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The Mysterious Story of Gitano Cervantes

VIGNETTES OF LIFE (AND DEATH) UNDER A BROKEN SYSTEM OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE

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A prison chaplain shares the stories of men he served.

Manghan’s debut draws on the time he spent as a volunteer chaplain at an unnamed American prison. Inmates were eager to tell him their stories, in person and in letters; these tales make up the bulk of this work, and many end tragically. The author questioned whether some of the prisoners he met were wrongly imprisoned, and he even went so far as to examine court documents for inconsistencies and questionable practices—which, in many cases, he found. The titular storyteller, Gitano Cervantes, found himself in prison for a crime he insists he didn’t commit. It turns out that the crime, the sexual assault of two boys, took place two years before Cervantes even entered the United States, but despite this, he sees little hope for release. Manghan tells stories of other men in the prison system; some admit guilt, while others maintain their innocence. One terminally ill prisoner tells of being mistreated by prison officials; another died as the result of neglect. Still another claims that he’s incarcerated due to false accusations by his stepgranddaughter, alleging the sexual abuse of her younger siblings. Manghan often tells these stories in the prisoners’ own words, through letters they sent him during his chaplaincy, and he uses court documents and prison records to bolster the accounts. Overall, the book is a frank look at the horrors of the American justice and prison systems in the modern age. However, the author is careful to note there are people in prison who truly deserve to be there, as well as ethical prison officials. The stories of injustice may indeed be outliers, but they also serve as a call to action for prison and justice system reforms. As a result of Manghan’s service as a chaplain, many of his subjects are religious, but the work doesn’t take a particularly religious perspective. Instead, his accounts are largely secular, and his appeals are on a political and personal level. Many readers, particularly those with an interest in issues surrounding the American justice system and human rights, will find the work compelling.


A sometimes-difficult but necessary book about the failures of the American prison system.

Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2014

ISBN: 978-1480804425

Page Count: 468

Publisher: Archway Publishing

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014

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WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR

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. 29, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015

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GOOD ECONOMICS FOR HARD TIMES

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.

It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.

Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.

Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0

Page Count: 432

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019

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