author lived in an environment of privilege in Yugoslavia, which was on the verge of ruin. Her parents, two fervent communist partisans and loyal officers during Josip Broz Tito’s rule, were not the warmest people. Abramovic was put under the care of several people, only to be taken in by her grandmother. “I felt displaced and I probably thought that if I walked, it meant I would have to go away again somewhere,” she writes. Ultimately, she carried this feeling of displacement throughout most, if not all, of her career. Many remember The Artist Is Present, her 2010 performance at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during which she sat in front of museumgoers for 736 hours, but her work started long before then. As a woman who almost single-handedly launched female performance art, the author has spent the better part of her life studying the different ways in which the body functions in time and space. She pushed herself to explore her body’s limits and her mind’s boundaries (“I [have] put myself in so much pain that I no longer [feel] any pain”). For example, she stood in front of a bow and arrow aimed at her heart with her romantic and performance partner of 12 years, Ulay. She was also one of the first people to walk along the Great Wall of China, a project she conceived when secluded in aboriginal Australia. While the author’s writing could use some polishing, the voice that seeps through the text is hypnotizing, and readers will have a hard time putting the book down and will seek out further information about her work.
Her biographer, James Westcott, once said: “every time she tells a story, it gets better,” and one can’t help but wait in anticipation of what she is concocting for her next tour de force.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90504-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.
The former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed.
It’s not surprising that Obama grew up a rambunctious kid with a stubborn streak and an “I’ll show you” attitude. After all, it takes a special kind of moxie to survive being the first African-American FLOTUS—and not only survive, but thrive. For eight years, we witnessed the adversity the first family had to face, and now we get to read what it was really like growing up in a working-class family on Chicago’s South Side and ending up at the world’s most famous address. As the author amply shows, her can-do attitude was daunted at times by racism, leaving her wondering if she was good enough. Nevertheless, she persisted, graduating from Chicago’s first magnet high school, Princeton, and Harvard Law School, and pursuing careers in law and the nonprofit world. With her characteristic candor and dry wit, she recounts the story of her fateful meeting with her future husband. Once they were officially a couple, her feelings for him turned into a “toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder.” But for someone with a “natural resistance to chaos,” being the wife of an ambitious politician was no small feat, and becoming a mother along the way added another layer of complexity. Throw a presidential campaign into the mix, and even the most assured woman could begin to crack under the pressure. Later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described “control freak”—not to mention the difficulty of sparing their daughters the ugly side of politics and preserving their privacy as much as possible. Through it all, Obama remained determined to serve with grace and help others through initiatives like the White House garden and her campaign to fight childhood obesity. And even though she deems herself “not a political person,” she shares frank thoughts about the 2016 election.
An engrossing memoir as well as a lively treatise on what extraordinary grace under extraordinary pressure looks like.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5247-6313-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2018
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