A significant book that will hopefully spark change.
Often shocking tales from a veteran litigator courageously battling menacing stalkers and online predators.
Brooklyn-based victims’ rights attorney Goldberg profiles hair-raising cases involving extreme stalking, vengeance-driven retaliation, and rejection-fueled abuse in which families, reputations, and livelihoods are systematically dismantled by scorned lovers. The author barely survived the wrath of a vindictive ex-boyfriend, and she began devoting her expertise toward representing clientele who unwittingly become the targets of deranged stalkers, a demographic she feels is grossly underrepresented. The real-life cases she presents—some of which have garnered national media attention—chillingly illustrate the insidious nature of these types of crimes and also act as a necessary call to arms regarding the importance of victim empowerment. Goldberg notes that these incidents are far more common than many of us realize, and the perpetrators are typically male and classic masters of charm and charisma, luring unsuspecting women into whirlwind romances with “jiu-jitsu-level mind games.” In the opening section, the author discusses the case of a woman whose boyfriend was discovered to be behind a barrage of mysterious online attacks, which soon turned nefarious once she terminated their relationship. Goldberg attests that many of these assailants are so skillful at using anonymizing software to cover their tracks that the time it takes to prosecute them can be prohibitively lengthy. Other cases feature a high-profile lawsuit involving a gay man viciously terrorized by an ex-lover, an arrogant “professional life-ruiner,” victims of “revenge porn,” and “sextortionists,” who are “part of a vast league of sex predators who use intimidation, threats, and trickery to coerce victims into sex acts.” Though the incidents became increasingly complex, they further sharpened Goldberg’s mastery in dealing with the cases. From bullied teenagers to women exploited by revenge porn, Goldberg’s cases usually get much worse before any kind of resolution is reached, but the author does an important service in bringing these horrific exploitations to light.
A significant book that will hopefully spark change.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-53377-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: June 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2019
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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