A well-written, salutary illustration of the principle that honorable men can disagree about the pace and the means of...
Two midcentury giants clash behind the scenes over civil liberties.
How much can a political leader do to advance necessary social change in the face of entrenched resistance without provoking a challenge to the legitimacy of governmental institutions? Disagreement on this point soured the relations between Dwight D. Eisenhower and Earl Warren, both hugely popular public figures. In September 1953, Eisenhower appointed Warren, a three-term governor of California with no judicial experience, as chief justice of the United States. Warren went on to forge a surprisingly liberal legacy, to Eisenhower's chagrin. While the Warren-led court broke new constitutional ground in many areas, former New York Law School dean Simon (FDR and Chief Justice Hughes: The President, the Supreme Court, and the Epic Battle Over the New Deal, 2012, etc.) focuses primarily on judicial responses to the nascent civil rights movement and to the political hysteria of McCarthyism. Warren coaxed a unanimous opinion from a conservative court in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring "separate but equal" public schools unconstitutional. The ruling brought him into conflict with Eisenhower, who never endorsed it, in part because he entertained serious practical concerns about the enforceability of court orders desegregating schools in rabidly hostile parts of the South. On national security grounds, Eisenhower, along with much of the public, also privately rejected court decisions defeating government efforts to punish suspected communists. While respecting Eisenhower's viewpoint, the author generally sides with Warren in faulting the president's failure to provide clearer moral leadership in the civil rights struggle or to stand up to the bullying McCarthy. Simon frames these conflicts within a robust, detailed narrative, clearly presenting the political and cultural milieu within which these two principled pragmatists worked. The author’s presentation of discussions among the court justices about the legal issues at stake is particularly illuminating.
A well-written, salutary illustration of the principle that honorable men can disagree about the pace and the means of effecting social change.Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-87140-755-9
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.
An acclaimed Mexican-born poet’s account of the sometimes-overwhelming struggles he and his parents faced in their quest to become American citizens.
Hernandez Castillo (Cenzontle, 2018, etc.) first came to the United States with his undocumented Mexican parents in 1993. But life in the shadows came at a high price. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided their home on multiple occasions and eventually deported the author’s father back to Mexico. In this emotionally raw memoir, Hernandez Castillo explores his family’s traumas through a fractured narrative that mirrors their own fragmentation. Of his own personal experiences, he writes, “when I came undocumented to the U.S., I crossed into a threshold of invisibility.” To protect himself against possible identification as an undocumented person, he excelled in school and learned English “better than any white person, any citizen.” When he was old enough to work, he created a fake social security card to apply for the jobs that helped him support his fatherless family. After high school, he attended college and married a Mexican American woman. He became an MFA student at the University of Michigan and qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allowed him to visit his father in Mexico, where he discovered the depth of his cultural disorientation. Battling through ever present anxiety, the author revisited his and his parents’ origins and then returned to take on the difficult interview that qualified him for a green card. His footing in the U.S. finally solidified, Hernandez Castillo unsuccessfully attempted to help his father and mother qualify for residency in the U.S. Only after his father was kidnapped by members of a drug cartel was the author able to help his mother, whose life was now in danger, seek asylum in the U.S. Honest and unsparing, this book offers a detailed look at the dehumanizing immigration system that shattered the author’s family while offering a glimpse into his own deeply conflicted sense of what it means to live the so-called American dream.
A heartfelt and haunting memoir just right for the current political and social climate.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-282559-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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