Bilott’s admirable crusade is widely known thanks to coverage by journalists; this book adds plenty of detail and further...
An environmental lawyer recounts the two-decade-long saga of U.S. residents being poisoned by drinking water contaminated with toxic chemicals used in the production of Teflon.
A young corporate attorney in Cincinnati as the narrative opens in 1996, Bilott explains his progression from defending corporate polluters to advocating for plaintiffs being denied justice by the multinational chemical manufacturer DuPont. Although the narrative eventually becomes dominated by arcane legal procedures and complicated chemistry, it opens powerfully as Bilott receives an unusual telephone call from Earl Tennant, a farmer on a modest acreage near Parkersburg, West Virginia. Tennant understood implicitly that some toxic substance was killing his cows and causing illness in his family, but nobody in West Virginia would listen, including the state environmental protection agency. Tennant was acquainted with Bilott’s grandmother, who provided him with the author’s phone number in Cincinnati. Though Bilott felt he could not accept Tennant as a client, for a multitude of reasons, he met with him at the farm, immediately sensed an injustice, and risked his career at his law firm to represent the Tennant family. Eventually, that one case mushroomed into a class-action lawsuit on behalf of tens of thousands of plaintiffs harmed by the toxic discharges emanating from DuPont’s factory. Bilott is obviously an advocate, so his treatment of DuPont’s scientists, lawyers, and top executives should be read with caution. Still, his level of detail leaves little doubt that year after year, the corporation misled government agencies, courts, and consumers into a false sense of security about the poisonous nature of their manufacturing processes. Bilott shares candid details about his own insecurities within his law firm as well as his failures as a husband and a father stemming from his workaholic nature.
Bilott’s admirable crusade is widely known thanks to coverage by journalists; this book adds plenty of detail and further context.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-7281-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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
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
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