by Michael Capuzzo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 10, 2010
Terrifying, engrossing, inspirational and surprisingly funny.
Former Philadelphia Inquirer and Miami Herald reporter Capuzzo (Close to Shore: A True Story of Terror in an Age of Innocence, 2001, etc.) reveals the inner workings of the mysterious Vidocq Society, a team of celebrated forensic investigators that regularly meets to tackle unsolved murder cases that have stymied conventional homicide-detection techniques.
The heart of the Society consists of William Fleisher, an avuncular former federal agent with a gift for networking; Richard Walter, a prickly and brilliant profiler obsessed with plumbing the depths of the murderous mind; and Frank Bender, a master forensic sculptor of seemingly supernatural talents. These men and their cohorts have proven a devastatingly effective team, solving scores of seemingly hopeless cold cases through a combination of experience, dogged passion for justice and shared sets of obscure and highly specialized skills. The book intrigues and disgusts in equal measure with its graphically detailed descriptions of the most depraved murders imaginable, and the material might be unbearable without the fantastic successes of the brilliant detectives who bring the malefactors to justice. Bender and Walter are an irresistibly entertaining team. The cadaverous, supercilious Walter, chain-smoking in ascetic contemplation in his Victorian manse, contrasts deliciously with Bender, a voluble, compulsive womanizer who balances a hedonistic approach to life with an uncanny instinct for accurately visualizing complete, detailed faces based on the slimmest fragments of forensic evidence. The case of John List, an upright churchgoer who murdered his entire family before disappearing for some 18 years, demonstrates the weird and potent chemistry shared by the sleuths. Walter developed a startlingly accurate profile of List, determining the area in which he was hiding, the work he did, the car he drove and his manner of dress. Bender created a bust depicting the changes to List’s appearance that had occurred during the intervening years. Both men were dead on the money, and List was caught—but the Vidocq members couldn’t stop sniping over whose idea it had been to add heavy horn-rim glasses to the bust. With these men, the details are everything.
Terrifying, engrossing, inspirational and surprisingly funny.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-592-40142-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Gotham Books
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
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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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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