1 comments about Hanging Judge.

1. Written in the 1950's, this book displays a remarkable lack of research and fact. Read S.W. Harman's 'Hell on the Border' instead. The book reflects more about the time it was written than the the person it is describing.

1 comments about Cowboy Justice: Tale of a Texas Lawman.

1. Cowboy Justice won Westerners International Co-Founders Best Book Award and to great critical acclaim.

   "Cowboy Justice is a nonfiction masterpiece that shows us a lawman who enforced the law because the Rule of Law was sacred to him. There was no sense of personal gain or selfish career building, nor was there a sense of power for power's sake. Gober deserves a place beside Earp, Masterson, Garrett and others who gained fame for their law enforcement. And yet, he almost stands alone when it comes to greatness tempered with courage and humility." ---Michael Martin Murphey

5 comments about The Defense Is Ready: Life In The Trenches Of Criminal Law.

1. This book gives a very interesting inside look into the world of criminal defense attorneys. The author gives her unique perspective on the law through stories of several cases she defended. While I found the book very interesting, especially her explanation of the Menendez case, I couldn't help thinking that she was giving only one side of the story and leaving out facts that didn't support her views of defendant's rights. Still, it was very enthralling and hard to put down.



2. I have always liked the way that Leslie Abramson handles herself as well as being a fairly big fan of her courtroom practices. So, I went into this book with some preconceived biases. Well, they were all proven wrong.

   Abramson is an extremely intelligent woman, and an excellent attorney, but her writing, as well as that of Richard Flaste, is quite dry and rather boring. She has some nice stories to tell, but the manner in which she delivers them is undeniably dull.

   The book clearly had no cogent flow to it whatsoever. The book was somewhat hard to get through, but I read on, hoping it lead to something better. But, it truly didn't.

   I gave the book two stars simply because the information on the cases, and the behind the scenes stuff was pretty interesting. Unfortunately, that is all this book really has to offer you.




3. I have to question the factuality of the stories written in this book. My family is the subject of one of the stories Leslie chose to discuss in detail within her book. I have to say I was shocked and infuriated to find my family story, including names and a picture sent to Leslie in a Christmas card, printed without our consent or knowledge. After the initial shock I sat down to read the book and was again outraged at the many erroneous facts intertwined in our brief story. I have to wonder if she even looked at our file or if she just tried to pull from memory and/or embelish this brief condensed story of our life. I do not know all the laws governing what you can or can't print in an autobiography, but I would think that if you were writing about other people's lives, you should have to state the facts and be able to substantiate those facts with documentation. I know that the 6 pages of this book dedicated to my life story has so many fabricated and outright false statements, it is impossible for me to read any of the other stories with any degree of faith that what I am reading is the Real story! I would recommend that anyone who reads this book takes it for what it is, an autobiography about Leslie Abramson. Do not read it to understand the subjects of her cases or what the Real facts behind their cases were.



4. Perhaps I'm being anachronistic, but I don't think an autobiography should be written by anyone other than the subject him or herself. If the person doesn't feel up to the job, he should have an authorized biography published with a vignette explaining his involvement in the project. Whatever her reasons, Ms. Abramson's decision to employ Richard Flaste was a big mistake. If she was too lazy to write this book herself, she should have at least taken the time to find a competent writer. Reading this book is like trying to drive across a treacherous bog in a Ferrari. You hope there's something good on the other side but the journey is so needlessly frustrating and unpleasant, you aren't sure if it's worth it. Let me save you some trouble. Even if you had a Range Rover, this journey wouldn't be worth it. My conclusion: for someone who is so assertive and logical in her public speaking, Ms. Abramson has published a very disappointing autobiography



5. If you ever thought there was more to certain cases than what you saw on tv, irregardless of whether you agree with Abramson's conclusions or not, you owe it to your sense of humanity or cynicism to read this boo

5 comments about The Best Lawyer in a One-Lawyer Town.

1. Dale Bumpers recounts his formative years with honesty, verve, and a wonderful sense of humor. Sparing us a blow-by-blow account of his years as an influential member of the United States Senate, Bumpers instead gives us the gift of riding along for the journey as he looks back on his life and remembers the lessons he learned from his father in Depression-era Arkansas. We enjoy a remarkable whirlwind tour -- through high school, college and law school; through tragedy; through the years of simultaneously serving as city attorney, family hardware-store operator, lawyer, husband, and father; through the many often-zany legal cases and clients with whom Bumpers worked; and, finally, through the decision of the young, smart, and genuine country lawyer -- inspired by his father, who comes across as a thoughtful, caring, and noble man, to commit to a life of serving others -- to launch a long-shot campaign to become the Governor of Arkansas. This is not a book for Bumpers to tout his influence on policy in Arkansas, although I discovered later that he was the only Arkansas Governor of the twentieth-century who, among Arkansas political scientists, achieved the rank of "Great." (Other Arkansas governors included David Pryor and, of course, a young man named Bill Clinton.) Nor is it a bogged-down account of Bumpers' years in the Senate, although he was for twenty-four years among the most revered members of that body. Nor is it a rumination on the trends of the times or the national character, even though Dale Bumpers was repeatedly encouraged to run for president and declined in 1976, 1984, and finally for the last time in 1988. Indeed, in an age where politicians discuss their political accomplishments and ambitions at length in their memoirs, with a cloying sense of self-centeredness that encourages one to forswear the genre entirely, Bumpers never discusses the intense-but-always-fleeting power struggles that define Washington, or why he always decided against running for the presidency. Instead, the book is a reflection a long, sometimes-bumpy, but always satisfying public and private life, full of vivid images, memorable episodes, and wonderful stories.
   
   What makes the book so appealing is its utter lack of pretense, Bumpers' genuine and unfailing respect for those who might wander across his book in the local library and spend a few moments with it. It is little wonder he always won re-election in Arkansas, despite the fact that his views tended to be more liberal than those of the state as a whole. ("Do you want to know why you always thought I was more liberal than I said I was?" he recounts asking an assembled group back home in Arkansas, as he was finishing up his last term in the U.S. Senate. "Because I was!") In an age of insta-political memoirs, Bumpers mentioned that it took him nearly four years to write the book, and it shows.
   
   Given our disenchantment with politics these days, we are constantly looking for a man on a white horse to save our political culture from itself. One wonders, however, what our potential would be if we moved past the cult of political celebrity, and searched for a leader who was confident but genuine, talented and humble, and most of all, good and decent, with an integrity and a generosity of spirit that reminds us of the best about ourselves. In an age where we are all looking for the next John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton (Mitt Romney? John Edwards? Barack Obama?), you may, after reading this memoir, wonder whether we may better be served by searching for the next Dale Bumpers.



2. Senator Bumpers' memoir is truly a great read. The Senator is very candid about politics, honest about his life, and philosophical without trying to justify his actions while in office. In a day where it seems every politician running for office feels the need to write a book, Senator Bumpers has taken the time to write one after leaving public office.
   On a personal note, the Senator took time out of his day to autograph a copy for me on the occasion of my retirement from the Army.
   This is a very good book.



3. Dale Bumpers might be seen as a mixture of one part Atticus Finch (To Kill a Mockingbird), one part Jefferson Smith (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), and a half part Abe Lincoln (at least he got the self-deprecating part).
   
   In his memoir, Bumpers presents his life in wry strokes from Depression-era Arkansas through the Clinton impeachment trial. When focused upon the Arkansas of his youth, Bumpers' writing rings with spry anecdotes and the merriment of a man who can laugh at what was once a scandal and present rural life with a fine eye.
   
   Unfortunately, the broad brush strokes of his gubernatorial and senate career reeks of sterilized gaps (or perhaps, hatchets slyly buried). Bumpers becomes jaded, cynical, and cautious in writing about Washington powerbrokers, condensing his memoirs into a string of dinner parties and public engagements lacking the same confessional quality. After multiple terms in the Senate, Bumpers recalls only two meaningful debates - Panama Canal, and the battle to save the Manassas Battlefield from becoming a shopping center.
   
   Bumpers' memoir is worth reading for the depiction of the rural South and a profile of a real-life career of a grassroots lawyer who did good and made good in the first half. However, concluding with Bumpers speech on behalf of fellow Arkansan Bill Clinton during the impeachment trial is anticlimactic, and the latter section begs for the same treatment as his earlier, less public life.



4. Great read by someone who knows how to paint pictures with words. Dale Bumpers is a true public servant, not a politician out for fame, ego, money, and sex. I first became aware of him in a lengthy newspaper article some decades ago that gave deep background coverage to his spoken eloquence and mastery of issues, beyond that even of most Senators. I have wanted him to run for President ever since, and I think his speech in defense of Bill Clinton shows what a loss we have endured in not having Dale Bumpers as a President, particularly in light of the actions of our current President.
   
   The Senator describes in his book how Arkansas was always competing with Mississippi in being at the bottom of the lists of good things, and at the top of lists of bad things, and how he strove to change that. I was born and raised in Louisiana, and remember experiencing the same thing with Mississippi, but don't remember seeing Arkansas on those lists frequently. I consider that to be a testament to the Senator's success in changing things in Arkansas, as he was born about 1926, and I was born in 1963.
   
   Lets hope a generation of Americans finds this work as inspiring as the author found the words of Harry Truman to him: "You should always remember that the people elected you to do what you think is right. They're busy with their own lives, and they're depending on you.... Get the best advice you can find on both sides of the issues, pick out the one that makes the most sense to you, and go with it.... Secondly, trust people with the truth. Politicians always have a hard time telling people the truth, rather than telling them what they think they'd like to hear. People can handle the truth, and you can trust `em with it." (p. 226).



5. This is an exceptionally excellent book, replete with snatches of humor and wise and poignant thoughts. It is indeed a memoir rather than an autobiography, and does not dwell much on the author's illustrious career as governor and senator. The best chapters are toward the end, when he tells of his crowning achievemnet after he left the Senate and gave his superlative speech in the trial in the Senate of Bill Clinton. I am glad he set that speech out in an appendix since I had forgotten just how able it was. This book is a great book, and one can recomment it unreservedly.

5 comments about Broken Contract: A Memoir of Harvard Law School.

1. This book is, well, strange. The author is obviously bright, and possesses at least some degree of self-awareness. Despite this, it seems to have taken him three years to figure out what should have been obvious in three weeks: namely, that he had no desire to study law or to become a lawyer.

   This passage (pp. 130, 131) is typical:

   "What I did care about - or thought I did - was my third class: Poverty Law.... But if poverty law was the right field to go into, (the professor) never convinced us that it was interesting. He said that poverty lawyers should use arbitrary rules to benefit their clients, exploit the loopholes, because 'the poor do not have resources, all they have are the rules'. But the rules were boring. It was not interesting to know that when a rule says you have ten days to file, you do or do not count the days at both ends. But that was what poverty law entailed: knowing the arcane rules involved in such things as meeting income and the asset requirements of various programs. During a break one day, I heard one student tell another, 'This is as bad as tax'. Maybe we were just painfully naïve, but we still held out the hope that doing good, if not remunerative, could at least be interesting".

   Well, law is concerned largely with "arcane rules". What did he expect?

   Kahlenberg's solution to his dislike of law school was to opt for as many non-legal elective courses as possible. Most of these were taught at the Kennedy School of Government, which he greatly preferred: "Its purpose - to take on the great social and political problems of our time, involving issues such as health care, foreign relations, and poverty - was so much more grand than that of the law school (which is concerned with) a narrow field more akin to accounting" (p. 173). Yet even the Kennedy School is attacked for being insuccifiently theoretical: "the school's emphasis on mechanics and management over vision is a perenial concern" (pp. 173, 174).

   Kahlenberg writes, at considerable length, about the need for Harvard Law graduates to perform "public service": a phrase which he never defines but clearly restricts to working in Washington as a staff member for a powerful Senator or an important Senate committee. He fails to explain why this sort of employment is more relevant or admirable than the private practice of law, of which he writes disparagingly (p.155):

   "By the end of the summer, I had come to believe that most high-priced attorneys did not wear white hats or black hats; they wore no hats at all. They just came to work every day to do jobs that were of little social importance".

   I would respectfully suggest the following: (1) the vast majority of jobs in this world can be argued to have "little social importance" (which in any case is an obviously subjective description); (2) the writing of speeches for some hack politician, or policy papers that will be read by few and acted upon by none, is a job of less "social importance" than the provision of legal services to private clients.

   Although I myself am a lawyer, I freely admit that it's not for everyone. Why did it take Kahlenberg so long to figure out that it was not for him?

   It was only at the tail end of his final year, upon deciding not to take the Bar exam or to accept a job with a law firm, that realization set in: "I wondered whether I had gone off the deep end. Being a press secretary had nothing to do with law whatsoever. Had I just wasted three years of my life and a lot of money? Was law school a big mistake?" (p. 223). Yes, Richard, it was.




2. This book has some strong points, but they are outweighed, in my opinion, by the negatives.

   First, in terms of subject matter, Kahlenberg's very liberal--despite what he may profess, he seems (to a moderate like me) much more liberal than your average Democrat--slant to absolutely everything about which he writes taints the entire book. Apparently, he seems to think that only liberals can provide useful public service or enhance the nation's government. One might think that, with seven years of formal education, Kahlenberg might realize that things are not so black-and-white, and that people of all ideologies can be (and are) public servants dedicated to helping their fellow citizens.

   When it came to the actual structure of the book, I tired of his endless rants on how HLS can change people. Yes, I understand--and can sympathize--with his point, but I prefer not to be absolutely bombarded with a single idea over and over again without so much as a single additional insight after the first 100 pages. Moreover, detailed descriptions of two or three firm interviews were interesting--fascinating, in fact. But having to read what amounted to the same story (with different firms and different attorneys that eventually all blended together) some 20-30 times was tedious at best.

   Once again, I get his point that all corporate firms are the same, that they are extremely successful at attracting HLS students away from public work, and that they work against progressive change and the common good rather than helping the public. But there has to be a less mind-numbingly dull and long-winded--not to mention pretentious and arrogant--way to communicate the point.

   If you absolutely must read this--as you probably should if you have any intention of going to HLS or any other "name" law school--borrow it from the library, but do not waste your money purchasing the book.




3. Broken Contract is the chronicle of Richard Kahlenberg's struggle to justify his classical liberal ideals with the harsh reality of law school: most entering law students have a desire to use the privilege of an education in the law to help the poor and downtrodden of society, "but upon graduating, the vast majority [scramble] to fill the ranks of the nation's top corporate law firms" (from the front flap). Through the framework of his struggle with these powerful opposing forces, Kahlenberg presents us with a fascinating look at Harvard Law School, its culture and the nature of the law education of the late 1980s. He paints a portrait of everyday life as a law student, scrambling for Law Review positions, summer internships, judicial clerkships and ultimately, for a job after graduation.

   As Kahlenberg searches for a job and dogmatically asks each interviewer about the firm's pro bono work (he is interested in little more), he occasionally comes across as an elitist; his sense of noblesse oblige is mildly nauseating. Throughout the book, Kahlenberg operates on the assumption that class-action lawsuits are morally right, that cases brought by poor people are just, that all big corporations are evil, that people have to sell-out to earn big salaries and that "conservatives" are willing to do anything to guarantee the rights of the rich.

   However, don't let these relatively small negative aspects of the book deter you from reading it, even if you identify yourself as a conservative. His larger point is this: "since each of us struggles daily with good and bad impulses, we might want to restructure our social institutions in order to make it a little easier to do good" (235). This book does not target a certain ideology, except perhaps greed. Kahlenberg does not pull any punches and the targets of his criticisms span the ideological spectrum (although he does let a few more land on the right side of the spectrum).

   Broken Contract rates a full four and a half stars. Broken Contract challenged me to think critically about my motivations for attending law school and broadened my perspective on life in general and on the legal community in particular.




4. If you want to read the story of a guy who thinks it would really be nifty to do important public service work while still pulling down six figures, this is the book for you. Kahlenberg makes law students like myself who are legitimately dedicated to public interest law look like idiots. From tacky comments about distinguished lawyers he labels "sell-outs" for their choice to move to private work to the hilarious account of his (very sincere, I'm *sure*) questioning an interviewer at Arnold and Porter about whether a liberal would feel comfortable at the firm (like they're going to tell you no) the book is pretty useless. Kahlenberg wants you to think he's really upset that he just tried and tried and couldn't get a public interest job, but let's face it -- he went to Harvard Law. If he was the least bit honest at any time, the book would be worth reading. There's no way Coles read this book before agreeing to write the foreword.



5. This book is a compendium of irritating whinings by a naive liberal intent on saving the world. I was very much disappointed. Skip. Or borrow the book from the library.

No comments about J. V. Barry: A Life.

No comments about Sir Matthew Hale, 1609-1676: Law, Religion and Natural Philosophy (Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History).

4 comments about Snow Blind.

1. You will not have any trouble reading this book.It is one of the few books I have read where someone snorting his brains out on coke tries to explain, almost romantically, how he got started in dealing (the head of U.S Customs personally asked him to do it!!) and why Coke has a bad rap (after all, it WAS in Coca-Cola). He describes some great concealment methods that would still work as well today as it did in 1972, and it almost seems like he was the underdog fighting against the system. Almost. In reality he just dealt in misery and slowly became more misarable himself. Good book for anyone in law enforcement to read.



2. I first met Douglas Kalajian after toasting the New Journalism with the fabled editor Eddie Sears during a wine-fueled chit-chat in the executive floors of The Palm Beach Post. The year was 1994 or 1995. I forget, mainly because I left all my brains to the wrinkled mavens who entertained me nightly at the many ornate bars I frequented in Palm Beach. What Sears said about Kalajian pretty much cements my belief that Douglas, more than any other writer in star-crossed Southern Florida, has a full grasp of the many flawed characters that walk that wild geography. "Kalajian will shock the Hell out of a witch," Sears said. This book is about one such wicked dude. You can visit Florida for a week and it isn't long before you get the distinct feeling that Florida is no Midwest Wimp like Oklahomo or Kancer or Rita Nebraska...No, sir. Here, in his book, Douglas Kalajian is both Dali and Diego Rivera. He has painted a factual mural so alarming and bright that to read it is to see what's on the other side of the Sun. I read it while fishing in The Gulf of Mexico and damned if every damned fish I caught didn't look ugly as all Hell. Truth is scary and Douglas Kalajian has thrown truth at us...



3. Snow Blind is a true story that moves at the pace of an action adventure. The action happens in the courtroom, as a youg public defender with a gift for showmanship rights wrongs, rescues the innocent and puts the high-and-mighty in their place. And then something goes wrong, big time. If you live in South Florida you WILL recognize the protagonist and the bigwigs he must duel. You'll be surprised, because not many people know the details. Even if you live elsewhere and don't know the names, you'll be swept along by this amazing story.



4. Kalajian has written a riveting tale of the true life fall of a passionate advocate for the poor who becomes caught in the seductions of the drug underworld and who saves his soul only when he returns to his calling to help others.

2 comments about Bus Ride to Justice.

1. Fred Gray knew how. Mr. Gray defended some of the movements biggest names, you should read some of the things he accomplished.Mr Gray did make every effort to destroy seregation where ever he found it. And he was good at it.



2. Fred Gray isn't just a Civil Rights Lawyer, he's THE Civil Rights lawyer. This man represented Rosa Parks in the Bus Boycott, MLK Jr in the Selma March, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and desegregation lawsuits for Alabama public schools. In a world where the word 'lawyer' holds a negative connotation, Fred Gray's story is about what a lawyer ought to be doing. This isn't the movie of the week, it's the real thing by the man who did it.

1 comments about Slovo: The Unfinished Autobiography of ANC leader Joe Slovo.

1. excelent book all about slovos fights with apartheit. the only white leader of the a.n.c A FIGHTER TO THE END.