Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review. 

So I am seriously annoyed by this book. This book was supposed to be a memoir of the former CEO of Lonely Planet, Daniel Houghton that showed how travel changed his life and how it impacts everyone around you. Instead, we have Houghton dancing around what sounds like troublesome parts of his life (somewhere in there he got divorced) and just interviewing the rich and famous in traveler circles. Reading about how Houghton was treated as he took over the reigns of Lonely Planet is also really boring. I don't care how your coworkers were not that confident in you when they first met you (how did this person not know what a P&L report was??) or the hazing (maybe?) he supposedly experienced when he went to Beijing. The book even focuses at him trying to get their office digs ready for the BBC to come and discuss with the owner of Houghton's company about them taking over Lonely Planet. 

I always say a mark of a good memoir is how open the author is with the readers. Great memoirs are hard to do. Great memoirs about a particular event, theme, etc. are really hard to do. I would have loved a book about travel actually being about travel, not him just talking about how many miles he traveled in a year. I wanted to hear about the countries/cities he visited, not how fast he had to run through an airport. I wanted to hear about the people he met, not how he became friendly with a cab driver in London who still picks him up free of charge. This whole book felt off. 

The writing also was not that that great. Houghton mostly focuses on working at Lonely Planet and then provides one to two interviews in between "peeks" at his job. So the whole book is just a very short chapter about him, then pages of interviews in between each chapter. Also can I say that reading interviews of the rich and famous and how travel impacts them was just tone-deaf as hell. One guy he interviewed drove 1920s Aston Martin's through some of the "stan" countries over a period of months. What regular travel can do that?

The flow of the book was off from beginning to end. I think that this book maybe could have been punched up a bit if Houghton eventually includes pictures of something in the finished version of this book. For a supposedly great photographer, I can't imagine that the finished product has zero images. 

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Disclaimer: ARC via the publisher and Netgalley.

The last time I did my civic duty of jury duty it was either the day after or day that Larry Krasner fired several lawyers for the DA’s office. It was an interesting day. I’m not sure why they didn’t just cancel us coming in.

I tell you this so you know that I live in one of the cities that Bazelon writes about in her new book.

According to the studies that Bazelon cites in her book, most Americans agree that the justice system needs to be reformed and that in many cases the penalties are too harsh. True, there are some people, like one of my co-workers, who believe people like Krasner haven’t been victims of crime so they don’t care about punishment. But as someone who has lived in a city with harsh penalties, they don’t seem to work that well.

Bazelon makes an excellent and good case as to why this is as well as detailing how the country got to this point. Her book follows two people who are caught in justice in different parts of the country. There is Noura who is accused of murdering her mother, and Keith who is charged with an illegally holding a gun. Noura is white, from Memphis, and her family, well not rich, is not poor. Keith is from NYC, black, and his family is struggling finically. Both are close in age – not having graduated high school when the book opens. Both are basically innocent.

In some ways, Keith is a little luckier because NYC has/had programs that could help him and the idea of punishment was changing. This is not to say that his race, economic background, and neighborhood did not play a role in his charge and his subsequent interaction with police and the system. It is though Keith that Bazelon illustrates the cost to the average person when it comes to the justice system. It isn’t just the charge, but the time that is put on hold, the missed wages, the struggle to move forward on a good path when everything seems to be or is out to get you. Chances are that if you live in a big urban area, you know someone like Keith.

Noura’s case is different and illustrates what happens when a prosecutor doesn’t play by the rules and abuses power. (Noura’s case was also first reported on Bazelon for the New York Times). She is charged and eventually found guilty of murdering her mother. She spends years in jail. You might not know someone like Noura, but Noura’s case also illustrates how power can be horribly abused, and her friendships in prison illustrate, as Noura herself points out, that she is hardly alone in suffering a miscarriage of justice; she just has the benefit of being white.

What is also important is that the long-lasting effects of being charged are shown. It isn’t just the time and money that is loss, but the emotional and mental damage as well. Bazelon does directly tackle how race plays into what happens. The stories of Keith and Noura also lead to discussions with DA’s, defense lawyers, judges, and activists, some good, some bad – some pushing for change, some frustrated because their hands are tied. The book isn’t anti cop or anti-justice – it is pro-humanity.

Reading this right after finishing The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist is enough to make you want to go around smacking people. Thankfully, Bazelon includes a step by step proposal for reforming the justice system, including what people who read her book can do. Not only is the planned sketched out but she also provides cited examples of each step working

Highly recommended.

Not the best series in this continuity, but that line...

Hah.  I've read this two or three times and 'oh my god... is that a bird?!' cracks me up every time.   Also, rude little meatbag.    That bird has a name and it's Laserbeak!

Also, swoons, Thundercracker in action!   Yes, killing more meatbags.   Don't care.   Love him anyway!