Doing Justice: A Prosecutor’s Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law by Preet Bharara
Publisher: Knopf
Publication Date: March 19, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
By the one-time federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, an important overview of the way our justice system works, and why the rule of law is essential to our society. Using case histories, personal experiences and his own inviting writing and teaching style, Preet Bharara shows the thought process we need to best achieve truth and justice in our daily lives and within our society.
Preet Bharara has spent much of his life examining our legal system, pushing to make it better, and prosecuting those looking to subvert it. Bharara believes in our system and knows it must be protected, but to do so, we must also acknowledge and allow for flaws in the system and in human nature.
The book is divided into four sections: Inquiry, Accusation, Judgment and Punishment. He shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system, but he also shows how we all need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in our daily lives.
Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career–the successes as well as the failures–to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action (and in some cases, not taking action, which can be just as essential when trying to achieve a just result).
Much of what Bharara discusses is inspiring–it gives us hope that rational and objective fact-based thinking, combined with compassion, can truly lead us on a path toward truth and justice. Some of what he writes about will be controversial and cause much discussion. Ultimately, it is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system–and in our society.
Preet Bharara was the federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York who was fired by Donald Trump in 2017. (That used to be a dubious distinction – now he is just one of legions of people Trump has dismissed.) However, this book isn’t focused on his firing. His book is a walk through each step of the legal process – inquiry, accusation, judgment and punishment – and how each step works in the context of the SDNY.
I found the examples he used in the book fascinating. A book of this nature could easily be dry and boring but Bharara’s style is engaging. I found the section on inquiry to be particularly interesting. It’s such a long, detailed process to develop a rapport with someone so that they will feel comfortable providing information. I had no idea.
I listened to the audiobook of Doing Justice. Bharara reads it himself in a conversational manner. He has a podcast about legal topics called Stay Tuned. I haven’t listened to it yet but I plan to soon. If it’s as good as his book, then I know I’ll enjoy it. If you already listen to his podcast, then check out his book. Recommended.
November 27th, 2020 in
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I hope everyone has a happy and safe Thanksgiving!
November 26th, 2020 in
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The Boy on the Bridge by M.R. Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Publication Date: May 2, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
One exceptional boy journeys into the ashes of society to find the cure for a devastating plague in this riveting post-apocalyptic standalone set in the same world as the USA Today-bestselling The Girl With All the Gifts.
Once upon a time, in a land blighted by terror, there was a very clever boy.
The people thought the boy could save them, so they opened their gates and sent him out into the world.
To where the monsters lived.
The Boy on the Bridge is a stand-alone novel set in the same world as The Girl with All the Gifts but it’s also a prequel of sorts. If you haven’t read either, I would start with The Girl with All the Gifts. The Boy on the Bridge has a couple of spoilers in it if it’s read first. Accordingly, this review will be short as I don’t want to spoil The Girl with All the Gifts. Check out my review of The Girl with All the Gifts here.
The Boy on the Bridge takes place probably ten or fifteen years before The Girl with All the Gifts. The apocalypse due to the plague has already happened and a team comprised of military personal and scientists is traveling about England, trying to determine the cause and if there is a cure.
The first half of this book was very slow and not much happened. If you can make it through, it picks up quite a bit in the second half. I didn’t like it quite as much as The Girl with All the Gifts but I still enjoyed it and would recommend it to readers who liked The Girl with All the Gifts.
(I received a complimentary copy of this book for review.)
November 23rd, 2020 in
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Eleven Rings: The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson
Publisher: Penguin Press
Publication Date: May 21, 2013
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. Even more important, he succeeded in never wavering from coaching his way, from a place of deep values. Jackson was tagged as the “Zen master” half in jest by sportswriters, but the nickname speaks to an important truth: this is a coach who inspired, not goaded; who led by awakening and challenging the better angels of his players’ nature, not their egos, fear, or greed.
This is the story of a preacher’s kid from North Dakota who grew up to be one of the most innovative leaders of our time. In his quest to reinvent himself, Jackson explored everything from humanistic psychology and Native American philosophy to Zen meditation. In the process, he developed a new approach to leadership based on freedom, authenticity, and selfless teamwork that turned the hypercompetitive world of professional sports on its head.
In Eleven Rings, Jackson candidly describes how he:
• Learned the secrets of mindfulness and team chemistry while playing for the champion New York Knicks in the 1970s
• Managed Michael Jordan, the greatest player in the world, and got him to embrace selflessness, even if it meant losing a scoring title
• Forged successful teams out of players of varying abilities by getting them to trust one another and perform in sync
• Inspired Dennis Rodman and other “uncoachable” personalities to devote themselves to something larger than themselves
• Transformed Kobe Bryant from a rebellious teenager into a mature leader of a championship team.
Eleven times, Jackson led his teams to the ultimate goal: the NBA championship—six times with the Chicago Bulls and five times with the Los Angeles Lakers. We all know the legendary stars on those teams, or think we do. What Eleven Rings shows us, however, is that when it comes to the most important lessons, we don’t know very much at all. This book is full of revelations: about fascinating personalities and their drive to win; about the wellsprings of motivation and competition at the highest levels; and about what it takes to bring out the best in ourselves and others.
As coach of the Chicago Bulls and then the Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won a total of eleven NBA championships. Eleven Rings is both a memoir and a self-help/management book. However, Phil doesn’t go into much detail on his personal life. He mostly mentions it when it directly relates to what was going on with his basketball life at the time. The main focus of the book is his coaching philosophy and what has influenced it. Phil is a student of many teachers. He reads a lot and seems especially drawn to Native American and Buddhist philosophy.
I actually got this book when it first came out because I was a huge Chicago Bulls fan back in the Michael Jordan days. Like most of the books I acquire, it promptly went into my TBR pile. I dug it out after watching the docuseries about Michael Jordan’s last season with the Bulls, The Last Dance, on Netflix. I wanted to know more about Phil Jackson and his coaching because it was clear from the documentary that his players loved him.
I enjoyed learning more about Phil’s unorthodox style, from the infamous triangle defense, to teaching his players to meditate. Every season, he gave each player a book that he had chosen especially for them that he thought would speak to them in some way or have something to teach them. It could be anything – non-fiction, a novel or poetry. How cool is that? They didn’t always read them but at least he tried.
He doesn’t go into detail about his players’ personal lives but he is quite candid about challenges he had coaching various players. Of course he struggled with Dennis Rodman, but he also had trouble with others, including quite a bit with Kobe Bryant, who was still a teenager when he started with the Lakers. I was impressed by how he handled each player differently according to the guidance they needed. He didn’t subscribe to a one-size-fits-all approach in anything he did. That’s not to say that he was a perfect coach. He messed up sometimes and he admits his mistakes in this book.
You don’t need to be a hard-core basketball fan to enjoy Eleven Rings. There are technical details about basketball of course, but I feel like a lot of the coaching skills he uses can be applied in everyday life as well. Recommended.
November 20th, 2020 in
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The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Publisher: John Murray
Publication Date: August 8, 2019
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
“All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death.”
In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel’s half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life.
Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home.
Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank.
Miguel Angel de La Cruz, or Big Angel, as he’s known, calls his whole family back to celebrate what will be his last birthday – he’s been diagnosed with terminal cancer. His almost 100-year-old mother happens to die that weekend so the gathering morphs into a combination funeral and birthday party. It sounds like the makings of a somber occasion but it’s not. The de La Cruz family is a lively cast of characters, full of spirit and humor. (I had trouble keeping track of everyone. Some editions of the book have a family tree in them – if you decide to read this book, I recommend trying to find a copy that includes one.)
Little Angel, Big Angel’s half-brother, comes to visit for the celebration. He’s been raised by his white mother. He’s struggling with his identity as both white and Mexican and feeling somewhat like an outsider in the de La Cruz family, even though he is a part of it. Throughout the weekend, he listens as Big Angel tells him stories about his life and as people come to pay tribute to both Big Angel and Big Angel’s mother.
At its heart, The House of Broken Angels is about family. Urrea gave the relationships and characters wonderful depth. He based the novel on his relationship with his older half-brother, who also had a huge final birthday party. I’m sure that’s why the family in this book seems so authentic and their love for one another so real.
November 12th, 2020 in
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Luster by Raven Leilani
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication Date: August 4, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
No one wants what no one wants.
And how do we even know what we want? How do we know we’re ready to take it?
Edie is stumbling her way through her twenties―sharing a subpar apartment in Bushwick, clocking in and out of her admin job, making a series of inappropriate sexual choices. She is also haltingly, fitfully giving heat and air to the art that simmers inside her. And then she meets Eric, a digital archivist with a family in New Jersey, including an autopsist wife who has agreed to an open marriage―with rules.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscapes of contemporary sexual manners and racial politics weren’t hard enough, Edie finds herself unemployed and invited into Eric’s home―though not by Eric. She becomes a hesitant ally to his wife and a de facto role model to his adopted daughter. Edie may be the only Black woman young Akila knows.
Irresistibly unruly and strikingly beautiful, razor-sharp and slyly comic, sexually charged and utterly absorbing, Raven Leilani’s Luster is a portrait of a young woman trying to make sense of her life―her hunger, her anger―in a tumultuous era. It is also a haunting, aching description of how hard it is to believe in your own talent, and the unexpected influences that bring us into ourselves along the way.
I picked this book up because I heard that transracial adoption played a part in the plot and as a transracial adoptive parent, this intrigued me. Well, it does play a part but that is the only thing in it even remotely similar to my life!
Edie is a twenty-something Black woman living a bleak life full of meaningless, unfulfilling sexual encounters. Most of them have been with men at the publishing company where she works for the children’s imprint. Now she is dating Eric, a forty-something married white guy she met online. He and his wife have recently agreed to open their marriage and Edie is the first woman he’s dated since that decision. Due to unfortunate and slightly bizarre circumstances, Eric’s wife Rebecca ends up inviting Edie to move in, even though she doesn’t exactly like Edie. Eric and his wife (who is also white) have an adopted tween Black daughter named Akila. Edie somewhat unwillingly becomes a mentor to her because Akila has no other Black people in her life.
Edie, Eric and Rebecca are all deeply flawed to say the least. Their lives are mostly joyless. However, Edie narrates her life with the darkest humor that keeps this book from being hopelessly depressing. For instance:
“There are times I interact with kids and recall my abortion fondly, moments like this when I cross paths with a child who is clearly a drag.”
Or:
“The waitress tells us the specials in such a way that we know our sole responsibility as patrons in her section is to just go right ahead and f*ck ourselves.”
I loved this book’s humor and brutal honesty. It’s hard to believe that it’s Raven Leilani’s first novel. Highly recommended.
November 9th, 2020 in
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Nutshell by Ian McEwan
Publisher: Anchor
Paperback Release Date: May 30, 2017
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Trudy has been unfaithful to her husband, John. What’s more, she has kicked him out of their marital home, a valuable old London town house, and in his place is his own brother, the profoundly banal Claude. The illicit couple have hatched a scheme to rid themselves of her inconvenient husband forever. But there is a witness to their plot: the inquisitive, nine-month-old resident of Trudy’s womb.
As Trudy’s unborn son listens, bound within her body, to his mother and his uncle’s murderous plans, he gives us a truly new perspective on our world, seen from the confines of his. McEwan’s brilliant recasting of Shakespeare lends new weight to the age-old question of Hamlet’s hesitation, and is a tour de force of storytelling.
When I heard that the narrator of Nutshell was an unborn fetus, I had to read it. The fetus is quite an erudite little fellow, having absorbed much knowledge from the podcasts his mother listens to. Accordingly, his first person voice is mature, it’s not like reading someone talking in baby talk.
The fetus is almost full-term when he figures out that his mother and uncle are having an affair and are planning to kill his father. He loves his mother but his loves father as well. He must try and find a way to put a stop to his mother and uncle’s plot. But how can he do that from inside his mother’s belly?
This is a very short book so it’s hard to say more about it without giving anything away. It’s definitely worth the read to see how the author accomplishes the unusual concept of a book told from a fetus’s point of view. Recommended.
November 2nd, 2020 in
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All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Publication Date: May 4, 2020
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence?
Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.
In All Adults Here, Emma Straub’s unique alchemy of wisdom, humor, and insight come together in a deeply satisfying story about adult siblings, aging parents, high school boyfriends, middle school mean girls, the lifelong effects of birth order, and all the other things that follow us into adulthood, whether we like them to or not.
All Adults Here is a character driven novel about Astrid and her three grown children. When Astrid witnesses her frenemy Barbara get hit and killed by a school bus, she starts to reevaluate her own life choices. She wonders if it’s too late to right some of the parenting mistakes she makes when her kids were young. At the same time, her teenage granddaughter comes to live with her, giving her a chance to do things right on the first try.
Her oldest son is a tightly wound, somewhat bitter man. Her daughter is single and pregnant by choice and her youngest son is bohemian who is also a bit of a stoner. It’s his daughter that comes to live with Astrid.
Emma Straub writes fantastic characters. She’s able to make their inner monologues both introspective and full of wry humor. Astrid was my favorite. She had the greatest lines. Here’s one I really liked:
“She herself [Astrid] was an only child, and she found old people with siblings somewhat ridiculous, as if they were eighty-year-olds who still wore water wings in swimming pools. Siblings were for the very young and needy. She had given her children siblings to occupy each other in childhood.”
This book addresses so many facets of life, it would make a great book club selection. It’s got LGBT issues, single motherhood, adultery, bullying, death and divorce. It sounds like a lot but I didn’t think it was overloaded. Straub did a wonderful job weaving everything together in an organic way. Although the characters in All Adults Here deal with some serious problems, it never gets too heavy. You won’t feel depressed after reading it and that’s important in these times.
I’ve loved the books I’ve previously read by Emma Sraub and All Adults Here did not disappoint. Highly recommended.
Other books by Emma Straub I’ve reviewed:
Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures
The Vacationers
October 29th, 2020 in
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When Life Gives You Lululemons by Lauren Weisberger
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Release Date: June 5, 2018
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Publisher’s Description:
Welcome to Greenwich, Connecticut, where the lawns and the women are perfectly manicured, the Tito’s and sodas are extra strong, and everyone has something to say about the infamous new neighbor.
Let’s be clear: Emily Charlton does not do the suburbs. After leaving Miranda Priestly, she’s been working in Hollywood as an image consultant to the stars, but recently, Emily’s lost a few clients. She’s hopeless with social media. The new guard is nipping at her heels. She needs a big opportunity, and she needs it now.
When Karolina Hartwell, a gorgeous former supermodel, is arrested, her fall from grace is merciless. Her senator-husband leaves her, her Beltway friends disappear, and the tabloids pounce.
In Karolina, Emily finds her comeback opportunity. But she quickly learns Greenwich is a world apart and that this comeback needs a team approach.
So it is that Emily, the scorned Karolina, and their mutual friend Miriam, a powerful attorney turned stay-at-home mom, band together to navigate the social land mines of suburban Greenwich and win back the hearts of the American public. Along the way, an unexpected ally emerges in one Miranda Priestly.
When Life Gives You Lululemons isn’t really a sequel to The Devil Wears Prada, it’s more of a spin-off. I didn’t even realize it was written by the same author until about halfway through the audiobook! I’ve never read The Devil Wears Prada and it didn’t affect my enjoyment or understanding of this book at all.
Emily is an image consultant who’s having trouble adapting to the modern age of social media and her business is suffering as a result. When her friend Karolina, a former supermodel, is arrested for a crime that she may or may not have committed, Emily takes the case.
While When Life Gives You Lululemons supposed to be chick-lit, I thought it was more than that. Karolina’s predicament had my stomach in knots. And I was also really angry at her ex-husband. There were a lot of funny parts too, it was a good balance. It was a nice book to listen to because it was entertaining but didn’t’ require so much concentration that I missed my turn while driving. That has actually happened to me more times than I care to mention with other audiobooks!
Fans of The Devil Wears Prada will be glad to know that Miranda Priestly does make an appearance. However, I think anyone looking for a lighter read will appreciate this book.
October 20th, 2020 in
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