The Return

Review: Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption Bryan Stevenson Spiegel & Grau 2015 I missed this one in its original offering, but I am glad to have discovered it in paper.     Yes, this is about justice and mercy from a lawyer’s own experience and practice.   A single case serves as the base story line for this book, but there’s plenty of others interspersed as well.   This reads as well as most recent fiction, but it’s true and with endnotes too.    Stevenson originally worked with death row inmates primarily in the Alabama prisons.   If you are from Alabama I’ll tell you now it isn’t a pretty story of the legal system in that state.   Not only in the days gone by, but also in more recent times.   Other states take some hits too, so he didn’t single just Alabama out.   And they aren’t all in the South. This book has been compared to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird .   It does carry a sad resemblanc...

Review: All These Wonders: True Stories about Facing the Unknown Catherine Burns, editor Crown Archetype 2017 A forward by Neil Gaiman?   I half expected stories from the beyond from this collection.   You know those campfire stories that give you chills and haunt you forever.   There are stories here that may stay with you for a long time and you can’t say you weren’t warned.      The happy part is that these stories leave you believing that maybe there just might be some good left here and there in this world.   I sampled various stories just so I’d have some left to read after I put up this review.   I wanted them for those days that land you once in a while when you need to hear something positive.   And that is why I recommend this one to you.   The authors of the individual stories tell their own tale in their way.   Some of them are tough reads, but ones that showed me even in those situations there’s stil...

Review: Rain: A Natural and Cultural History Cynthia Barnett Crown Publishers 2015 Rain .   I nearly went on by this one, but now I’m glad I picked it up.   The endorsements called it captivating, imaginative, lyrical, insightful, and other accolades.   I think I’ll call it original and brave.   The reason I picked it up in the beginning was to explore how someone could write a novel length, nonfiction book about rain of all things, and make it interesting to a layman.   Well, Barnett has succeeded in doing just that. I expected a science book only, totally missing the entirety of the subtitle.   Culture?   Rain has culture and a history to boot?   Yes, it does.   One that is not just Western in scope.   Seems everyone is dependent on rain, and the shape of their culture defines that interest over its history.    The organization of this book reminded me of a mind map---rain with all the little connected ...