After this unenlightening account, Harlan remains an enigma. (16 halftones, not seen)
A serviceable but bloodless biography of the Supreme Court justice who penned some of the most celebrated judicial dissents of the 19th century.
Yarbrough (Political Science/East Carolina Univ.; John Marshall Harlan, 1992, etc.) sketches the complex, contradictory life of the Kentucky Republican who in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) eloquently disputed the Court's 'separate but equal' doctrine. Harlan's 34-year tenure on the court (18771911) was notable for his willingness to cast the sole dissenting vote in major civil rights cases in the aftermath of the Civil War. In ringing, righteous prose, Harlan was the first justice to argue that the Bill of Rights should apply to the states and US territories (not just to the federal government) and, in the famous case of Lochner v. New York (1905), that states are entitled to pass legislation protecting the health and safety of workers. But Yarbrough shows that Harlan's judicial record even in civil rights cases was 'spotty' and unpredictable, his inspiring dissents often marred by ethnocentric attitudes and gross generalizations. The author also examines Harlan's troubling private life, focusing on the justice's insensitive treatment of both his alcoholic brother and mulatto half-brother, his chronic insolvency, and his tendency to adapt his stance to shifting political winds. But Yarbrough simply doesn't have enough material here: He often speculates on how the justice's private life affected his work but offers little concrete proof of a connection. He also has little to say about Harlan's relationship with his colleagues on the Court. Worse, Yarbrough summarizes instead of analyzing many of the Court's major opinions: Lochner, one of the most influential cases in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, is discussed in a mere page and a half.
After this unenlightening account, Harlan remains an enigma. (16 halftones, not seen)Pub Date: May 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-19-507464-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1995
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
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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