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LAWYERS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM

In this age of lawyer-bashing, attorney/novelist Speiser (Superstock, 1982) offers an unusual—and shameless—paean to the plaintiff's bar—those lawyers who, in the author's view, fulfill the American Dream of righting wrongs while making themselves rich. Speiser begins by analyzing the law firm featured on L.A. Law, characterizing its attorneys as ``Equalizers''—lawyers who enrich themselves by representing underdog clients (Speiser draws a contrast between these entrepreneurs of equal justice and other types of attorneys, like civil-rights and some criminal-defense lawyers, who may do worthwhile public service but typically don't make a lot of money in the process). The author uses this pop paradigm as a framework for a series of fascinating stories- -dramatic tort cases in which individual victims of modest means achieved stunning victories against tycoons and huge corporations. He proudly recounts his own role as an Equalizer (many of the cases cited are his own), extolling punitive damages and other weapons of the plaintiff's lawyer and arguing that civil litigation enhances democracy, corporate responsibility, and even the economy. Speiser goes on to outline plans to make the civil-litigation system bigger, more accessible, and more lucrative. Predictably, he argues that Dan Quayle's plan to institute the English rule in American courts—the rule that the loser in a lawsuit pays for all costs (a regulation intended to deter litigation)—would be counterproductive and possibly even anti-American. Speiser concludes that democratic, market-oriented societies need a thriving plaintiff's bar, and he urges the development of this institution in other countries as well. Speiser tells some absorbing tales of success in court, but his reduction of the American Dream to a quest for riches is unworthy, and his self-serving tribute to the plaintiff's bar will have readers shaking their heads and smiling.

Pub Date: April 1, 1993

ISBN: 0-87131-724-9

Page Count: 430

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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