Intriguing behind-the-scenes look for readers with an interest in social justice, focusing on how one man’s allegiance to...
Comprehensive biography of the Supreme Court Justice whose liberal agenda profoundly affected public policy in the second half of the 20th century.
During his tenure from 1956 to 1990, William Brennan (1906–1997) provided more than 1,350 opinions on a wide variety of issues. As the subtitle indicates, Congressional Quarterly reporter Stern and Brennan expert Wermiel (Constitutional Law/American Univ.) focus on Brennan’s legacy as a dedicated defender of those marginalized by mainstream America. His allegiance to those less privileged, as well as his use of charm and compromise to achieve goals, came from a childhood spent observing his Irish immigrant father, a union official elected to several terms as a Newark, N.J., city commissioner. The authors trace Brennan’s life from corporate attorney to lawyer for the Army during World War II, subsequent selection as a state judge and then youthful appointment to the Supreme Court. The bulk of the book is dedicated to examining the forces at work throughout his tenure, and his deep, abiding passion for, and commitment to, human dignity. The authors balance differing accounts of Brennan the jurist and the man, presenting an evenhanded portrait of the affable but stubborn Justice. Stern and Wermiel thoroughly cover such divisive issues as racial integration, gender inequality, abortion, pornography, the rights of criminal defendants and upholding the death penalty. Despite his outward joviality, Brennan did not reveal personal insights with those closest to him, including his devoted clerks, but his true passion comes through clearly: his love for the potential power of the law to help or harm humanity. A canny consensus broker, though perhaps pedestrian in opinion writing, his legacy as a judicial activist—a term deployed both proudly and pejoratively toward Brennan—cannot be diminished. The book is dense, and although the authors take pains to explain legal terminology and implications of case outcomes, it may be tough going for those with limited familiarity with court proceedings.
Intriguing behind-the-scenes look for readers with an interest in social justice, focusing on how one man’s allegiance to guiding principles transformed this nation’s judicial system.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-547-14925-7
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 13, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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