An accessible description of an intricate field of law, examined in an open-hearted style.
A lawyer specializing in family law relates, with appropriate redactions, some unhappy war stories.
Many attorneys avoid cases involving family practice because it’s too emotionally demanding. Others, like Philadelphia lawyer Klaw, are less averse to the family fights, marital mayhem, late-night calls and all the high drama. The author, a wife and mother, deals professionally with such intimate, basic human concerns as love, heirlooms, money, acquisitions, money, sex, children and, of course, money. In daily practice, she may confront lying spouses, secure protection orders, counsel same-sex marriage partners or arrange for new birth certificates for transgendered clients. Family practice, it should be noted, is an evolving legal specialty. There have been titanic social and scientific changes in just a generation or two; evolving sexual mores and relations, as well as new reproductive technology, have outpaced the stately progress of the law. Klaw’s tilt is manifestly feminist, but she acknowledges the camaraderie among family-law practitioners. “We’re joined together through a common work life that can be difficult, emotionally intense, sometimes exhilarating, and sometimes thankless,” she writes. All lawyers, of course, enjoy reprising their courtroom adventures and recounting what they think are interesting “matters” (cases); Klaw, a regular blogger, is quite adept at anecdotal exposition of legal principles. Especially effective is her analysis, running sporadically throughout the book, of a representative custody trial. The conversational, entertaining text may sometimes sound more like Judge Judy than Learned Hand or Felix Frankfurter, but it is all informative and smart. (It may also enhance her total of well-deserved billable hours).
An accessible description of an intricate field of law, examined in an open-hearted style.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-61620-239-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2013
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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