Washington Post reporter Drehle (formerly of the Miami Herald) crafts a gripping narrative traversing the world of the death penalty. ``Twenty men have been sentenced to die under Florida's modern death penalty laws for every one who has been executed,'' he writes. ``Nothing but chance has separated those who live from those who died.'' Though he reviews (and refutes) the standard prodeath penalty arguments of deterrence and retribution, Drehle's concern is with the flawed system in practice. He examines in detail Florida cases beginning with that of John Spenkelink, whose May 1979 execution was the first after the Supreme Court's invalidation of all death penalty laws in 1972. Florida had passed a new law aiming to respond to the high court's quest for procedural certainty; however, notes the author, most experts failed to recognize ``how contentious and crazy and tortured the whole process was going to be.'' The book meanders but abounds with memorable, sometimes macabre material, including a case in which two men on death row had to plead guilty to a crime they had earlier denied committing in order to be released on the basis of time served, and the request by a black killer who hated whites to have his ashes taken to Africa. Drehle treats even opportunistic characters like former Florida governor Bob Graham with dignity and lets his reporting drive his conclusions. A narrow death penalty limited to cases like serial murder or political killings would provide firmer ground for judging, he suggests. Some of the crimes- -especially those by serial killer Ted Bundy, whose case dominates the last third of the book—are indeed monstrous. Drehle observes that death row inmates are invariably weak, flawed people who could not overcome childhood deprivation and violence: ``This isn't bleeding-heart stuff, just simple fact.'' A powerful argument that we should all avoid sloganeering about the death penalty and think more carefully about justice. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Feb. 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-2166-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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