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A review by branch_c
Doing Justice: A Prosecutor's Thoughts on Crime, Punishment, and the Rule of Law by Preet Bharara
3.0
An informative and entertaining book that reads like a transcript of one of Bharara’s podcasts. It’s filled with anecdotes from his career that effectively illustrate his philosophy of justice, which boils down to a belief that although the system may be imperfect, justice can be served if the individual people that make up the system behave with integrity and good intentions.
The problem, of course, is that people in general don’t always do that, something that’s clearly demonstrated by the defendants in the cases described here. Of course we can hope that those who decide to pursue criminal justice professions skew toward the better aspects of human nature, and in fact they are an appropriate target audience for this book. Young lawyers could certainly do worse than to pick up some lessons from these pages.
Maybe it’s partially because I’ve listened to so many of his podcast episodes, but I find that the author’s voice really comes through in the writing. Yes, even with a bit of name dropping and humble bragging - it adds to Bharara’s bold personality and gives a ring of truth to the stories in the book. And at least he’s self-aware enough to include the time that his ten-year-old daughter called him a drama queen after reading a newspaper article about him.
I’ve never had any particular interest in law or criminal justice, but even so I’ve found the podcast to be fairly engaging, and this book is too.
The problem, of course, is that people in general don’t always do that, something that’s clearly demonstrated by the defendants in the cases described here. Of course we can hope that those who decide to pursue criminal justice professions skew toward the better aspects of human nature, and in fact they are an appropriate target audience for this book. Young lawyers could certainly do worse than to pick up some lessons from these pages.
Maybe it’s partially because I’ve listened to so many of his podcast episodes, but I find that the author’s voice really comes through in the writing. Yes, even with a bit of name dropping and humble bragging - it adds to Bharara’s bold personality and gives a ring of truth to the stories in the book. And at least he’s self-aware enough to include the time that his ten-year-old daughter called him a drama queen after reading a newspaper article about him.
I’ve never had any particular interest in law or criminal justice, but even so I’ve found the podcast to be fairly engaging, and this book is too.