Jenkins (The Litigators, 1989) offers a breezy, gossipy, and fast-paced treatment of the controversial divorce-lawyer's larger- than-life legal accomplishments and personal foibles. Marvin Mitchelson, long a renowned L.A. practitioner, achieved national fame when he represented Michelle Triola Marvin in her ``palimony'' suit against actor Lee Marvin. Jenkins relates how this case set an important and novel legal precedent that had a national impact on matrimonial law. He doesn't dwell on the arcana of divorce law, however, but devotes most of his account to Mitchelson's personal antics—brazen trial tactics, alleged sexual exploits with clients, drug abuse, financial difficulties, and problems with the California State Bar. Drawing on interviews with friends, adversaries, and clients, Jenkins loads his text with quotes, particularly from lengthy interviews with Mitchelson himself—who emerges as a complex man and a superb trial lawyer with a strong desire to be an insider in the heady social world of Hollywood. The constants of his public persona seem to be his demands for publicity and money, which he pursues by representing high-profile clients, winning high-stakes trials, arguing important appeals in the Supreme Court, and living an ostentatious life: Mitchelson is now as famous as the show-biz personalities he represents. A light, diverting, and evenhanded treatment of a modern legal celebrity.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07856-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1992
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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