A breezy, enjoyable, and informative collection of anecdotes by the FBI crime lab, by an enthusiastic if unskeptical fan. Fisher, coauthor of several celebrity autobiographies (George Burns's All My Best Friends, 1989, etc.), likes to introduce chapters with quotes from Sherlock Holmes, so it's clear this book is an entertainment, albeit an educational one. The opening chapter traces the history of the lab, established in 1933 to provide free and impartial investigative services for federal, state, and local agencies. Fisher then devotes each of the eight following chapters to one or a few related units of the lab, recounting the impressive march of scientific expertise and offering tidbits from interesting cases. Faced with extortion threats regarding cyanide-tainted Tylenol in 1982, members of the lab's chemistry/toxicology unit recognized that X-rays could detect the presence of the poison. Lab expertise, Fisher notes, sometimes proceeds curiously: One vital tool for developing invisible fingerprints is superglue, using a technique discovered by accident in 1979. And new technology can be a double-edged sword for criminals: Though illegal copying of documents has increased, every copy machine has ``fingerprints'' caused by its unique set of scratches and smudges. In addition to its technique, Fisher captures some of the lab's lingo lore: Criminals use so much duct tape that analysts call it ``crime tape''; Radio Shack is known as ``the Bomber's Store,'' because one can buy nearly all components there. However, though he shows that the lab does act impartially, he offers only sketchy treatment of some controversial issues, like the importance and reliability of DNA testing and the theories surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A good alternative to much true-crime ephemera. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-79369-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A heartfelt if somewhat unsurprising view of old age by the former president. Carter (Living Faith, 1996, etc.) succinctly evaluates the evolution and current status of federal policies concerning the elderly (including a balanced appraisal of the difficulties facing the Social Security system). He also meditates, while drawing heavily on autobiographical anecdotes, on the possibilities for exploration and intellectual and spiritual growth in old age. There are few lightning bolts to dazzle in his prescriptions (cultivate family ties; pursue the restorative pleasures of hobbies and socially minded activities). Yet the warmth and frankness of Carter’s remarks prove disarming. Given its brevity, the work is more of a call to senior citizens to reconsider how best to live life than it is a guide to any of the details involved.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1998
ISBN: 0-345-42592-8
Page Count: 96
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1998
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.
Custer died for your sins. And so, this book would seem to suggest, did every other native victim of colonialism.
Inducing guilt in non-native readers would seem to be the guiding idea behind Dunbar-Ortiz’s (Emerita, Ethnic Studies/California State Univ., Hayward; Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War, 2005, etc.) survey, which is hardly a new strategy. Indeed, the author says little that hasn’t been said before, but she packs a trove of ideological assumptions into nearly every page. For one thing, while “Indian” isn’t bad, since “[i]ndigenous individuals and peoples in North America on the whole do not consider ‘Indian’ a slur,” “American” is due to the fact that it’s “blatantly imperialistic.” Just so, indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by a “colonialist settler-state” (the very language broadly applied to Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinians today) and then “displaced to fragmented reservations and economically decimated”—after, that is, having been forced to live in “concentration camps.” Were he around today, Vine Deloria Jr., the always-indignant champion of bias-puncturing in defense of native history, would disavow such tidily packaged, ready-made, reflexive language. As it is, the readers who are likely to come to this book—undergraduates, mostly, in survey courses—probably won’t question Dunbar-Ortiz’s inaccurate assertion that the military phrase “in country” derives from the military phrase “Indian country” or her insistence that all Spanish people in the New World were “gold-obsessed.” Furthermore, most readers won’t likely know that some Ancestral Pueblo (for whom Dunbar-Ortiz uses the long-abandoned term “Anasazi”) sites show evidence of cannibalism and torture, which in turn points to the inconvenient fact that North America wasn’t entirely an Eden before the arrival of Europe.
A Churchill-ian view of native history—Ward, that is, not Winston—its facts filtered through a dense screen of ideology.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0040-3
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Beacon Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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