Yarbrough (Political Science/East Carolina Univ.) offers the first major—and excellent—biography of one of the Warren Court's most interesting and brilliant figures. John Marshall Harlan (1899-1971) was a ``lawyer's lawyer.'' Educated at Princeton and Oxford, he quickly rose to become one of the nation's leading corporate litigators. Yarbrough shows how the justice's life and thought were shaped by his legacy as the son of a prominent lawyer and grandson of the first Justice John Marshall Harlan (who, like his namesake, was also known for his judicial dissent, mostly for his famous finding in Plessy v. Ferguson, in which the Supreme Court created the ``separate but equal'' formula that legitimized racially discriminatory practices). On the famously liberal and activist Warren Court, Yarbrough explains, Harlan, who sat on the Supreme Court from 1955 until his death, stood out for his closely reasoned commitment to strict constitutional construction, federalism, judicial restraint, and deference to legislative determination. These principles often resulted in vigorous dissents. Harlan's position as the ``great dissenter'' of the Warren Court has often led to dismissal of his views as well reasoned but without influence. Harlan's philosophy has become increasingly important in recent years, however, as the Court has become more conservative (for instance, as Yarbrough points out, David Souter in his Senate confirmation testimony cited Harlan as his judicial role model). An absorbing and scholarly analysis of one of the Supreme Court's truly great jurists. (Nineteen halftones—not seen.)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-19-506090-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
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 standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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