A well-written and thoughtful guide to managing a challenging process.
A debut manual focuses on coping with the aftermath of the negligent death or injury of a loved one.
Bachus combines personal and professional experiences in dealing with catastrophic injury and death to present a step-by-step guide to handling the legal, medical, financial, and emotional effects. The author is a personal injury attorney with more than two decades of experience representing victims and families in civil litigation, and he is also the son of a woman killed by a negligent driver. The book discusses the potential criminal and civil charges that may be brought, the rights and responsibilities of victims and their families, and the possible outcomes. Bachus explains autopsies, advance directives, estates and probate, and insurance. The volume’s final chapters address the emotional aspects of coping with death and injury, including grief, healing, and advocacy. Appendices provide information on each state’s relevant laws and offer templates for contacting police, prosecutors, and other officials. The manual is concise and informative, and the author does an excellent job of balancing the narrative between cut-and-dried facts and the nuances of his own experiences. (For instance, the discussion of the role of victims and families in the criminal justice system is punctuated by Bachus’ account of the driver who killed his mother being subject only to a minor fine because a box was left unchecked on the initial traffic citation.) Although it is clear that the author loved and still mourns his mother, the book’s overall tone is lawyerly and dispassionate rather than emotional. This allows the work to serve as a comprehensive resource rather than a call to arms, ensuring that victims and families are aware of their rights—not only in the courtroom, but also concerning communication, information, and reimbursements—and how to exercise them. The volume handles complex legal topics at an appropriate level that balances detail and readability (and emphasizes the importance of understanding how each state’s laws differ), making it useful to readers without a legal background.
A well-written and thoughtful guide to managing a challenging process.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5445-2795-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.
The acclaimed director displays his talents as a film critic.
Tarantino’s collection of essays about the important movies of his formative years is packed with everything needed for a powerful review: facts about the work, context about the creative decisions, and whether or not it was successful. The Oscar-winning director of classic films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs offers plenty of attitude with his thoughts on movies ranging from Animal House to Bullitt to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to The Big Chill. Whether you agree with his assessments or not, he provides the original reporting and insights only a veteran director would notice, and his engaging style makes it impossible to leave an essay without learning something. The concepts he smashes together in two sentences about Taxi Driver would take a semester of film theory class to unpack. Taxi Driver isn’t a “paraphrased remake” of The Searchers like Bogdanovich’s What’s Up, Doc? is a paraphrased remake of Hawks’ Bringing Up Baby or De Palma’s Dressed To Kill is a paraphrased remake of Hitchcock’s Psycho. But it’s about as close as you can get to a paraphrased remake without actually being one. Robert De Niro’s taxi driving protagonist Travis Bickle is John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards. Like any good critic, Tarantino reveals bits of himself as he discusses the films that are important to him, recalling where he was when he first saw them and what the crowd was like. Perhaps not surprisingly, the author was raised by movie-loving parents who took him along to watch whatever they were watching, even if it included violent or sexual imagery. At the age of 8, he had seen the very adult MASH three times. Suddenly the dark humor of Kill Bill makes much more sense. With this collection, Tarantino offers well-researched love letters to his favorite movies of one of Hollywood’s most ambitious eras.
A top-flight nonfiction debut from a unique artist.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-06-311258-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2022
SEEN & HEARD
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