An absorbing account that will especially speak to advocates of social and criminal justice reform.
For a juror in a real-life murder case, the guilty verdict is only the beginning of his post-trial examination into the many institutional failures he feels led to the tragedy.
Abraham Cucuta, 35, was convicted in 2018 of first-degree murder for two “brutal and senseless” gang-connected killings. When the trial concluded, Sigel agonized: “Why? And there is plenty of blame to go around.” In this nonfiction book, the author, a former journalist, trains his reportorial eye on the courtroom proceedings as well as “how and why the failures of the New York City schools, its public housing projects and its criminal justice system, contributed to these outcomes.” He also apportions blame to the families that fail “to do what families are supposed to do for their children.” The victims, he notes, “were still children when they first began joining gangs, robbing tourists or peddling crack.” Sigel writes with compassion. If this were a real-life Twelve Angry Men, he’d be cast in the Henry Fonda role (although in announcing the guilty verdict, Fonda probably wouldn’t have spoken louder than he should, indulging in a regretful “piece of theater”). The trial takes up the first half of the compact, engrossing work, and Sigel serves as an otherwise objective observer, laying out the opposing attorneys’ cases and noting troubling holes in the prosecutor’s presentation (a lack of physical evidence connecting the accused to the crime). The author takes his commitment seriously: “While we owe the defendant a fair trial, we also have an obligation…to see that justice is done.” The second half of the timely book is devoted to Sigel’s “search for why.” He skillfully puts a human face on the denizens of run-down housing projects, overwhelmed schools, and the police. There is hope in the vivid success stories of nonprofit organizations trying to break the cycle of recidivism.
An absorbing account that will especially speak to advocates of social and criminal justice reform.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73242-550-7
Page Count: 146
Publisher: The Writers’ Press
Review Posted Online: July 7, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For fans only.
The hoodie-and-shorts-clad Pennsylvania senator blends the political and personal, and often not nicely.
Fetterman’s memoir addresses three major themes. The first—and the one he leads with—is depression and mental illness, which, combined with a stroke and heart trouble, brought him to a standstill and led him to contemplate suicide. The second is his rise to national-level politics from a Rust Belt town; as he writes, he’s carved a path as a contentious player with a populist streak and a dislike for elites. There are affecting moments in his personal reminiscences, especially when he writes of the lives of his working-class neighbors in impoverished southwestern Pennsylvania, its once-prosperous Monongahela River Valley “the most heartbreaking drive in the United States.” It’s the third element that’s problematic, and that’s his in-the-trenches account of daily politics. One frequent complaint is the media, as when he writes of one incident, “I am not the first public figure to get fucked by a reporter, and I won’t be the last. What was eye-opening was the window it gave into how people with disabilities navigate a world that doesn’t give a shit.” He reserves special disdain for his Senate race opponent Mehmet Oz, about whom he wonders, “If I had run against any other candidate…would I have lost? He got beaten by a guy recovering from a stroke.” Perhaps so, and Democratic stalwarts will likely be dismayed at his apparent warmish feelings for Donald Trump and dislike of his own party’s “performative protests.” If Fetterman’s book convinces a troubled soul to seek help, it will have done some good, but it’s hard to imagine that it will make much of an impression in the self-help literature. One wonders, meanwhile, at sentiments such as this: “If men are forced to choose between picking their party or keeping their balls, most men are going to choose their balls.”
For fans only.Pub Date: Nov. 11, 2025
ISBN: 9780593799826
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2026
SEEN & HEARD
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