Criminal lawyers will find plenty of useful trial tips here. Layfolk will simply be mesmerized by this inside-the-courtroom legal primer. The hyperbole of the subtitle aside, Black’s Law is a remarkably down-to-earth, insightful book about the difference one dedicated attorney can make in a criminal-justice system that is deeply flawed. True, Black has represented the elite: he counts William Kennedy Smith and sportscaster Marv Albert among his former clients. But he has also staked much of his legal reputation on people many others would prefer to see rot in jail. “I want you to see the defendant as a flesh-and-blood human being, not a hunk of meat,” writes Black, a former public defender who now appears regularly on CNBC, MSNBC, and CNN. “I want you to feel how he is scared, humiliated, confused and desperate.” Luis Alvarez is a young Miami cop who ignited horrible race riots after he killed a black man he thought was pulling a gun on him. Thomas Knight is an insane multiple killer whose death sentence finally is vacated after Black spends years working to show the many ways in which Knight’s inadequate legal counsel was responsible for never getting him a fair trial or the obvious mental-health treatment that he deserved. Steve Hicks, a bartender with no criminal past until he was charged with murdering his girlfriend, is a disturbing example of the ways in which shoddy police investigative work and circumstantial evidence can ruin a person’s life. The case of Fred De La Mata, a Cuban immigrant bank president, offers a depressing illustration of how overzealous federal prosecutors can dictate the course of a trial. An unsettling page-turner and sobering reminder that in the legal treatment of the least fortunate of our citizenry lie all of our rights. (Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-81022-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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