Supreme Discomfort

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Supreme Discomfort

Author : Kevin Merida
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0767916360
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis Supreme Discomfort by : Kevin Merida

Download or read book Supreme Discomfort written by Kevin Merida and published by Crown. This book was released on 2008-04-08 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Justice Clarence Thomas is the Supreme Court’s most reclusive member [and] a prime candidate for a careful, fair-minded biography. In delivering it, Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher have done some quiet justice of their own.”—Washington Post There is no more powerful, detested, misunderstood African American in our public life than Clarence Thomas. Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas is a haunting portrait of an isolated and complex man, savagely reviled by much of the black community, not entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia, to elite educational institutions, to the pinnacle of judicial power. His staunchly conservative positions on crime, abortion, and, especially, affirmative action have exposed him to charges of heartlessness and hypocrisy, in that he is himself the product of a broken home who manifestly benefited from racially conscious admissions policies. Supreme Discomfort is a superbly researched and reported work that features testimony from friends and foes alike who have never spoken in public about Thomas before—including a candid conversation with his fellow justice and ideological ally, Antonin Scalia. It offers a long-overdue window into a man who straddles two different worlds and is uneasy in both—and whose divided personality and conservative political philosophy will deeply influence American life for years to come.

Supreme Discomfort

Author : Kevin Merida
Publisher : Crown
ISBN 13 : 0385520069
Total Pages : 450 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Supreme Discomfort by : Kevin Merida

Download or read book Supreme Discomfort written by Kevin Merida and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-04-24 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[An] impeccably researched and probing biography . . . invaluable for any understanding of the court’s most controversial figure.”—The New York Times Book Review A sweeping, compelling portrait of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and “an unflinching look at success and race in America” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), from two Washington Post journalists There is no more powerful, detested, misunderstood African American in our public life than Clarence Thomas. Supreme Discomfort is a haunting account of an isolated and complex man, savagely reviled by much of the Black community, not yet entirely comfortable in white society, internally wounded by his passage from a broken family and rural poverty in Georgia to elite educational institutions and finally to the pinnacle of judicial power. His staunchly conservative positions on crime, abortion, and, especially, affirmative action have exposed him to charges of heartlessness and hypocrisy. Supreme Discomfort is a superbly researched and reported work that features testimony from friends and foes alike who have never spoken in public about Thomas before—including a candid conversation with his fellow justice and ideological ally, Antonin Scalia. It offers a long-overdue window into a man who straddles two different worlds and is uneasy in both—and whose divided personality and conservative political philosophy will deeply influence American life for years to come.

My Grandfather's Son

Author : Clarence Thomas
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063235927
Total Pages : 308 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (632 download)

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Book Synopsis My Grandfather's Son by : Clarence Thomas

Download or read book My Grandfather's Son written by Clarence Thomas and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words. Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time.

Strange Justice

Author : Jane Mayer
Publisher : Graymalkin Media
ISBN 13 : 163168163X
Total Pages : 358 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (316 download)

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Book Synopsis Strange Justice by : Jane Mayer

Download or read book Strange Justice written by Jane Mayer and published by Graymalkin Media. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a New York Times Best Seller and a National Book Award finalist. Charged with racial, sexual, and political overtones, the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as a Supreme Court justice was one of the most divisive spectacles the country has ever seen. Anita Hill’s accusation of sexual harassment by Thomas, and the attacks on her that were part of his high-placed supporters’ rebuttal, both shocked the nation and split it into two camps. One believed Hill was lying, the other believed that the man who ultimately took his place on the Supreme Court had committed perjury. In this brilliant, often shocking book, Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, two of the nation’s top investigative journalists examine all aspects of this controversial case. They interview witnesses that the Judiciary Committee chose not to call, and present documents never before made public. They detail the personal and professional pasts of both Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill and lay bare a campaign of lobbying, public relations, and character assassination fueled by conservative power at its most desperate. A gripping high-stakes drama, Strange Justice is not only a definitive account of the Clarence Thomas nomination hearings, but is also a classic casebook of how the Washington game is played by those for whom winning is everything.

The Discomfort of Evening

Author : Lucas Rijneveld
Publisher : Graywolf Press
ISBN 13 : 1644451301
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (444 download)

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Book Synopsis The Discomfort of Evening by : Lucas Rijneveld

Download or read book The Discomfort of Evening written by Lucas Rijneveld and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2020-08-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE A stark and gripping tale of childhood grief from one of the most exciting new voices in Dutch literature Ten-year-old Jas lives with her strictly religious parents and her siblings on a dairy farm where waste and frivolity are akin to sin. Despite the dreary routine of their days, Jas has a unique way of experiencing her world: her face soft like cheese under her mother’s hands; the texture of green warts, like capers, on migrating toads in the village; the sound of “blush words” that aren’t in the Bible. One icy morning, the disciplined rhythm of her family’s life is ruptured by a tragic accident, and Jas is convinced she is to blame. As her parents’ suffering makes them increasingly distant, Jas and her siblings develop a curiosity about death that leads them into disturbing rituals and fantasies. Cocooned in her red winter coat, Jas dreams of “the other side” and of salvation, not knowing where this dreaming will finally lead her. A bestseller in the Netherlands, Lucas Rijneveld’s radical debut novel The Discomfort of Evening offers readers a rare vision of rural and religious life in the Netherlands. In it, he asks: In the absence of comfort and care, what can the mind of a child invent to protect itself? And what happens when that is not enough? With stunning psychological acuity and images of haunting, violent beauty, Rijneveld has created a captivating world of language unlike any other.

The Enigma of Clarence Thomas

Author : Corey Robin
Publisher : Metropolitan Books
ISBN 13 : 1627793844
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (277 download)

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Book Synopsis The Enigma of Clarence Thomas by : Corey Robin

Download or read book The Enigma of Clarence Thomas written by Corey Robin and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enigma of Clarence Thomas is a groundbreaking revisionist take on the Supreme Court justice everyone knows about but no one knows. Most people can tell you two things about Clarence Thomas: Anita Hill accused him of sexual harassment, and he almost never speaks from the bench. Here are some things they don’t know: Thomas is a black nationalist. In college he memorized the speeches of Malcolm X. He believes white people are incurably racist. In the first examination of its kind, Corey Robin – one of the foremost analysts of the right – delves deeply into both Thomas’s biography and his jurisprudence, masterfully reading his Supreme Court opinions against the backdrop of his autobiographical and political writings and speeches. The hidden source of Thomas’s conservative views, Robin shows, is a profound skepticism that racism can be overcome. Thomas is convinced that any government action on behalf of African-Americans will be tainted by racism; the most African-Americans can hope for is that white people will get out of their way. There’s a reason, Robin concludes, why liberals often complain that Thomas doesn’t speak but seldom pay attention when he does. Were they to listen, they’d hear a racial pessimism that often sounds similar to their own. Cutting across the ideological spectrum, this unacknowledged consensus about the impossibility of progress is key to understanding today’s political stalemate.

Healing Back Pain

Author : John E. Sarno
Publisher : Balance
ISBN 13 : 0759520844
Total Pages : 194 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (595 download)

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Book Synopsis Healing Back Pain by : John E. Sarno

Download or read book Healing Back Pain written by John E. Sarno and published by Balance. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. John E. Sarno's groundbreaking research on TMS (Tension Myoneural Syndrome) reveals how stress and other psychological factors can cause back pain-and how you can be pain free without drugs, exercise, or surgery. Dr. Sarno's program has helped thousands of patients find relief from chronic back conditions. In this New York Times bestseller, Dr. Sarno teaches you how to identify stress and other psychological factors that cause back pain and demonstrates how to heal yourself--without drugs, surgery or exercise. Find out: Why self-motivated and successful people are prone to Tension Myoneural Syndrome (TMS) How anxiety and repressed anger trigger muscle spasms How people condition themselves to accept back pain as inevitable With case histories and the results of in-depth mind-body research, Dr. Sarno reveals how you can recognize the emotional roots of your TMS and sever the connections between mental and physical pain...and start recovering from back pain today.

Supreme Ambition

Author : Ruth Marcus
Publisher : Simon & Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1982123869
Total Pages : 496 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis Supreme Ambition by : Ruth Marcus

Download or read book Supreme Ambition written by Ruth Marcus and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Republicans began plotting their takeover of the Supreme Court thirty years ago. Brett Kavanaugh set his sights on the court right out of law school. Washington Post journalist and legal expert Ruth Marcus goes behind the scenes to document the inside story of how their supreme ambition triumphed. The Kavanaugh drama unfolded so fast in the summer of 2018 it seemed to come out of nowhere. With the power of the #MeToo movement behind her, a terrified but composed Christine Blasey Ford walked into a Senate hearing room to accuse Kavanaugh of sexual assault. This unleashed unprecedented fury from a Supreme Court nominee who accused Democrats of a “calculated and orchestrated political hit.” But behind this showdown was a much bigger one. In Supreme Ambition, Washington Post journalist and legal expert Ruth Marcus goes behind the scenes to document the thirty-year mission by conservatives to win a majority on the Supreme Court and the lifelong ambition of Brett Kavanaugh to secure his place in that victory. In that sense, Marcus has delivered a master class in how Washington works and an unforgettable case study in supreme ambition. The reporting in Supreme Ambition is also full of revealing and weighty headlines, as Marcus answers the most pressing questions surrounding this historical moment: How did Kavanaugh get the nomination? Was Blasey Ford’s testimony credible? What does his confirmation mean for the future of the court? Were the Democrats outgunned from the start? On the way, she uncovers secret White House meetings, intense lobbying efforts, private confrontations on Capitol Hill, and lives forever upended on both coasts. Supreme Ambition is a page-turner that traces how Brett Kavanaugh deftly maneuvered to become the nominee; how he quashed resistance from Republicans who worried he was too squishy on conservative issues and from a president reluctant to reward a George W. Bush loyalist. It shows a Republican party that had concluded Kavanaugh was too big to fail, with senators and the FBI ignoring potentially devastating evidence against him. And it paints a picture of Democratic leaders unwilling to engage in the no-holds-barred partisan warfare that might have defeated the nominee. In the tradition of The Brethren and The Power Broker, Supreme Ambition is the definitive account of a pivotal moment in modern history, one that was thirty years in the making and that will shape the judicial system of America for generations to come.

I Wish You All the Best

Author : Mason Deaver
Publisher : Scholastic Inc.
ISBN 13 : 1338306138
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (383 download)

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Book Synopsis I Wish You All the Best by : Mason Deaver

Download or read book I Wish You All the Best written by Mason Deaver and published by Scholastic Inc.. This book was released on 2019-05-14 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Becky Albertalli, Mason Deaver's stunning debut will rip your heart out before showing you how to heal from tragedy and celebrate life in the process. "Heartfelt, romantic, and quietly groundbreaking. This book will save lives." -- Becky Albertalli, New York Times bestselling author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens AgendaIt's just three words: I am nonbinary. But that's all it takes to change everything.When Ben De Backer comes out to their parents as nonbinary, they're thrown out of their house and forced to move in with their estranged older sister, Hannah, and her husband, Thomas, whom Ben has never even met. Struggling with an anxiety disorder compounded by their parents' rejection, they come out only to Hannah, Thomas, and their therapist and try to keep a low profile in a new school.But Ben's attempts to survive the last half of senior year unnoticed are thwarted when Nathan Allan, a funny and charismatic student, decides to take Ben under his wing. As Ben and Nathan's friendship grows, their feelings for each other begin to change, and what started as a disastrous turn of events looks like it might just be a chance to start a happier new life.At turns heartbreaking and joyous, I Wish You All the Best is both a celebration of life, friendship, and love, and a shining example of hope in the face of adversity.

Against Empathy

Author : Paul Bloom
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062339354
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (623 download)

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Book Synopsis Against Empathy by : Paul Bloom

Download or read book Against Empathy written by Paul Bloom and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2016-12-06 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Post Best Book of 2016 We often think of our capacity to experience the suffering of others as the ultimate source of goodness. Many of our wisest policy-makers, activists, scientists, and philosophers agree that the only problem with empathy is that we don’t have enough of it. Nothing could be farther from the truth, argues Yale researcher Paul Bloom. In AGAINST EMPATHY, Bloom reveals empathy to be one of the leading motivators of inequality and immorality in society. Far from helping us to improve the lives of others, empathy is a capricious and irrational emotion that appeals to our narrow prejudices. It muddles our judgment and, ironically, often leads to cruelty. We are at our best when we are smart enough not to rely on it, but to draw instead upon a more distanced compassion. Basing his argument on groundbreaking scientific findings, Bloom makes the case that some of the worst decisions made by individuals and nations—who to give money to, when to go to war, how to respond to climate change, and who to imprison—are too often motivated by honest, yet misplaced, emotions. With precision and wit, he demonstrates how empathy distorts our judgment in every aspect of our lives, from philanthropy and charity to the justice system; from medical care and education to parenting and marriage. Without empathy, Bloom insists, our decisions would be clearer, fairer, and—yes—ultimately more moral. Brilliantly argued, urgent and humane, AGAINST EMPATHY shows us that, when it comes to both major policy decisions and the choices we make in our everyday lives, limiting our impulse toward empathy is often the most compassionate choice we can make.

People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present

Author : Dara Horn
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393531570
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (935 download)

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Book Synopsis People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by : Dara Horn

Download or read book People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present written by Dara Horn and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal, Chicago Public Library, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living. Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture—and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks—Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life—trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study—to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past—making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Author : Elizabeth McCracken
Publisher : Little, Brown
ISBN 13 : 0316039802
Total Pages : 110 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination by : Elizabeth McCracken

Download or read book An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination written by Elizabeth McCracken and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2008-09-10 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer and self-proclaimed spinster. But suddenly she fell in love, got married, and two years ago was living in a remote part of France, working on her novel, and waiting for the birth of her first child. This book is about what happened next. In her ninth month of pregnancy, she learned that her baby boy had died. How do you deal with and recover from this kind of loss? Of course you don't -- but you go on. And if you have ever experienced loss or love someone who has, the company of this remarkable book will help you go on. With humor and warmth and unfailing generosity, McCracken considers the nature of love and grief. She opens her heart and leaves all of ours the richer for it.

Fraternity

Author : Diane Brady
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0385529627
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Fraternity by : Diane Brady

Download or read book Fraternity written by Diane Brady and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-01-03 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY San Francisco Chronicle • The Plain Dealer The inspiring true story of a group of young men whose lives were changed by a visionary mentor On April 4, 1968, the death of Martin Luther King, Jr., shocked the nation. Later that month, the Reverend John Brooks, a professor of theology at the College of the Holy Cross who shared Dr. King’s dream of an integrated society, drove up and down the East Coast searching for African American high school students to recruit to the school, young men he felt had the potential to succeed if given an opportunity. Among the twenty students he had a hand in recruiting that year were Clarence Thomas, the future Supreme Court justice; Edward P. Jones, who would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for literature; and Theodore Wells, who would become one of the nation’s most successful defense attorneys. Many of the others went on to become stars in their fields as well. In Fraternity, Diane Brady follows five of the men through their college years. Not only did the future president of Holy Cross convince the young men to attend the school, he also obtained full scholarships to support them, and then mentored, defended, coached, and befriended them through an often challenging four years of college, pushing them to reach for goals that would sustain them as adults. Would these young men have become the leaders they are today without Father Brooks’s involvement? Fraternity is a triumphant testament to the power of education and mentorship, and a compelling argument for the difference one person can make in the lives of others.

Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye

Author : David Ritz
Publisher : Omnibus Press
ISBN 13 : 085712160X
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (571 download)

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Book Synopsis Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye by : David Ritz

Download or read book Divided Soul: The Life Of Marvin Gaye written by David Ritz and published by Omnibus Press. This book was released on 2010-01-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Ritz presents his uniquely candid and and intimate account of the tumultuous life of the Prince of Soul music, Marvin Gaye. Author Ritz has assembled years of conversations and interviews from his life as a close friend and lyricist to the gifted Soul sensation, and tells the Marvin Gaye story with fly-on-the-wall accuracy and detail. From his early years as an abused child in the slums of Washington DC, through his rise to the very peaks of the Motown phenomenon, his fall from grace and subsequent comeback, to his untimely death at the hands of his father, Marvin's story is the stuff of legends. The cast of characters includes the Jacksons, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross and countless other icons of the world of soul music.The definitive biography of an enormously gifted and sensitive musician.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail

Author : Dr Martin Luther King
Publisher : HarperOne
ISBN 13 : 9780063425811
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (258 download)

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Book Synopsis Letter from a Birmingham Jail by : Dr Martin Luther King

Download or read book Letter from a Birmingham Jail written by Dr Martin Luther King and published by HarperOne. This book was released on 2025-01-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution

Author : Myron Magnet
Publisher : Encounter Books
ISBN 13 : 1641770538
Total Pages : 151 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (417 download)

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Book Synopsis Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution by : Myron Magnet

Download or read book Clarence Thomas and the Lost Constitution written by Myron Magnet and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Clarence Thomas joined the Supreme Court in 1991, he found with dismay that it was interpreting a very different Constitution from the one the framers had written—the one that had established a federal government manned by the people’s own elected representatives, charged with protecting citizens’ inborn rights while leaving them free to work out their individual happiness themselves, in their families, communities, and states. He found that his predecessors on the Court were complicit in the first step of this transformation, when in the 1870s they defanged the Civil War amendments intended to give full citizenship to his fellow black Americans. In the next generation, Woodrow Wilson, dismissing the framers and their work as obsolete, set out to replace laws made by the people’s representatives with rules made by highly educated, modern, supposedly nonpartisan “experts,” an idea Franklin Roosevelt supersized in the New Deal agencies that he acknowledged had no constitutional warrant. Then, under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1950s and 1960s, the Nine set about realizing Wilson’s dream of a Supreme Court sitting as a permanent constitutional convention, conjuring up laws out of smoke and mirrors and justifying them as expressions of the spirit of the age. But Thomas, who joined the Court after eight years running one of the myriad administrative agencies that the Great Society had piled on top of FDR’s batch, had deep misgivings about the new governmental order. He shared the framers’ vision of free, self-governing citizens forging their own fate. And from his own experience growing up in segregated Savannah, flirting with and rejecting black radicalism at college, and running an agency that supposedly advanced equality, he doubted that unelected experts and justices really did understand the moral arc of the universe better than the people themselves, or that the rules and rulings they issued made lives better rather than worse. So in the hundreds of opinions he has written in more than a quarter century on the Court—the most important of them explained in these pages in clear, non-lawyerly language—he has questioned the constitutional underpinnings of the new order and tried to restore the limited, self-governing original one, as more legitimate, more just, and more free than the one that grew up in its stead. The Court now seems set to move down the trail he blazed. A free, self-governing nation needs independent-minded, self-reliant citizens, and Thomas’s biography, vividly recounted here, produced just the kind of character that the founders assumed would always mark Americans. America’s future depends on the power of its culture and institutions to form ever more citizens of this stamp.

The Death of Punishment

Author : Robert Blecker
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 1137381337
Total Pages : 320 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (373 download)

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Book Synopsis The Death of Punishment by : Robert Blecker

Download or read book The Death of Punishment written by Robert Blecker and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-11-19 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in seven states, the history and philosophy professor exposes the perversity of justice: Inside prison, ironically, it's nobody's job to punish. Thus the worst criminals often live the best lives. The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.