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Re: Hey, ribit ... ya wanna get away and soak up some culture amongst da frogs?/ DE

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (0)
Mon, 30 Sep 24 3:54 AM | 26 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 58838 of 59015
(This msg. is a reply to 57380 by De_Composed)
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Re: “Jeffrey Toobin creates in The Nine a riveting story of one of the most important forces in American life today.”I finally finished Jeffrey Toobin's book.

Generally, I'm happy to be tackling "technical" books like this one at a fairly steady pace. I like to learn. In this case, I'm not so sure. The book was an accounting of the Supreme Court from roughly 1980 to 2007, mostly discussing the Rhenquist and Roberts Courts. It covered a lot of cases and a lot of Justices.

The positives are that it gave me a much better understanding of how the Court works, how it picks its cases, how its decisions were dominated for most of that time by certain Justices, particularly O'Connor and Kennedy, and some feel for the personalities of a few of the individuals. In many cases, I think the descriptions were twisted and corrupted by Toobin's bias.

The negatives are that Toobin was utterly unable to keep his political leanings out of the story, constantly sniping at the conservatives, particularly and quite viciously at Clarence Thomas. I think that insults must be Toobin's specialty, because he actually had very little to say about the liberal judges except for Ginsburg who he glorified.

That's essentially it. The book took me longer than it should have because I was never enthralled. It had no plot beyond what transpired year by year, and little theme beyond 'Conservative Extremists Bad. Conservative Decisions Wrong.' I'd even be okay with that if the book had only conveyed WHY they were so wrong and bad, but it didn't. (Precedent. Precedent. Precedent. That's the author's only explanation.)

In most complex cases, there are two sides. That's why, so often, these cases went 4 to 4 with the moderate O'Connor (and later Kennedy) deciding them. Toobin could have done a much better job, imo, of explaining the two positions. He instead tended to cover just one, criticizing the conservative position whenever it was victorious and heaping praise on O'Connor/Kennedy (both of whom were appointed by Republicans but did not live up to conservative expectations) if the liberals won.

Too bad. It could have been a good book. It needed a different author.

Next in line is the tiny "Heaven is For Real" by Todd Burpo. I won't be "studying" it but I'll read it. I mostly want to see how Heaven is described by the child who claims to have been there.






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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: Hey, ribit ... ya wanna get away and soak up some culture amongst da frogs?/ DE
By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE
Thu, 29 Aug 24 7:25 PM 		Msg. 57380 of 59015

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Re: “I'll ask my grandson who is going to teach American and World history if he has any desire for things from my Library but I doubt it..”Thanks, buddy! That's a really kind offer but I'm going to pass. Not only would the books be hard to pick up, but my chief interest is in Science Fiction (ones I don't already own.) Also, I just checked my database and I already have 287 books identified as "History / Culture" and another 175 in the genre "War" - so I'm not exactly running low.

You have a grandson who is about to get his B.S. in history but who has no interest in your history book collection? How strange! Doesn't he appreciate the value of books over his preferred source (one must assume), documentary movies?

Yesterday, I started on "The Nine" - which is something of a history book. The subtitle is "Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court." It promises to be a winner - it was a National Bestseller. The book is from 2008, so I'd bet you could pick up a copy for under $5 (including shipping) on AbeBooks, should you be interested. The summary on the back cover says:

"In The Nine, acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin (yeah, yeah, he's the guy on CNN) takes us into the chambers of the most important - and secret - legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, revealing the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land. An institution at a moment of transition, the Court now stands at a crucial point, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, and church-state relations. Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and with a keen sense of the Court's history and the trajectory of its future, Jeffrey Toobin creates in The Nine a riveting story of one of the most important forces in American life today."

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