Book Nook

Family and friends know reading is one of my major pleasures. A portion of any free time that I can scrounge is spent immersed in alternating between multiple books, catching up with The New Yorker (am almost two or three issues behind), and clicking to a few favorite online publications.

Have are notes regarding three books I've read in the last month or so.

Carrie Fisher's novel was a revelation. Having not read her two previous offerings (although I did enjoy the film version of Postcards From the Edge) was caught unaware by her luscious prose style.

It was fun trying to identify the true inspirations behind the characters. Jack Nicholson, Eddie Fisher and her mom were easy, others not so much. Clearly need to get up to speed on my Hollywood gossip.

Historian James MacGregor Burns cleanly written narrative simplifies the often convoluted evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court in Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Crisis of the Supreme Court.

Which reminds me, when did it become mandatory for works of nonfiction to carry a subtitle? Is this supposed to make me feel that shelling out $25 or $35 for a hardcover is a bargain? Is the writer being paid by the published word like back in the good all days of the 19th century penny press?

If nothing else, this book offers a convincing argument that the U.S. Supreme Court has never been aloof from politics. It always has been and will continue to be intimately entwined with politics.

One interesting tidbit the author provides is that James Madison to his dying day expressed remorse that the Constitutional Convention, possibly exhausted from debating and implementing details of the functions and responsibilities of legislative and executive branches, failed to exert similar efforts on behalf of the federal judiciary.

Another fascinating portion deals with the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. The general lesson taught in history classes is that the Court refused to alter Scott's status from slave to free man because he spent a number of years in a non-slave state.

While this is true to the ruling, the decision's core findings are filled with bile and contempt:

"No black man or woman descended from an American slave could claim national citizenship under the Constitution, which relegated blacks to a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race and who had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."

In effect, this shattered the status quo and legislative compromises dating back to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, that specified the contemporary states and territories that would be open to future expansion of the peculiar institution.

After this sweeping dictate by a Court dominated by slaveholders (which also marked the first serious claim by the Court to the alleged right of judicial review initially outlined by Chief Justice Judge Marshall five decades previously ), the War Between the States became inevitable.

Finally, "The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle" by prolific British author Russell Miller, fully portrays the extraordinary life and times of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.

It's a classic tale of a man who rose above his dire childhood and difficult family circumstances to find international fame as the inventor of "the world's most famous man who never was."

Ironically, he came to detest the character that brought him worldwide fame and financial success because he believed the Holmes stories overshadowed his many other published -- and in his opinion -- better writings.

It would be interesting to obtain his opinion regarding the upcoming film featuring Robert Downey Jr. The actor who embodied Sherlock Holmes in the largest number of films, Basil Rathbone, would probably also offer some choice comments if he were still amongst us.