by Thomas Cahill ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2009
Sad and revealing, but less powerful than other prison sagas like Thomas Gaddis’ classic Birdman of Alcatraz or, more...
Digressing from his previous focus on the formative years of Western civilization (The Mysteries of the Middle Ages, 2006, etc.), Cahill gives a personal account of a Texan executed in 2004 for a 1992 murder.
The author, who first visited Dominique Green on death row in 2003, makes no bones about his belief that the case represents a gross miscarriage of justice. He may not convince every reader, given that the murder was committed during an armed robbery Green admitted participating in, the weapon was found in his car and he tried to coerce one of his partners in crime into making up an alibi. Cahill is more effective at demonstrating the inherent flaws in the Texas judicial system as well as the inhumanity of life on death row. Raised by abusive, drug-addicted parents, Green was 18 when he was charged with the fatal shooting of a truck driver outside a Houston convenience store. His court-appointed lawyers were both inexperienced and negligent. Two of his co-defendants later received reduced sentences; the lone white suspect was never charged at all, in return for turning informant. Condemned to death, Green transformed himself into a model prisoner who eventually won the friendship and support of the victim’s family. He was also aided by Sheila Murphy, a former Chicago judge who took up his appeal, and by the Community of Sant’Egidio, an international charity based in Rome. Cahill, recruited to the cause by Murphy, elevated the case’s profile by arranging a prison visit from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who later called Green “a remarkable advertisement for God.” The author clearly demonstrates Green’s spiritual and intellectual growth while a death row inmate, but his subjective approach weakens this slim narrative’s dramatic punch.
Sad and revealing, but less powerful than other prison sagas like Thomas Gaddis’ classic Birdman of Alcatraz or, more recently, John Carlin’s Playing the Enemy.Pub Date: March 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52019-5
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2009
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IN THE NEWS
by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 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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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
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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SEEN & HEARD
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