A scholarly biography of the prominent Italian antifascist intellectual, writer, and activist who was stabbed to death by political assassins in 1937. As many as 200,000 people attended the funeral services for Rosselli in Paris. But today, as Pugliese notes, Rosselli (a “prophet crying out in the wilderness”) is so little known outside his native land that this is the first biography of him in English. Pugliese (history/Hofstra Univ.) brings to this admiring portrait a formidable variety of tools, including a thorough knowledge of Italian history, language, literature, and landscape. After a brief introduction, the book proceeds chronologically from Rosselli’s birth in 1899 (his father was a musicologist; his mother a playwright); follows him as he studies, marries, becomes a professor of political economy at Bocconi University in Milan; describes and assesses his increasing hatred for Mussolini’s fascist government; and details his associations with fellow political radicals, his arrests and imprisonment, his increasing involvements in antifascist organizations and publications, and his exile to France. Most engaging for general readers will be Pugliese’s accounts of Rosselli’s activism: his fistfight with a pack of fascists in the streets of Milan, his motorboat escape from the island prison of Lipari, his battlefield exploits during the Spanish Civil War, his participation in various attempts to assassinate Mussolini, and his 1934 meeting with Trotsky (who “appeared conservative” to Rosselli). Pugliese’s primary focus, however, is on Rosselli’s intellectual evolution, and though social historians may delight in his many detailed exegeses of Rosselli’s writings as he endeavors to establish his hero’s place in intellectual history, the uninitiate may be bemused, if not baffled, to read, in a fairly typical passage, that Rosselli was “ideologically positioned (not trapped) between Antonio Gramsci and Piero Gobetti.” Pugliese’s research is impeccable, though this important work at times demands of nonspecialist readers an uncommon erudition. (14 halftones, 1 line illustration, not seen)
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-674-00053-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harvard Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
Only the most dedicated Ginsburg fans, and there are many, will devour everything here, but most readers will find items of...
From the second woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court, a collection of writings ranging from the slight to the serious.
Now 83, women’s rights icon Ginsburg nears the close of her distinguished career as a law professor, appellate advocate, judge, and justice, arguably having done more to move our law in the direction of gender equality than any living person. Now, as two Georgetown Law professors, Hartnett and Williams (emerita) prepare her official biography, they have collected Ginsburg’s speeches, lectures, articles, and opinions, some on offer here. They preface most of this material with explanatory, wholly complimentary notes and begin with a chapter of juvenilia, demonstrating Ginsburg’s early interest in human rights and in preserving individual liberties. Passages devoted to “the lighter side” of life at the Supreme Court include, for example, Ginsburg’s musings on lawyers depicted in opera, not least her own “starring” role in Scalia/Ginsburg. There follows a section on “waypavers” and “pathmarkers,” Ginsburg’s tributes to, among others, Belva Lockwood, the first woman admitted to the Supreme Court Bar, Gloria Steinem, “the face of feminism,” and Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s first woman justice. Especially good are the author’s observations on the court’s “Jewish seat” and her charming lecture on four notable Supreme Court wives. These, and many other agreeable selections, are characterized as “remarks,” delivered and often recycled for various audiences. The collection also contains numerous bench announcements, summaries of some of Ginsburg’s most consequential opinions and dissents, and a few revealing essays that offer keys to her jurisprudence: for example, her perspective on the role of dissents, the value of consulting foreign law, and the wisdom of “measured motions” by the judiciary, wherein she mildly criticizes Roe v. Wade for provoking a backlash and halting “a political process that was moving in a reform direction.”
Only the most dedicated Ginsburg fans, and there are many, will devour everything here, but most readers will find items of interest from this icon of women’s rights.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-4524-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
Asante is a talented writer, but his memoir is undernourished.
A young black man’s self-destructive arc, cut short by a passion for writing.
Asante’s (It’s Bigger than Hip-Hop, 2008, etc.) memoir, based on his teenage years in inner-city Philadelphia, undoubtedly reflects the experiences of many African-American youngsters today in such cities. By age 14, the author was an inquisitive, insecure teen facing the hazards that led his beleaguered mother, a teacher, to warn him, “[t]hey are out there looking for young black boys to put in the system.” This was first driven home to Asante when his brother received a long prison sentence for statutory rape; later, his father, a proud, unyielding scholar of Afrocentrism, abruptly left under financial strain, and his mother was hospitalized after increasing emotional instability. Despite their strong influences, Asante seemed headed for jail or death on the streets. This is not unexplored territory, but the book’s strength lies in Asante’s vibrant, specific observations and, at times, the percussive prose that captures them. The author’s fluid, filmic images of black urban life feel unique and disturbing: “Fiends, as thin as crack pipes, dance—the dancing dead….Everybody’s eyes curry yellow or smog gray, dead as sunken ships.” Unfortunately, this is balanced by a familiar stance of adolescent hip-hop braggadocio (with some of that genre’s misogyny) and by narrative melodrama of gangs and drug dealing that is neatly resolved in the final chapters, when an alternative school experience finally broke through Asante’s ennui and the murderous dealers to whom he owed thousands were conveniently arrested. The author constantly breaks up the storytelling with unnecessary spacing, lyrics from (mostly) 1990s rap, excerpts from his mother’s journal, letters from his imprisoned brother, and quotations from the scholars he encountered on his intellectual walkabout in his late adolescence. Still, young readers may benefit from Asante’s message: that an embrace of books and culture can help one slough off the genuinely dangerous pathologies of urban life.
Asante is a talented writer, but his memoir is undernourished.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9341-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: July 6, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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