HMS Surprise

HMS Surprise, by Patrick O'Brian

Number 3 in the Aubrey/Maturin series, this one is set mostly in the Indian Ocean. Not sure what to say that isn't a spoiler. I liked it.

Bridget Jones' Diary

Bridget Jones' Diary, by Helen Fielding

Some lighter reading. I had seen and liked the movie, I liked the book better, I think. The online flirting between Bridget and her bad-boy publishing boss is very cute, and I liked the B-plot with her mom.

A Civil Action

A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr

Riveting. I cried. I yelled at the city engineer who kept insisting the water in East Woburn, Massachusetts, was perfectly safe when people - especially kids - were dropping like flies of leukemia left and right.

The case this book describes was a success and a failure at the same time. The wells were shut down, the EPA did a separate investigation, and the families injured by the illegal dumping of certain industrial facilities in the area made, en masse, 11 million dollars in punitive damages. But the lawyers went bankrupt doing it, the judge jerked them around, and 11 million dollars was pocket change to the companies involved.

Gideon's Trumpet

Gideon's Trumpet, by Anthony Lewis

Fascinating stuff. Up until the 1960's there was a ruling (Betts v. Brady) that the right to counsel was not guaranteed in state courts, basically, if you couldn't afford one, one wouldn't necessarily be appointed for you. (This was only at the state level, federal courts it was guaranteed, because the Constitution is very clear about a citizen's 'federal rights', but less so about which rights of those a state must guarantee.) Gideon's case was the vehicle by which this was changed.

Lewis explores the history leading up to Betts v. Brady and what happened for the following 20 years until Gideon's case, the justices sitting on the Supreme Court during that time frame, and then the actual story of Gideon's arrest, requests for counsel, and appeals, that eventually let to the decision by the Court that he did in fact have the right to counsel in a state court, whether he could afford it or not.