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THE ABCS OF LAW SCHOOL

Name: THE ABCS OF LAW SCHOOL
Author: Teresa Anne Power
ISBN: 978-0-9981070-7-3

DIARY OF A FIRST YEAR LAW STUDENT

by Teresa Anne Power ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2019

Worthy tips, tricks, and tools for prospective law students delivered in concise prose.

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An attorney, children’s yoga expert, and author offers a guide to law school success.

Power (The ABCs of Yoga for Kids Around the World, 2017, etc.), who has received favorable media attention for her bestselling kids’ yoga books and learning materials, now presents a handy manual aimed at those who want to go to law school and wish a leg up on the competition. Framed as a diary based on her days as a law student at Pepperdine University in the 1980s, the author updates her recollections with approaches, research, and tools to suit today’s burgeoning interest in legal studies. The colorful diary portions convey the emotional challenges of law school, but these entries merely contribute to the detailed overview of the first-year courses that constitutes the book’s major emphasis. “Most classes in law school are taught using the Socratic method,” Power writes. She goes on to provide key tools, such as the IRAC (Issue, Rule of Law, Analysis, Conclusion) method, that further students’ understanding of how to assess a particular case. This methodology typifies the kind of mnemonic device that gives students a preview of the ways law school prepares attorneys to face the everyday challenges they will encounter. In addition to torts, the guide covers legal research and writing, contracts, civil procedure, evidence, and real property, criminal, and constitutional law in a plain, reader-friendly style. Power began practicing yoga to alleviate stress in her law school days. At the very end of the book, she includes a five-minute yoga routine for law students—with simple black-and-white images by debut illustrator Mundja—which could have been integrated into the useful chapter focusing on the practice. The manual also features a number of helpful course outlines in appendices.

Worthy tips, tricks, and tools for prospective law students delivered in concise prose.

Pub Date: May 1, 2019

ISBN: 978-0-9981070-7-3

Page Count: 248

Publisher: Stafford House

Review Posted Online: March 18, 2019

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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LIFE IS SO GOOD

by George Dawson & Richard Glaubman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2000

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The memoir of George Dawson, who learned to read when he was 98, places his life in the context of the entire 20th century in this inspiring, yet ultimately blighted, biography. Dawson begins his story with an emotional bang: his account of witnessing the lynching of a young African-American man falsely accused of rape. America’s racial caste system and his illiteracy emerge as the two biggest obstacles in Dawson’s life, but a full view of the man overcoming the obstacles remains oddly hidden. Travels to Ohio, Canada, and Mexico reveal little beyond Dawson’s restlessness, since nothing much happens to him during these wanderings. Similarly, the diverse activities he finds himself engaging in—bootlegging in St. Louis, breaking horses, attending cockfights—never really advance the reader’s understanding of the man. He calls himself a “ladies’ man” and hints at a score of exciting stories, but then describes only his decorous marriage. Despite the personal nature of this memoir, Dawson remains a strangely aloof figure, never quite inviting the reader to enter his world. In contrast to Dawson’s diffidence, however, Glaubman’s overbearing presence, as he repeatedly parades himself out to converse with Dawson, stifles any momentum the memoir might develop. Almost every chapter begins with Glaubman presenting Dawson with a newspaper clipping or historical fact and asking him to comment on it, despite the fact that Dawson often does not remember or never knew about the event in question. Exasperated readers may wonder whether Dawson’s life and his accomplishments, his passion for learning despite daunting obstacles, is the tale at hand, or whether the real issue is his recollections of Archduke Ferdinand. Dawson’s achievements are impressive and potentially exalting, but the gee-whiz nature of the tale degrades it to the status of yet another bowl of chicken soup for the soul, with a narrative frame as clunky as an old bone.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-50396-X

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL NONFICTION

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ESSAYS AFTER EIGHTY

by Donald Hall ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 2, 2014

That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.”...

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The writing life at age 85.

In this collection of 14 autobiographical essays, former U.S. Poet Laureate Hall (Christmas at Eagle Pond, 2012, etc.) reflects on aging, death, the craft of writing and his beloved landscape of New Hampshire. Debilitated by health problems that have affected his balance and ability to walk, the author sees his life physically compromised, and “the days have narrowed as they must. I live on one floor eating frozen dinners.” He waits for the mail; a physical therapist visits twice a week; and an assistant patiently attends to typing, computer searches and money matters. “In the past I was often advised to live in the moment,” he recalls. “Now what else can I do? Days are the same, generic and speedy….” Happily, he is still able to write, although not poetry. “As I grew older,” he writes, “poetry abandoned me….For a male poet, imagination and tongue-sweetness require a blast of hormones.” Writing in longhand, Hall revels in revising, a process that can entail more than 80 drafts. “Because of multiple drafts I have been accused of self-discipline. Really I am self-indulgent, I cherish revising so much.” These essays circle back on a few memories: the illness and death of his wife, the poet Jane Kenyon, which sent him into the depths of grief; childhood recollections of his visits to his grandparents’ New Hampshire farm, where he helped his grandfather with haying; grateful portraits of the four women who tend to him: his physical therapist, assistant, housekeeper and companion; and giving up tenure “for forty joyous years of freelance writing.”

That sense of joy infuses these gentle essays. “Old age sits in a chair,” writes Hall, “writing a little and diminishing.” For the author, writing has been, and continues to be, his passionate revenge against diminishing.