A significant book that will hopefully spark change.
Often shocking tales from a veteran litigator courageously battling menacing stalkers and online predators.
Brooklyn-based victims’ rights attorney Goldberg profiles hair-raising cases involving extreme stalking, vengeance-driven retaliation, and rejection-fueled abuse in which families, reputations, and livelihoods are systematically dismantled by scorned lovers. The author barely survived the wrath of a vindictive ex-boyfriend, and she began devoting her expertise toward representing clientele who unwittingly become the targets of deranged stalkers, a demographic she feels is grossly underrepresented. The real-life cases she presents—some of which have garnered national media attention—chillingly illustrate the insidious nature of these types of crimes and also act as a necessary call to arms regarding the importance of victim empowerment. Goldberg notes that these incidents are far more common than many of us realize, and the perpetrators are typically male and classic masters of charm and charisma, luring unsuspecting women into whirlwind romances with “jiu-jitsu-level mind games.” In the opening section, the author discusses the case of a woman whose boyfriend was discovered to be behind a barrage of mysterious online attacks, which soon turned nefarious once she terminated their relationship. Goldberg attests that many of these assailants are so skillful at using anonymizing software to cover their tracks that the time it takes to prosecute them can be prohibitively lengthy. Other cases feature a high-profile lawsuit involving a gay man viciously terrorized by an ex-lover, an arrogant “professional life-ruiner,” victims of “revenge porn,” and “sextortionists,” who are “part of a vast league of sex predators who use intimidation, threats, and trickery to coerce victims into sex acts.” Though the incidents became increasingly complex, they further sharpened Goldberg’s mastery in dealing with the cases. From bullied teenagers to women exploited by revenge porn, Goldberg’s cases usually get much worse before any kind of resolution is reached, but the author does an important service in bringing these horrific exploitations to light.
A significant book that will hopefully spark change.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53377-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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