Colorful incidents and anecdotes effectively capture the performance art of trial lawyering.
An attorney recalls his courtroom experiences and laments the disappearance of criminal trials from the federal justice system.
There is at least one thing that a visitor to a federal courtroom is now very unlikely to see—a jury trial. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of criminal cases decided in the United States federal courts by a jury dwindled from 9.2% of all cases to only 2.1%. For veteran trial lawyer and debut author Katzberg, the “troubling reality” of the “vanishing trial” has implications not only for the criminal justice system, but also for American democracy. If the average citizen is no longer able to serve as a juror and “the effectiveness of the criminal defense function enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is meaningfully diminished, where does that leave the rule of law?” he asks in this provocative, lively combination of memoir and polemic that may have limited appeal to readers outside the legal profession. Katzberg is a well-qualified guide, having tried cases as both an assistant U.S. attorney in New York and a defense lawyer. The memoir portion of his book is laced with vivid episodes and vignettes from the “world we are slowly but surely losing.” “When done at the highest levels, trial work is performance art in the purest sense of the term,” he writes. He recalls such “old school” practitioners as the lawyer Jerry Lewis (“not the legendary comedian”), who “fearlessly used his distinct personality to dominate the courtroom” and would start cross-examinations by asking in a Brooklyn accent: “Are you a truteful poyson?” Katzberg points to two culprits in the demise of the jury trial—federal sentencing guidelines that have caused a steep decline in the number of defendants willing to risk a trial and technological advances that have tipped the evidentiary scales even more toward prosecutors. The author doesn’t address the substantial costs to taxpayers of jury trials—or whether America should follow the lead of countries like Switzerland and replace juries with judicial panels. But it’s hard to quarrel with his warning that “like the loss of the oceans’ coral reefs, the ongoing disappearance of federal criminal trials signals an increasing imbalance in our nation’s criminal justice system that must not be ignored.”
Colorful incidents and anecdotes effectively capture the performance art of trial lawyering.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-64543-218-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Mascot Books
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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
PERSPECTIVES
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
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