Not every citizen will read this book, but we’d be better off if a good many did.
A veteran of the bench hands down sobering judgments about the U.S. judicial system.
We want to think that when we have our day in court, justice will be served. In this debut collection of essays, Rakoff, drawing on two-plus decades of experience as a federal judge, suggests otherwise, describing a system “beset by hypocritical pretentions, conundrums, paradoxes, and shortcomings.” Our courts, he argues, function differently than how the Founding Fathers intended, contrary to what is portrayed in the media and in opposition to the notions of most Americans. The author comes at his topic from varying angles, arguing that eyewitness testimony is dubious; the death penalty is far from error-free (and more expensive than incarceration); and the amazing forensics portrayed on TV shows are not necessarily based on reliable science. Saliently, he also shows that many accused enter into pleas in which prosecutors hold all the cards, and a compelling minihistory of Chief Justice John Marshall illustrates how his court set the standard for a judicial system “more deferential to the executive branch…than to the legislative branch,” the echoes of which are heard today. Some of these pieces began as articles in the New York Review of Books and remain in that style. Although Rakoff sometimes uses unnecessarily dense language—e.g., “the future deterrent value of successfully prosecuting individuals far outweighs the prophylactic benefits of imposing compliance measures that are often little more than window-dressing”—a law degree is not required to follow the narrative, which never slips into screed. As the author makes clear, our justice system affects all of us. We pay dearly—financially and otherwise—when people are imprisoned falsely or for longer than they should be. In addition to laying out the flaws, Rakoff offers practical solutions. Even if you do not agree with his answers, it’s hard to refute his case that we have serious problems that deserve attention.
Not every citizen will read this book, but we’d be better off if a good many did.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-374-28999-7
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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