A well-written biography of our most influential jurist. Smith (George Bush's War, 1992, etc.) attributes the chief justice of the Supreme Court's lifelong commitment to national, as against state, power to his service in Washington's army during the American Revolution, including the bitter winter at Valley Forge. After the Revolution, he slowly built a lucrative law practice in Richmond, Va., while occasionally serving in state office and avidly supporting the Federalist Party; the extent to which political disagreement fostered Marshall's fully reciprocated animosity toward his second cousin, Thomas Jefferson, is unclear. As an emissary to France, Marshall showed sound judgment in the diplomatic crisis known as the XYZ Affair; he subsequently served with distinction in Congress and as secretary of state before President John Adams appointed him chief justice at age 45. Marshall used his enormous political skill and personal appeal to unite the Supreme Court in forging its most important early decisions, including Marbury v. Madison, which established the federal judiciary's authority to determine the constitutionality of acts of Congress and the president; McCulloch v. Maryland, which declared the supremacy of federal over conflicting state law; and the Dartmouth College case, which made possible the development of the corporation as an engine of economic activity. It is hard to imagine the course of American history had these decisions not been as lucidly and forcefully articulated as they were by Marshall, so the sobriquet ``definer of a nation'' is justifiable hyperbole. The book is flawed, however, by a failure to discuss the element of self-interest that often accompanied Marshall's political and jurisprudential values. Moreover, although Marshall emerges as an attractive combination of conviviality and pragmatism, his role in what would now be called a dysfunctional family might have been worth exploring. Borders on hagiography, but learned and readable. (16 pages b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-8050-1389-X
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1996
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
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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