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TOO BIG TO JAIL

HOW PROSECUTORS COMPROMISE WITH CORPORATIONS

Garrett combines groundbreaking research with clear writing and moral outrage.

Garrett (Law/Univ. of Virginia; Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong, 2011, etc.) presents research on criminal behavior by corporations in the United States and overseas.

According to certain statutes in U.S. law, corporations can be treated like individual people. However, attempting to prosecute corporations for criminal behavior is much more difficult than prosecuting individual defendants for nearly any charge. Garrett, who previously focused on wrongful convictions of individual murderers and rapists, examines prosecutors who have decided to charge corporations with crimes—or decided against it, even though victims abounded. Since no government agency or private group has collected reliable data about prosecutions of corporations by the federal government, state governments or county-based district attorneys, Garrett describes how he developed a database, as well as the holes in the data. He finds that federal prosecutors, despite their vaunted powers, are cast in the role of David, not Goliath, when seeking to punish multinational corporations with nearly unlimited budgets to hire lawyers. The prosecutors courageous enough to mount cases against corporations fail to go after high-level individuals within those corporations, lessening any deterrence effect. While Garrett is mostly pessimistic about the ability of prosecutors to reduce corporate crime or to properly compensate the victims, he does find a few promising minitrends. These include trying to alter corporate culture through deferred prosecutions and asking judges to appoint objective monitors to oversee corporate practices. The author finds unique hope in the prosecution of Siemens (ranked in the top 50 of the Fortune Global 500 list of largest corporations in the world), which admitted wrongdoing and seems determined, under current leadership, to act ethically while maintaining profits originally thought to emanate in part from bribery and other unsavory activities.

Garrett combines groundbreaking research with clear writing and moral outrage.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2014

ISBN: 978-0674368316

Page Count: 372

Publisher: Belknap/Harvard Univ.

Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2014

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DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC!

NEWPORT, SEEGER, DYLAN, AND THE NIGHT THAT SPLIT THE SIXTIES

An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s...

Music journalist and musician Wald (Talking 'Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap, 2014, etc.) focuses on one evening in music history to explain the evolution of contemporary music, especially folk, blues, and rock.

The date of that evening is July 25, 1965, at the Newport Folk Festival, where there was an unbelievably unexpected occurrence: singer/songwriter Bob Dylan, already a living legend in his early 20s, overriding the acoustic music that made him famous in favor of electronically based music, causing reactions ranging from adoration to intense resentment among other musicians, DJs, and record buyers. Dylan has told his own stories (those stories vary because that’s Dylan’s character), and plenty of other music journalists have explored the Dylan phenomenon. What sets Wald's book apart is his laser focus on that one date. The detailed recounting of what did and did not occur on stage and in the audience that night contains contradictory evidence sorted skillfully by the author. He offers a wealth of context; in fact, his account of Dylan's stage appearance does not arrive until 250 pages in. The author cites dozens of sources, well-known and otherwise, but the key storylines, other than Dylan, involve acoustic folk music guru Pete Seeger and the rich history of the Newport festival, a history that had created expectations smashed by Dylan. Furthermore, the appearances on the pages by other musicians—e.g., Joan Baez, the Weaver, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Dave Van Ronk, and Gordon Lightfoot—give the book enough of an expansive feel. Wald's personal knowledge seems encyclopedic, and his endnotes show how he ranged far beyond personal knowledge to produce the book.

An enjoyable slice of 20th-century music journalism almost certain to provide something for most readers, no matter one’s personal feelings about Dylan's music or persona.

Pub Date: July 25, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-06-236668-9

Page Count: 368

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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