An uneven but rollicking read.
From the 1860s to the first decade of the 20th century, the story of the notorious New York City law firm of Howe & Hummel.
Murphy (Crazy ’08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads, and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History, 2007) noticed a reference to the firm in Luc Sante’s New York City period history Low Life (1991). Intrigued, the author discovered four 1940s-era New Yorker features about the firm written by Richard Rovere, who collected them in The Magnificent Shysters (1947). Murphy dug deeper, examining court documents and extensive newspaper coverage of their cases. Although the author found very little information about the personal lives of William Howe and Abraham Hummel, she glories in the stark differences between the two men who gained renown during their lifetimes primarily through their immoral tactics in courtrooms. Howe was a flamboyant, obese Catholic. The Jewish Hummel was more understated. Howe tended to defend high-profile murderers, while Hummel focused more on Broadway stars and others involved in civil litigation. Murphy is obviously fascinated by the fact that so many prominent New Yorkers sought out the ethically challenged firm, but, she notes, the lawyers’ questionable reputations might have been a major selling point. “Being rascally was a job recommendation in itself for a Tammany-era lawyer,” she writes; “being rascally and getting away with it was free advertising.” Though full of period color and lively characters, Murphy’s narrative suffers from shifting tones, as the author seems uncertain about whether to approach the lawyers’ exploits using praise, disdain or irony.
An uneven but rollicking read.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-171428-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Melville House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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