A valuable personal look at a key figure in American judicial history.
Recently discovered in the Library of Congress, a previously unpublished memoir by the wife of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan, revealed here as a former slaveholder whose ringing words in defense of civil rights contrasted with his decidedly paternalistic view of racial minorities.
Malvina Shanklin (1838–1916) saw Kentucky lawyer Harlan (1833–1911) as a “heroic figure” from the day they met when she was 15, and in her eyes he never descended from the pedestal during 57 years of marriage. Written as a tribute to her beloved husband four years after his death, her observations nonetheless suggest deep conflicts between Harlan’s inherited attitudes and his legacy as the lone dissenter in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) who famously declared, “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Malvina’s writings innocently document the fact that Harlan owned slaves until Emancipation and held jaundiced opinions on “Negro” ethnicity throughout his life. Yet he served in the Union Army and commented on the evolution of his attitudes from the time he was appointed to the Court in 1877: “I would rather be right than consistent.” An introduction by Linda Przybyszewski (History/Univ. of Cincinnati; The Republic According to John Marshall Harlan, 1999) provides a contemporary analysis of Harlan’s key civil rights opinions. Following Plessy, further rulings amply display his conviction that Negroes had to become full partners in the American experience. Malvina’s ear for irony, albeit gentle, provides gems on the private man: a staunch Presbyterian, for example, he is brought up short when a long-lost cousin reveals that his Quaker forebears had abandoned their pacifist faith in favor of the Scottish sect so they could fight Indians harassing the frontier homestead. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose request for material on justices’ wives prompted the manuscript’s discovery, provides a foreword claiming the memoir as a revelation of Malvina’s sterling worth as well as John’s public life.
A valuable personal look at a key figure in American judicial history.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-679-64262-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Modern Library
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2002
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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