A balanced but also admiring portrait of a Latina, a jurist and a trailblazer.
A former Supreme Court correspondent for the Washington Post and current legal affairs editor for Reuters charts the spectacular career of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor—from the Bronx to the nation’s highest court.
Biskupic—who has written biographies of justices Scalia and O’Connor—combines scholarly rigor with a bit of human admiration in this cleareyed account of how someone advances a judicial career in 21st-century America. She periodically reminds us that Sotomayor came from a rough background, that she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton (after a slow start, she realized how behind she was) and that she excelled at Yale Law School. But the author also comments continually on Sotomayor’s networking—the vast array of supporters whom she has summoned at various stages of her career to propel her advancement, perhaps most successfully when newly elected President Barack Obama was making his first appointment to the Supreme Court (David Souter was retiring). To add a bit of a sharp edge, Biskupic quotes the opponents of Sotomayor, including Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe; twice, the author quotes Tribe’s letter to Obama declaring that Sotomayor is “not nearly as smart as she seems to think she is.” Biskupic also highlights Sotomayor’s vivacious personality—everything from her nail polish to her love life to her disconcerting ways in the court. The author focuses on some of Sotomayor’s cases (and comments) at various stages, including her controversial “wise Latina” remark and her impassioned defenses of affirmative action, a policy she often credits for her own successful career. We also learn about her work habits (assiduous) and her diabetes (under control). Most of all, however, we see in sharp relief the principal role that politics plays in court appointments.
A balanced but also admiring portrait of a Latina, a jurist and a trailblazer.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0374298746
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2014
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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