Like having one’s day in court, reading this revelatory account is a rite of passage that could make any Law and Order hound...
An affecting meditation on jury duty laid out with the dexterity of a police procedural.
When intellectual historian and Princeton professor Burnett (Masters of All They Surveyed, not reviewed) receives a juror card during a winter sabbatical, he welcomes it as an improbable vacation into the urban jungle, a whimsy he is disabused of by the coiling process of jury selection alone. The judicial lottery, along with his own scruples, lands him in Part 24 of the New York Supreme Court, its military and religious underpinnings richly evoked, for the murder trial of a young fiancé who stabbed a surreptitious date after she turned out to be an unexpectedly domineering transsexual. After listening in open court for several days and spending four more sequestered as foreman with his co-jurors, Burnett gains a more worldly-wise appreciation of the power of the state and the state of things. The episode, he writes, has been a gift that keeps on costing. The gift is compellingly shared with insights that reveal his own self (mindful, intelligent, occasionally pedantic) and the other jurors, all locked in the therapeutic anarchy and political jockeying of their closed room. There, the ancient conflict between legal and moral justice plays out, leading toward a remarkable display of coordinated gravitas at the reading of the verdict. After the trial, evidence highly corroborative to the verdict comes to light; however, Burnett laments, “welcome as the news was, it ransomed our verdict only by bankrupting its logic.” He advocates the wisdom of keeping large legal questions open while making decisions based on delimited criteria.
Like having one’s day in court, reading this revelatory account is a rite of passage that could make any Law and Order hound or legal eagle a more reasonable person. (2 diagrams, not seen)Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-41303-0
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2001
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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