by Cyril Wecht with Mark Curriden with Benjamin Wecht ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 21, 1996
Wecht, a forensic pathologist and lawyer (Cause of Death, 1993), provides disappointingly little insight into some sensational trials and tragedies of recent years. Wecht is often called in as an expert when local coroners have trouble establishing a cause of death or when attorneys need a fresh take on the record of an autopsy. But rather than concentrate on the interpretive abilities that have made him professionally so well known, Wecht includes a curious amount of padding here and even, in one chapter, offers transcripts of television interviews he gave on a case. Equally disappointing is his approach to some of the famous cases on which he's been consulted. Wecht provides page after page of gelatinous information about the Simpson case, including much rehashing of familiar material; along the way, he shares his personal beliefs about the Holocaust and offers an apologia for Johnny Cochran's use of bodyguards supplied by the Nation of Islam. As for forensic insight, he states two ``startling truths'': O.J. may have done it, and the police may have planted evidence. As for the deaths of David Koresh and his followers in Waco, the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton by Chicago police in 1969, the mysterious death of White House counsel Vincent Foster (it was, Wecht decides, a suicide), and the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire in Kentucky in 1977, in which over one hundred people died—the author's takes frequently seem terse or incomplete, rough drafts for a memoir rather than detailed records of investigations or explanations of forensic science. He concludes with a curiously indecisive take on the so-called ``alien autopsy'' film screened on television last year. A sloppy, dissatisfying work from an author who has done better. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1996
ISBN: 0-525-93974-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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BOOK REVIEW
by Cyril Wecht with Mark Curriden with Benjamin Wecht
by Elie Wiesel & translated by Marion Wiesel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 16, 2006
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
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BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; edited by Alan Rosen
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; illustrated by Mark Podwal
BOOK REVIEW
by Elie Wiesel ; translated by Marion Wiesel
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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