An astute, unvarnished account that should stand out from the crowd of pro– and anti–law enforcement books.
An impassioned memoir focused on policing’s fraught relationship with communities of color and other marginalized groups.
Writing with Harris, CNN and Wall Street Journal security contributor Horace vividly depicts the surreal challenges faced by African-Americans in law enforcement following a distinguished career: “I’ve been part of the best and worst that my noble profession represents.” Writing with deep knowledge and concern, the author argues that unequal policing based on ingrained racial bias and the drug war is even more pervasive than the attention paid to the Black Lives Matter movement and flashpoints like the killing of Michael Brown would suggest. “Despite claims to the contrary,” writes Horace, “Black Lives Matter is not anticop.” Rather, it is an outgrowth of long-term alienation that white communities fail to perceive, due to disparate approaches to policing that often come to light in cases of brutality. The author focuses on the evolution of tactics relative to the post-1960s war on drugs, agreeing with many scholars that a narrative of punitive enforcement followed by mass imprisonment crippled minority communities following the civil rights era. While his tone is knowing and restrained, he appears anguished by the long-term arc of mistreatment and mistrust within black communities; he looks at specific policies and places, creating a somewhat meandering structure. He notes how Ferguson cops used aggressive tactics to generate revenue for years prior to the Brown killing. He also examines New Orleans to illustrate entrenched departmental corruption that culminated in several notorious police-involved murders. In Chicago, he explores a city in crisis due to intractable violence in segregated neighborhoods and an egregious excessive-force killing followed by a political coverup. There, as elsewhere, he concludes, “African-Americans and Latinos want a leader who will bring more fairness to policing.” Horace includes interviews with other cops, emphasizing diverse outlooks and deepening his perspective effectively.
An astute, unvarnished account that should stand out from the crowd of pro– and anti–law enforcement books.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-44008-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Hachette
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
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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