Tushnet (Law Center/Georgetown) offers an absorbing account of the legal struggles, led by Thurgood Marshall, to achieve civil rights for African-Americans. Had Marshall never sat on the US Supreme Court, he would have won an enduring place in American legal history for his work as general counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, when he helped to create a massive body of civil rights law that at last gave some substance to the Constitution's promises of equality of opportunity and racial justice. Here, Tushnet tells of Marshall's early education under Howard University's Charles Hamilton Houston, who taught Marshall how litigation could be used as a tool for social engineering. Although Marshall tried to carry on a conventional legal practice in Baltimore, he was drawn to the work of the NAACP; by 1936, he was working for the NAACP full-time in New York. Tushnet recounts the NAACP's often unsuccessful struggles in the lower courts, the hostile and sometimes violent resistance met by NAACP plaintiffs and lawyers in the courts of the South, and the long and frustratingly slow processes of developing factual records and arguing appeals. Nonetheless, Marshall and his legal team achieved important results in several areas that were pervaded by racial segregation, in all of which he won victories before the US Supreme Court: desegregating universities; attacking racially restrictive covenants in housing contracts; and challenging rules of parties and private political organizations that allowed only whites to vote in primaries. Yet these victories left intact Plessy v. Ferguson, an 1896 Supreme Court precedent that permitted legalized racial segregation. Tushnet devotes most of his account to the long, slow development of the record in Brown v. Board of Education (1955), the briefing and argument in that historic case, the Court's decision to overturn Plessy, and the stormy, often bloody aftermath. An important and well-told account of the often-neglected legal struggle for civil rights.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-19-508412-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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