A heady yarn of sports, celebrity, racism, crime, justice, and redemption. (Author tour)
Former reporter Hirsch spins a riveting, straight-ahead account of one of the great miscarriages of justice in the history of
American criminal law, and the fight to overturn it. Rubin "Hurricane" Carter was once a popular middleweight contender. Like many black celebrities of the mid-1960s, the physically imposing Carter, who radiated outspoken confidence, was seen as a threat by the white establishment. One night in 1966, Carter and an acquaintance named John Artis were questioned by police about a gruesome triple homicide; a few weeks later, the two were arrested for the crime. The resulting trial, held in the racially charged town of Paterson, New Jersey, before a predominantly white jury, introduced an array of specious prosecutorial evidence, including manufactured witnesses and a highly dubious motive—racial revenge, for the recent barroom murder of two black persons. Nevertheless, Carter was convicted and sentenced to three life terms. Arriving in prison, he steadfastly maintained his innocence. As an innocent man, he reasoned, he had no responsibility to follow prison policies: He wore his own clothes, ate his own food, and, most important, devoured literary and philosophical works and legal texts. While in stir, Carter mounted an ongoing defense of amazing clarity and sophistication that became a cause c‚lSþbre among the radical-chic crowd (Bob Dylan immortalized the boxer in the song "Hurricane"). Carter also wrote a book, The Sixteenth Round, which caught the attention of black Brooklyn teenager Lesra Martin, who was the adopted ward of a white Toronto commune. The boy brought Carter’s plight to "the Canadians," as the commune members came to be known, and before long, Carter had some very supportive friends who, along with some persistent attorneys, succeeded in getting Carter’s and Artis’s convictions thrown out—though not in recovering nearly 20 years of the men’s lives.
A heady yarn of sports, celebrity, racism, crime, justice, and redemption. (Author tour)Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2000
ISBN: 0-395-97985-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2000
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
PERSPECTIVES
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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