Valdez is Coming

Valdez is Coming by Elmore Leonard, 232 pages.

Bob Valdez worked as the shotgun rider on a Hatch and Hodges stagecoach. He also worked as the town constable in Lanoria, Arizona. He was an accommodating man, willing to go along, to get along. But, after Valdez was tortured and almost killed by the gunmen employed by a local cattle rancher, as he was seeking justice for a widowed mother, he reverts to the man he was when he served as a scout for the during the war against the Apaches.
Leonard did violence very well. No one is taking anything lightly, but people continually mistake the everyday for the extraordinary. Maybe the first book I have read because it was mentioned in the review of a novel, two characters in the forthcoming George Pelecanos novel discuss this book.

The Divide

The Divide: American injustice in the age of the wealth gap / Matt Taibbi 416 pgs.

Matt Taibbi takes the "two America's" thing and runs with it.  This isn't about statistical difference in income but about difference in the criminal justice system.  How can someone at bottom of the drug culture (the kid walking around with a joint in his pocket) get more time than the bank that admitted to laundering? The book talks about the "frisk and stop" program in New York City that results in over half a million stops per year and a huge number of arrests and tickets that result mostly in the inconvenience to going to court and paying a fine.  By contrast, Taibbi talks about the extent of fraud and illegal behavior in the banking and finance sectors that led to the collapse of the economy but not one person going to jail.  Seems a little out of whack. Taibbi also includes chapters on deporting immigrants (seems like this is a local jurisdiction money grab), welfare fraud (is it harder to get $400 worth of welfare benefits or a bank bailout worth billions?), and banking whistle blowers that end up on welfare because they get fired and black listed.  Want to get out of your comfort zone and get riled up?  Read this book.

check our catalog

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar, Literary Fiction, 422 pages.

Araceli Ramirez finds her expected duties growing when her co-workers in the Torres-Thompson household are let go. Maureen and Scott Torres-Thompson have fallen on hard times. They're still rich, they still have the palatial house with a pool, the live-in staff, and the private elementary school whose tuition is about half that of Princeton annually, but they are having to cut back.
Maureen and Scott don't communicate too well, and a rather massive misunderstanding about their finances precipitates a confrontation that reverberates through the rest of the book. Steps are taken, and things are said that cannot be taken back, and soon the domestic drama becomes the center of a criminal case.
As the legal troubles mount, the story becomes somewhat more didactic and the characters lose a bit of their depth and recede toward caricature. It's still a compelling read, but Maureen, Scott, Araceli, and the DA all become more symbolic and less interesting.

Check our catalog.

Downloadable Audio.

The Mockingbirds by Daisy Whitney 335 pages

Date rate is not an easy topic to talk about in fiction or in life. Alex is a junior at an elite college prep school when she is raped by a fellow student. She doesn't know what to do or who to turn to for help. Fortunately, members of a secret society the Mockingbirds step up to serve justice. The Mockingbirds is a group of students dedicated to righting wrongs created in their school since the administration cannot be relied on.  The set up of this group, the way they operate, hold court and carry out sentences is very clever. Alex is a sympathetic and believable character. The author writes from personal experience raped when she was in freshman at Brown University.It can happen anywhere and girls need information to prevent and or deal with traumas successfully.

Dissent Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases

Dissent: Great Opposing Opinions in Landmark Supreme Court Cases by Mark Tushnet

I listened to this on my MP3 player and found it to be a very interesting perspective on American history. So many of the big Supreme Court cases dealing with race, gender, privacy , worker's rights, etc. were decided one way but years later overturned. So it seems like the justices who dissented on the original cases were ahead of their times. Or maybe so many of the decisions are influenced by politics and public opinion and not so much on the impartial view of the court. Not surprising, there have been many judicial appointments that are based on politics more than competence so the results should also not surprise. Many dissents are quoted in the book and some are not based on the reasoning that you would imagine. I think this book would be interesting to anyone who likes American history or the judicial system.

check our catalog

also on Overdrive (MP3 audio)

Justice: What't the Right Thing to do by Michael J. Sandel

Justice: What's the Right Thing to do by Michael J. Sandel -308 pages, philosphy.
Sandel's book, like his PBS television show of the same name, presents us with moral dilemmas and and hot-button topics and asks us to think about the options. What would we do and what should we do? He then gives us several philosophical contexts in which to view the problems he presents, from gay marriage to government bailouts to affirmative action and he then asks us what the individual owes society and what society should leave to the individual. A clear and compelling read.

Check our Catalog.