Washington Post reporter Drehle (formerly of the Miami Herald) crafts a gripping narrative traversing the world of the death penalty. ``Twenty men have been sentenced to die under Florida's modern death penalty laws for every one who has been executed,'' he writes. ``Nothing but chance has separated those who live from those who died.'' Though he reviews (and refutes) the standard prodeath penalty arguments of deterrence and retribution, Drehle's concern is with the flawed system in practice. He examines in detail Florida cases beginning with that of John Spenkelink, whose May 1979 execution was the first after the Supreme Court's invalidation of all death penalty laws in 1972. Florida had passed a new law aiming to respond to the high court's quest for procedural certainty; however, notes the author, most experts failed to recognize ``how contentious and crazy and tortured the whole process was going to be.'' The book meanders but abounds with memorable, sometimes macabre material, including a case in which two men on death row had to plead guilty to a crime they had earlier denied committing in order to be released on the basis of time served, and the request by a black killer who hated whites to have his ashes taken to Africa. Drehle treats even opportunistic characters like former Florida governor Bob Graham with dignity and lets his reporting drive his conclusions. A narrow death penalty limited to cases like serial murder or political killings would provide firmer ground for judging, he suggests. Some of the crimes- -especially those by serial killer Ted Bundy, whose case dominates the last third of the book—are indeed monstrous. Drehle observes that death row inmates are invariably weak, flawed people who could not overcome childhood deprivation and violence: ``This isn't bleeding-heart stuff, just simple fact.'' A powerful argument that we should all avoid sloganeering about the death penalty and think more carefully about justice. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2166-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
Categories: CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | UNITED STATES | HISTORY | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ETHNICITY & RACE
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