There are new book reviews of David Dow's The Autobiography of an Execution, and John Temple's The Last Lawyer.
"David Dow's memoir, 'The Autobiography of an Execution,' is a piercing work, condemning a system, disliking the condemned," is the title of Andrea Simakis' review in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
As you wander the bookstore or graze Amazon, don't let the title of David R. Dow's memoir send you running for "Star," the unauthorized Warren Beatty biography, or other fast-food nonfiction.
"The Autobiography of an Execution" isn't spinach lit, and it's not the work of an earnest abolitionist. This is, instead, a stinging, honest account of what it's like to defend mostly indefensible men. Dow is such a fine storyteller that he can make legal proceedings read like a thriller.
The author is a Texan who has represented more than 100 condemned clients. He's actually liked three or four. Seven of them, he writes, likely were innocent. "Wasn't it Rousseau who loved mankind and hated man? That's me. I do not want my clients to be executed, and I can't stand them."
He showers after visiting these men in prison, inmates who beat their wives to death as their children watched, or murdered women and raped them -- in that order.
Dow has written previous critiques of a screwy system of justice that allows death sentences to go forward in the face of outrageous courtroom antics: defense lawyers who slept through trials; barking-mad clients allowed to represent themselves. But while "Autobiography" works as an indictment, it's also a love letter to Dow's wife and 6-year-old son as he tries to balance his macabre vocation with family
Richard Connelly posts, "David Dow, Of UH And Death Row, Gets Some Book-Selling Help From The New York Times," for the Houston Press.
For years, UH professor David Dow has been Houston's most famous advocate against the death penalty. He's the go-to guy for quotes, and the mere mention of his name tends to rile up those who support lethal injunction (and any other method the government uses for killing convicts).
He's written a book, The Autobiography of an Execution, and he gets a thumbs-up from the influential New York Times Book Review this Sunday.
The review by Slate senior editor Dalia Lithwick is already online and is decidedly enthusiastic.
She calls it a "dark, raw memoir" that is "brilliant [and] heart-rending," although she doesn't like that legal concerns force Dow to use pseudonyms and composite chronologies in detailing the single case the book follows.
A reminder of upcoming author events:
Wednesday, February 17th – Books & Books – Miami, FL
Tuesday, February 23rd – Book People – Austin, TX
Wednesday, February 24th – Barnes & Noble – San Antonio, TX
Saturday, February 27th – Politics & Prose – Washington, DC
John Temple's book is reviewed in North Carolina's IndyWeek, "John Temple's The Last Lawyer: Grinding out justice," by Adam Sobsey.
Just before the exciting climax of The Last Lawyer, Ken Rose, the titular hero, steps down as director of the Durham-based, Indy Citizen Award-winning nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation. His staff throws him an exit party, and someone asks aloud, rhetorically, "So who is Ken Rose?"
"A ripple of laughter electrified the crowd, then transformed into claps as the question sank in." But no one hazards an answer.
In hindsight, that's no surprise. Despite the title's promise that Rose is the subject of the book, and despite his manifest commitment to his work, he is less the last lawyer than the lost lawyer—lost, that is, on the reader, who experiences him as the primary puzzle among many in John Temple's impassioned, principled and streamlined yet oddly opaque book. The "single-minded and brilliant" Rose led the CDPL's appellate defense of Levon "Bo" Jones, who was sentenced to death for the 1987 murder of a Duplin County bootlegger, despite "no confession, no informant testimony, no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no DNA evidence," as Rose tells the last of a dozen judges to hear Jones's case.
But although Rose helms the ship, he stays below decks for much of its course, which is carried instead by his co-counsel (including Mark Kleinschmidt, now mayor of Chapel Hill) and an array of staff, witnesses and others.
Earlier coverage of Autobiography and Last Lawyer at the links; related posts are in the books index.
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