A surprisingly compassionate, common-sense guide to controlling crime, from the police chief of Los Angeles. Williams begins with the events of March 1991, when 81 seconds of videotape caught Rodney King being beaten by cops in L.A. Williams, then police commissioner in Philadelphia, privately congratulated himself on his own department, which was running better than it had in years. In June 1992, Williams moved across the country and took charge of the embattled LAPD, and inherited more trouble than he ever imagined. In this simple, straightforward book, Williams outlines the reasons behind the acrimonious relationship between Los Angelenos and their police. Williams, who is black (though he considers himself first and foremost ``blue''), addresses the issue of race by actively encouraging minorities to join the force and by reminding older cops either to accept new faces or leave. Williams is a staunch gun control advocate and a firm supporter of community policing, stands that have helped to decrease tensions in Los Angeles. He illustrates the importance of community policing through examples of arrests gone wrong, and he builds a strong case for streamlining procedures to identify and fire rogue cops. Williams may be quick to punish, but he is also quick to commend and finds much to praise about the LAPD, defending its actions in recent high-profile cases like the investigation of Michael Jackson for sexual misconduct. Williams's style lacks fire, but it is certainly heartfelt. While none of the ideas here are radically new, Williams presents his vision of a police department with enthusiasm and grace, and with the results to back it up.
Pub Date: April 22, 1996
ISBN: 0-684-80277-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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 moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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