Welcome to an overlooked chapter in American history. Combining the details of a compelling story and the significance of precedent-setting Supreme Court decisions provides the ingredients for a terrific book. Dallas Morning News journalist Curriden and attorney Phillips deliver just that, presenting a reconstructed version of events that could be mistaken for a blockbuster movie if not for the un-Hollywood-like ending. When a white woman is assaulted and raped in Chattanooga, Tenn., in 1906, it doesn’t take long before a black man is accused. The racial dynamics of the community, the characters of the sheriff and judge, and the obviously flawed conviction of the accused, Ed Johnson, would be rejected as unimaginative plagiarism if this were a work of fiction. When two local black lawyers decide to appeal, however, events take a very unfamiliar twist as they end up in front of Supreme Court Justice John M. Harlan requesting a stay of execution. Even more surprising is their success, for at this time, no precedent establishing the authority of the US Supreme Court to intervene in state criminal matters existed. Upon hearing the news from Washington, the local mob lynches Johnson with nearly overt cooperation from the sheriff. To the amazement of local officials, the incident doesn—t end there, for the members of the Supreme Court are considerably agitated by this affront to their authority. Federal investigations ensue and lead to contempt of court charges against the sheriff. These unprecedented charges lead to an equally unprecedented conviction, and the position of the Supreme Court as the ultimate court of appeal is established. Of course, the sentences are light and the prejudice that killed Ed Johnson remains more vigorous than the faint hope for justice that inspired his lawyers. Nevertheless, in a century that ultimately saw the Supreme Court take the lead in fighting institutionalized racism, this case was a watershed and deserves our attention.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-571-19952-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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