A fantastic look behind the scenes of the U.S. justice system.
A defense attorney from the trial made famous in Making a Murderer tells his story.
From the beginning of his “Opening Statement,” first-time author Buting commands attention with his account of Steven Avery’s trial. The author recounts how, as he sat in the office of his co-counsel, Dean Strang, they received word that Avery’s nephew had confessed to helping Avery commit murder. It is in the context of this first phone call that Buting makes clear his passion as a defense lawyer and his justifiable anger with a system that does not, as he points out later, consider those accused of crimes as “innocent until proven guilty.” Avery had already spent 18 years in prison for a sexual assault that DNA evidence later proved he didn’t commit. Once charged with murder, Buting and Strang came to his aid believing that local law enforcement officials were biased against him. The author uses his expertise to make a convincing case, laying out shoddy police work, strange coincidences, and impossible-to-believe evidence that will have even the most anti–conspiracy theory readers thinking that it could have been a frame job. But he doesn’t stop with Avery’s case. Buting gives supporting evidence from other cases he’s worked or knows well, showing consistently how easy it is for police and prosecutors to fixate on the wrong suspect in a rush to solve crimes or without noticing their own bias. To his credit, while the author cuts the justice system no slack for its deep-seated problems, he also makes sure to repeat that it is a systemic issue and that most police, prosecutors, and judges are not out to hurt suspects. Without muddying the waters with excessive legalese, Buting presents a compelling portrait of the mechanisms of building a murder defense.
A fantastic look behind the scenes of the U.S. justice system.Pub Date: Feb. 28, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-256931-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2017
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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