A stirring account of a legal travesty that effectively reveals a rotten core within the justice system.
A thought-provoking cultural discussion of wrongful convictions based on race.
In 1987, Benjamine Spencer, a Black man, received a life sentence for a crime he did not commit: the brutal murder of Jeffrey Young, a white man, in Dallas. According to Hagerty, author of Life Reimagined and Fingerprints of God, this narrative—of an innocent person of color incarcerated without the benefits of credible witnesses, solid evidence, a competent investigation, or effective legal counsel—is disturbingly common. What makes this story distinctive, however, is the author’s keen understanding that each experience is unique to a specific individual. The concept of injustice may be monolithic, but the mechanics involved are far more complex than most people comprehend. “If Spencer’s experience could be captured in one sentence,” writes Hagerty, “it is this: Convicting an innocent person is easy; undoing the mistake is almost impossible.” The author’s narrative persuasively demonstrates how deeply embedded racism is in the fabric of the American criminal justice system. Unfortunately, few people heroically advocate for the wrongly imprisoned. In this case, the hero is Jim McCloskey, a Vietnam veteran and priest who has been instrumental in the modern innocence movement and aided Spencer in his fight for freedom until 2021, “when he became one of the rare prisoners in America who persuaded a prosecutor to take a second look at his conviction.” The description of the emancipation process is occasionally a slog, but Hagerty skillfully interweaves details of relevant past cases and historical commentary about how the justice system consistently moves the goalpost to punish Black Americans. Thankfully, the story has a satisfying conclusion, but it’s disconcerting nonetheless. Hagerty’s work will appeal to readers of Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy and similar books.
A stirring account of a legal travesty that effectively reveals a rotten core within the justice system.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9780593420089
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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