Fiery, focused, bold voices address groundbreaking decisions.
A well-curated collection of the most influential cases of the American Civil Liberties Union, published to mark the organization’s 100th anniversary.
Husband-and-wife team Chabon and Waldman (co-editors: Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation, 2017) present a finely edited almanac of lively, contextually grounded stories that read like the greatest hits of freedom. Written by some of today’s most popular and celebrated authors, these essays serve as history lessons, cautionary tales, and calls to arms. Considered in terms of contemporary cultural values and changes, the contributors explore a variety of issues with an eye on broad efforts of the ACLU to protect the rights of vulnerable populations. For people of color, immigrants, religious minorities, LGBTQ community members, and others whose rights have been threatened or undermined by patterns of discrimination, the collection informs ongoing movements for justice. However, it’s not all praise, as some contributors offer well-reasoned criticisms of ACLU actions. Throughout, the contributors deftly handle the promises and challenges of the courts and their decisions, covering such issues as privacy rights, intellectual freedom, and women’s rights. As each legal case—including Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Gideon v. Wainwright, among many others—is spun through the writers’ perspectives and distinct approaches, the resulting distillation provides insights that are both riveting and refreshingly diverse. This is not solely a book about controversial decisions so much as one that traces the ACLU’s efforts at attending to the importance of the rule of law, the role of the courts, and the significance of legal reform. It’s a timely and cohesive love song for freedom, sung by an impressive roster of contributors, including Neil Gaiman, Jesmyn Ward, George Saunders, Marlon James, Salman Rushdie, Meg Wolitzer, Liyun Li, Elizabeth Strout, Jacqueline Woodson, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Aleksandar Hemon, and Lauren Groff.
Fiery, focused, bold voices address groundbreaking decisions.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9040-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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