hmmm...I'm hovering between a 2.5 and 3 star rating for this one.

I'll start with what I appreciate about the book. It's extensively researched and I can definitely appreciate the work that goes into interviewing people, sifting through archives, and parsing the language of court cases. It's also a really accessible account of the legal and political landscape surrounding the death penalty in Texas (and nationally to a certain extent). The author doesn't get too bogged down in the legal details so I think this book ultimately is a good overview for someone who has a mild interest in understanding the legal mechanics of the judicial system.

My number one complaint is that the book feels extremely disjointed and hard to follow most of the time. The chapters seem like they would be better off as standalone articles; there's not really any connection between the various sections. When there were connections between multiple chapters, I found it hard to follow. The author jumped between timeframes in weird and unpredictable ways. I found myself going back a few pages many times in order to understand what was going on when the author rapidly flipped from one anecdote to the next.

I also feel like the title is an inaccurate description of the book. This wasn't so much charting the "rise and fall" of the death penalty, but was more of a biographical account of the lawyers, judges, and death row inmates in Texas. I missed the theme of "rise and fall." I struggled to find the overarching theme or argument from the author. Again, this book was more autobiographical/ethnographical.

Finally, at times I felt like it was overwritten. Particularly when talking about the lawyers involved in the cases. It's interesting to read about both prosecutor and defense attorney's responses to the cases, but there was too much anecdotal information that wasn't necessary to further the alleged theme of the book.

This isn't a bad book, but it's not the best either.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

"Rather than telling you what you should look for in a partner, here's a quick list of what you shouldn't look for:
1. Geminis (duh)
2. People who don't pet dogs when presented with the opportunity"

I listened to this as an audiobook while studying for my exams and that was a great decision. I love these Bodega Boys and am glad that they accompanied me to the halfway point of my law school career.

"For the most part, the demonstrations were given their political leadership by the students, but they were given their class character by the presence of thousands of workers and unemployed...those whom the press and the bourgeoisie designated 'hooligans, riffraff, bad elements.'"

Great introduction to a topic I knew nothing about previously. From 1968-1969, there was a ton happening across many different areas, but Ali did a great job organizing this account and making it easy to follow along with what was happening.

This book was also a great reminder of the necessity of class solidarity, not just in revolutionary uprisings, but in every day life as well.

"A man does not recover from such a devotion of the heart to such a woman. He ought not, he does not."

This is such a darling book! For years, Pride and Prejudice has stood as one of my all time favorite books and certainly my favorite from Jane Austen, but Persuasion has now surpassed it.

Featured is the classic Austen animosity between two characters that are clearly in love, funny observations, and a lovely heroine. Truly what more could you need.

Have you ever been researching a topic and formed a hypothesis? You continued to research, only to find that the evidence you've collected does not support your hypothesis. At this point, a sensible person would either abandon the topic entirely or rework their hypothesis to address the conclusions provided by the evidence. Silvia Federici did not do this. She clung to her faulty theory like a life raft and tried to paddle her way to a disjointed conclusion.

This book has me in an absolute rage. I recently added Federici's other book, Caliban and the Witch, to my TBR, but bought this little book first as it's an update to her first book. When I first started reading this, I felt like I maybe should have read Caliban and the Witch first, but by the end of this book, I was glad to read this first so I don't waste my time on the other book.

TL;DR: This book is xenophobic and poorly researched.

I'm going to make a list to try to organize my thoughts but I am absolutely fuming so no promises on coherency.

1. My first complaint is that this book is horribly xenophobic. Federici routinely refers to "Africa" as if it is a COUNTRY and not a CONTINENT CONSISTING OF MANY COUNTRIES WITH DIFFERENT CULTURES. She assumes that there is one, monolithic "Africa" and this is deeply problematic.
I knew I was in for an absolute mess when I encountered this line on page 12: "But if my reading of the witch hunt is correct, then a different historical understanding becomes possible, whereby the African slaves, the expropriated peasants of Africa and Latin America, and the massacred Native population of North America become the kin of the sixteenth and seventeenth century European witches, who, like them, saw their common lands taken away, experienced the hunger produced by the move to cash crops, and saw their resistance persecuted as a sign of a diabolical pact." YIKES! Comparing the persecution of European white women to the institutionalized slave trade that resulted from racist, colonialist empires does NOT sit well with me.
On page 52, Federici speaks of the return of witch-hunting in Africa and India and writes "many factors contribute to the resurgence of witch hunts, among them the disintegration of communal solidarity, due to decades of impoverishment and the ravages of AIDS and other diseases in societies where malnutrition is rampant and healthcare systems have collapsed." So many problematic stereotypes here that just smack of her believing that anywhere other than the US, Canada, or Europe are "backwards." No mention of the lasting impacts of empire anywhere in this "analysis."

Here is a list of some other problematic instances from her chapter titled "Witch-Hunting, Globalization, and Feminist Solidarity in Africa Today:"
"Although the fear of witchcraft is often described as a deep-seated feature of Africa's belief systems, assaults on witches intensified in the 1990s."
Comparing the resurgence of persecution in "Africa" to European 17th century witch hunts, Federici writes that we will not find an explanation for this phenomenon by "appealing to the African worldview."
"Thousands of children have also been tortured this way in Angola, with the complicity of their parents, probably eager to free themselves from youngsters they can no longer support." this is HORRIBLE! I think it's pretty obvious why it's horrible but yikes, yikes, YIKES.
But Africa isn't the only entity subject to Federici's xenophobia. On page 72, she says "Indeed we could not explain such brutality if we did not have both historical precedents and more recent examples coming from other parts of our "global village," like India or Papua New Guinea." girl I.....

2. This book is so poorly researched that I'm amazed it was even published. One of the chapters was published in an academic journal and I'm uncertain how it passed peer review. In fact, Federici herself admits on page 13 that the evidence for her theory is "circumstantial."

Federici doesn't cite ANYTHING. She references certain anecdotes and does not cite where they are from. For example, she talks about the history of companion animals and witch hunts on page 22 and doesn't cite where this info came from! How convenient that nobody can verify her work!

In addition to lack of citations, Federici doesn't appear to have done any primary source research or really any of her own fact gathering whatsoever. She references other people's work in support of her own theory, but it's clear that she has contributed no original research to this topic. She's just cobbling together other random bits she pulled from others in order to give this Frankenstein-monster-of-a-theory its wings.

Speaking of cobbling, she really doesn't say ANYTHING in this book that makes sense. Truly she is just pulling random quotes that suit her ill-fated hypothesis and ignoring everything else.

3. Conclusion: I have never in my life read such a poorly researched, problematic book in my entire life. I can't believe this and Caliban and the Witch are given any scholarly credit. I also can't believe I wasted my time reading this. Truly I would have DNF'd it but I powered through so I could write this review.

I read this book so long ago and never wrote a review because I simply didn't know how I felt about it. But I find myself thinking about it quite often, so I'll drop some thoughts here. Overall, I think this is a good book. Sometimes lines would stop me dead and I would just sit there, book in my hands and absolutely gobsmacked.

I find myself frequently thinking about this passage in particular, from page 177 where a man has just confessed his love for the narrator, while they are alone on a boat, in the middle of the sea:

"I stood on the deck, dripping, and watched him, a towel wrapped around my shoulders where my skin hurt from the sun. He had a penknife in his hand, a large red Swiss Army knife with a long ridged blade, and was cutting the frayed ends off the ropes with a sense of purpose...He retied the ropes while I watched, and then strolled along the deck towards me, the knife still in his hand. Had I had a nice swim, he asked. ... He played with the knife in his hand, snapping the different blades in and out. I watched pieces of steal appear and disappear in his fingers, each one so distinctly shaped, some of them long and narrow and piercing, others strangely spiked and horned."

This is just so sinister. When I read this, I held my breath as a I flipped from page 177 to 178. It's just so unsettling.

So overall, I think I enjoyed this book, it just took me seven months to realize it.

"I realized then that I didn't understand anything. I read all the books I could."

"Once again, I arrived at my usual conclusion: one must educate oneself."

"That day, I learned something essential: we can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable...once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it."

I'm absolutely blown away by this book. I read it in one day because I just couldn't stop. The illustrations are incredible, Marjane's story is both heartbreaking and hopeful, and there are so many moments of wisdom that left me gobsmacked. I learned so much about Iran as well, having previously never studied or read anything about the country.

This is an extremely powerful and important book. It's found a place onto my "everyone MUST read this book" list.

"You can't get out of this one, Henry, you can't get it out of me, and with this bullet lodged in my chest, covered with your name, I will turn myself into a gun, because I'm hungry and hollow and just want something to call my own. I'll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me the whole time."

"We have not touched the stars, nor are we forgiven, which brings us back to the hero's shoulders and a gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence, but despite the abundance of it."

Build me a city/ He could build a city / This could be a city

This is an exceptional book of poems. Every word chosen precisely to create a visceral, panicked, lonely atmosphere in each poem. There's not a bad poem in this book and it's certainly hard to choose a favorite, as each has its own merits. My personal favorites are Wishbone, You are Jeff, Litany in Which Certain Things are Crossed Out, Saying Your Names, and Snow and Dirty Rain.

"There are many, many types of books in the world, which makes good sense, because there are many, many types of people, and everybody wants to read something different. For instance, people who hate stories in which terrible things happen to small children should put this book down immediately. But one type of book that practically no one likes to read is a book about the law. Books about the law are notorious for being very long, very dull, and very difficult to read. This is one reason many lawyers make heaps of money."

Re-reading this series due to a wave of nostalgia that washed over me a few weeks ago. I LOVED these books as a kid and I'm happy to say this little book held up to the test of time. I enjoyed it just as much now as I did back in the day.

As an adult and a law student, I laughed at all of the subtle digs at lawyers. Maybe reading this book as a kid is subconsciously the reason why I am studying law :)

"What happens in a certain place can stain your feelings for that location, just as ink can stain a white sheet. You can wash it, and wash it, and still never forget what has transpired, a word which here means 'happened and made everybody sad.'"

"Klaus sighed, and opened a book, and as at so many other times when the middle Baudelaire child did not want to think about his circumstances, he began to read."

I don't have much to say by way of a review, but I just love these little books. As law school and work start back up, I anticipate I will be reading this entire series very quickly.