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BLOOD WILL TELL

A TRUE STORY OF DEADLY LUST IN NEW ORLEANS

The most interesting aspect of the 1984 New Orleans ``baseball bat murder'' of Janet Myers is that, despite two convictions, it's still not clear exactly who killed the woman—and why. Meanwhile, this cumbersome, detailed examination by Bosco (The Boys Who Would Be Cubs, 1990) raises as many questions as it answers. Myers's husband, Kerry, and his best friend, Bill Fontanille, had different versions of what went on during the bloody struggle that resulted in Janet's death. Fontanille, who readily admitted sleeping with Janet, said he stopped by the house to retrieve his baseball bat and Kerry began stabbing him, talking incoherently, and battering Janet, who was apparently unconscious. By contrast, Kerry stated that Fontanille bludgeoned Janet and shattered Kerry's arm with the bat—but that Kerry managed to stab Fontanille several times. Neither man could explain how the couple's toddler son sustained a severe head injury, resulting in coma. Bosco recounts Kerry's 911 call in its entirety; repeats police and medical reports, as well as court testimony; offers fresh statements from friends and relatives; and adds updated comments by many of the investigators, medical personnel, and attorneys involved in the subsequent six years of legal wrangling. Blood spatters placed both men near Janet during at least one of possibly three separate beatings. One series of blows apparently occurred after she expired, and Bosco notes that, technically, Janet died of coronary arrest caused by an air embolism. Moreover, the ``arbitrary air bubble'' probably didn't kill her until two hours after the initial beating: She could have been saved had either Kerry or Fontanille called for an ambulance. Though a sole ``batman'' was never established, both Kerry Myers and Fontanille were found guilty of the murder. Fontanille received 21 years for manslaughter, while Myers got life without parole for second-degree murder. Bosco captures the bizarre, frenetic nature of the case, but repetitive and extraneous material only adds to the confusion. (Sixteen b&w photos—not seen)

Pub Date: Nov. 22, 1993

ISBN: 0-688-10889-X

Page Count: 560

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1993

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A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES

For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979

ISBN: 0061965588

Page Count: 772

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979

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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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