Angel of Death Row

Angel of Death Row, by Andrea D. Lyon

Full disclosure:  I know Andrea, I've worked with Andrea, I've represented some of the same people, I know and have worked with people she writes about in this book.  But I'm going to review this book all the same.

Andrea joined the Cook County (IL) Public Defender's Office at a time when there were very few women trial lawyers, much less criminal defense lawyers.  She took a lot of guff from prosecutors, judges and colleagues, but she never let it stop her.  By the time she left that office, she was the head of the Homicide Task Force, than which there are, in no small part thanks to Andrea, no better lawyers.  She went on to found the Capital Resource Center, representing Illinois' death row inmates in post-conviction proceedings (the Center is now the Post-Conviction Unit of the Office of the State Appellate Defender), and then moved on to clinical work at the University of Michigan and the DePaul University School of Law, where she heads the Center for Justice in Capital Cases.

This is the story of how she came to be "The Angel of Death Row", as she was dubbed by the Chicago Tribune.  She talks of her life, her family, and her clients in an easy, conversational style.  It's not a book that's heavy on the law; that's not what it's about.  It's about people.  The people she works with, the people she lives with, the people she represents.  The last are the most important.  It's so easy to see criminal defendants as "the other"; Andrea helps us (as she has helped juries) see the man or woman, and how they got to be sitting in the defendant's seat.   Some of the stories are horrific, some are sad, some are incomprehensible.  But they are all stories of human beings whose lives went terribly wrong.  Andrea knows that the "why" is as important as the "what" in these stories, and she is indefatigable in conveying that to judges and juries.

Andrea's passion for justice and her anger at injustice and the system that tolerates it are obvious on every page of this book. 

Two New York City guidebooks

I recently went to New York City, and took two guidebooks with me. The first, Forbes City Guide New York 2010, I had requested through the Amazon Vine program in anticipation of the trip. The second, Touring Gotham's Archaeological Past: 8 self-guided walking tours through New York City, I picked up second-hand.


Forbes City Guide New York 2010

I waited to review this until after my trip, but I'm afraid that first impressions were right. It's not a guide that I can recommend.

To begin with, although there is the occasional nod to the other boroughs, this guide should more properly be called the Forbes City Guide "Manhattan 2010". And trendy, expensive Manhattan at that. This is a guide for people with money. Forget budget hotels; there are hardly any moderately-priced hotels suggested. The same is generally true of their restaurant recommendations.

But what really drove me nuts was the almost complete lack of directions. You can't tell a visitor to New York City that a restaurant is located at 541 Amsterdam Avenue. You've got to give the cross-street. And the guide doesn't tell you what subway line to take and which station you need. There's a subway map at the back, but it doesn't designate the lines! Come on! Everyone in New York rides the subway! I guess they expect readers of this guide to take cabs everywhere, which I would NOT recommend. Why would you want to pay to get stuck in Midtown traffic?

On the plus side, they're right about the M60 bus to and from LaGuardia (best bargain in town!) and TKTS (the discount theatre ticket service), and they have most of the major museums and cultural institutions. But those can be found also in guidebooks that don't have the drawbacks of this one.

Touring Gotham's Archaeological Past: 8 self-guided walking tours through New York City

Now for the good one! The authors Diana diZerega Wall and Anne-Marie Cantwell, are professors of anthropology at the City University of New York and Rutgers University-Newark, respectively. They have put together these walking tours, in all the boroughs except Staten Island*, to help tourist and resident alike learn more about the history of the city.

Now, you might think that they're going to take you off the beaten track, and in some cases that's true. Most tourists don't get up to Inwood in Manhattan or out to the Bronx. But they do go to Ellis Island and Liberty Island, though they likely don't know that Ellis Island's Main Building was built on top of a Native American burial site, or that the island where the Statue of Liberty stands was a Native American shellfish-gathering station and hunting and fishing camp.

As Cantwell and Wall guide us along New York City's streets, we learn through the excavations that have occurred there much about the lives of the Native Americans who inhabited the area and the lives of the early European settlers. Pot shards and dog burials, bottles, dice and buttons, all have their stories to tell, and one of the great things about this book is that the authors teach us how to understand those stories. How do the skeletons in the African Burial Ground tell their stories of malnutrition, disease and physical hardship? How do preservation architects figure out when a house was built? What is it about artifacts found in one backyard privy that tells us they likely came from a brothel? The book is full of fascinating stories, and even if you don't go on all, or even any, of the tours, you'll learn a lot just reading it.

If you do decide to take book in hand and set out on a tour, you'll find that Cantwell and Wall make it easy. Each tour is accompanied by an excellent map, and though they cover a good deal of territory, all can be accomplished with a comfortable pair of shoes and a MetroCard (the authors give explicit transit directions for each, though it's always a good idea to check ahead of time in case of cutbacks and route changes!). You might want to take a standard guide along with you, in case you want to find a place to have a bite to eat along your route, though it might be more fun (and more in keeping with the "sense of adventure" the authors recommend) to rely on serendipity!


* The authors did not include the Staten Island sites because they are vulnerable to looting.

At Printers' Row

At Printers' Row
Originally uploaded by mojosmom

What used to be known as the Printers Row Book Fair, and is now the Printers Row Lit Fest, was held this weekend in Chicago. As usual, I went. As usual, I came home with a bunch of books. Heavy (literally) on art books and memoirs. Herewith the haul:

Chicago's Left Bank, by Alson J. Smith
Passages from the French and Italian Note-books of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tales of a Theatrical Guru, by Danny Newman (with a foreword by Studs Terkel)
Dear Genius: A Memoir of my Life with Truman Capote, by Jack Dunphy
Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the form of Nature
The Medici, MIchelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence
Edgar Miller and the Hand-Made Home: Chicago's forgotten Renaissance man
Richard Nickel's Chicago: Photographs of a lost city

It was quite a nice day to browse, cool enough for a light jacket but not cold. I love warm summer days, but carrying a ton of books around when it's mid-'80s and sunny isn't always pleasant.

I have to say that I was shocked to find that the fair is devoting less and less space to books. I don't mind that they're doing a lot more author events. That's completely appropriate. But the fair is now shorter by one block, and much of the space was taken up by the C-SPANmobile, a "reading lounge" (read: furniture sales), a mattress seller and a car dealer. Look, I know they need sponsors, but this was ridiculous.

Adventures in Chicago with Marie Grandin

The following is a guest post from Mary Beth Raycraft, translator of A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exhibition.

Mary Beth will be in Chicago discussing this book at Women and Children First (one of my favorite bookstores!) on Wednesday, June 16, at 7:30 p.m. The bookstore is at 5233 N. Clark St.

Adventures in Chicago with Marie Grandin

While translating Marie Grandin’s 1894 travel memoir, A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition, I also had the pleasure of embarking on a lively behind the scenes tour of late 19th-century Chicago. A twenty eight old Parisian schoolteacher, Marie arrived in the city in August 1892 accompanied by her husband, the sculptor Léon Grandin. They would live in Chicago for ten months while Léon supervised the installation of the Columbian Fountain at the Exposition. While he spent his days in the sculpture workshops, Marie took full advantage of her freedom and circulated in the bustling streets of the city, attended cultural events, and asked many questions as she gathered information about American life for her travel account.

Determined to get a true sense for middle class American life, the Grandins opted to stay in several different boardinghouses near Jackson Park during their time in Chicago. In each boardinghouse, Marie had an opportunity to carefully observe the clientele whose routines, interactions, and manners she meticulously documented for her readers. Determined to go beyond superficial appearances, she delicately probed relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and servants and employers.

Pleasantly surprised by the independence and energy of Chicago’s women, Marie quickly undertook her exploration of the city. She began with walks in her neighborhood, strolling in Washington Park and along Drexel Boulevard, which she compared to the elegant Parisian Avenue des Champs Elysées. After getting settled on the south side of the city, Marie soon discovered that a tram car conveniently shuttled between Jackson Park and the Loop. The bustling city center, the Loop became the focus of many of her expeditions, including visits to department stores, the Chicago Public Library, the Athenaeum, and the Auditorium. In order to verify information, she went to the Public Library which at the time was located on the fourth floor of city hall at Lasalle and Washington streets. The Athenaeum building on Van Buren Street housed classrooms, offices, and studios as well as the growing collection of the Art Institute. Grandin’s friendship with two instructors at the Art Institute, Lydia Hess and Marie Gélon Cameron, gave her access to many activities there, including afternoon teas with faculty members. Also on her itinerary was the Auditorium Building, which attracted much attention during the fair for its stunning architecture and multifunction design. Marie and her husband joined distinguished foreign visitors at the elegant inaugural ball held there in October 1892 where she was struck by the sumptuous décor and the graceful dancers. She also frequented the commercial establishments of the Loop, including department stores where she admired the vast range of goods and Gunther’s Confectionary on State Street where she indulged her sweet tooth.

Armed with a letter of introduction from an acquaintance in Paris, Marie Grandin eventually gained entrance into Chicago’s highest social circle, becoming a habitué in the salon of Bertha Palmer’s elegant home on Lake Shore Drive. At the time, Palmer was busy with preparations for the opening of the Woman’s Building at the fair which Marie enthusiastically described as “without question one of the most interesting buildings of the entire site.” Indeed, Marie’s visits to the Woman’s Building and her conversations with individual women involved in the project provided her with a place and framework for thinking about what she had observed in Chicago in terms of education and gender relations.

While she admired Chicago’s modern cityscape and unusual tourist attractions, Marie Grandin was particularly struck by the relative freedom of American women. She was surprised to see girls and boys studying side by side in coeducational classrooms and young people socializing away from the watchful eye of a chaperone. Over the course of her interactions in boardinghouses, private homes, schools, and at the fair, she encountered a number of dynamic women who were passionately engaged in the social, cultural, and political life in Chicago. Although Marie Grandin had eagerly anticipated visiting the city and the Fair, in the end, Chicago’s women turned out to be the most dynamic spectacle of all.

Mary Beth Raycraft teaches French at Vanderbilt University and is the translator of Madame Léon Grandin’s A Parisienne in Chicago, Impressions of the World’s Columbian Exposition (University of Illinois Press, 2010). See www.aparisienneinchicago.com for interactive maps of Madame Grandin’s Chicago.

(Photo of Mary Beth Raycraft courtesy of the author)

Two that don't live up to the rest of their series

21. A River in the Sky, by Elizabeth Peters

Amelia Peabody and her Egyptologist husband, Radcliffe Emerson, are off, not to Egypt, but to Palestine. Out of chronological order, this one is set in 1910, at a time when the Ottoman Empire was crumbling and the British were trying to stem German influence in the Holy Land. The Emersons set off, at the behest of the War Office, which is concerned that a bumbling archaelogist may or may not be a German spy, but in any case is likely to engage in a dig that will antagonize Jew, Muslim and Christian alike.

As in all Peters' books, the bad guys aren't always easy to tell from the good, Ramses Emerson gets into hot water, there are mysterious societies, and what's right and wrong isn't always obvious. Unlike many of her books, though, there's a sense that Peters was going through the motions, putting in the stock scenes - Amelia with her umbrella, Emerson ranting, women throwing themselves at Ramses. There's very little emotional tension, and, frankly, the motivations of the characters are almost buried.

Not Peters' best.



22. The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, by Sharyn McCrumb

I was really back-and-forth about this book. I love Sharyn McCrumb's Ballad series, but this one doesn't seem to quite fit with the rest, despite the presence of a very young Nora Bonesteel.

Based on the true story of Edith Maxwell, a young schoolteacher who was tried for murdering her father, this novel could have been written about a lot of high publicity trials today. Just as today, journalists tried to fit events into a pre-determined mold, not caring if what they said was true or not. McCrumb describes them coming down to the Blue Ridge from the cities of the North, expecting poverty and ignorance, and, when that's not what they found, saying it was, anyway. They decided first whether they wanted Erma Morton (the Edith Maxwell character) to be guilty or not, and wrote their stories accordingly. (Remind anyone of broadcasters like Nancy Grace?) The journalists aren't the only ones using Morton for their own ends. Her brother, the townsfolk, all have their reasons for wanting a particular outcome.

Into this mix comes a young journalist from Tennessee, Carl Jenkins, who knows this land and its people, and is shocked by the way the experts are covering the trial. Yet he is not immune. When his newspaper wants more "oomph" to his stories, he hits on the idea of bringing his young relative, Nora Bonesteel, to town. She has the "sight", and maybe she will "see" the truth and help him with his stories. Of course, she can't, because, as she tells Carl, "it doesn't work that way".

McCrumb has given her journalists interesting back stories that inform their present, the celebrity journalist Henry Jernigan and his years in Japan, sob sister Rose Hanelon and her yearning for love, Carl Jenkins and his need to fit in and "be somebody". I almost wish she hadn't wrapped up their futures in an epilogue, because I could have stood to have had them back again.

I think my small dissatisfaction with a novel I truly enjoyed otherwise was a sense that the "Ballad" part was just lying on top of the plot, rather than being an integral part of it. The story was good enough that it could have stood on its own.

There's a non-fiction book about this trial, Sharon Hatfield's Never Seen the Moon, that I'm going to look for.

How Florence Invented America

20. How Florence Invented America, by Giancarlo Masini

In case you've been wondering where the heck I've been, the answer is: Florence and Amsterdam. I spent several glorious days in Florence, and then on to Amsterdam, which was also tremendous fun, but, thanks to a volcano in Iceland, I was there longer than expected. So I have been playing catch up, at home and work, but now I think I'm back on track.

And I will begin by talking about some of the books that I read on my trip.

When I travel, I like to bring books that are in some way connected to the places to which I am going. In fact, I found this one at a used bookstore and bought it specifically to read for the trip.

When I first picked it up, I thought it would be a lot of puffery and braggadoccio, but it was actually quite interesting. It's about Amerigo Vespucci, Giovanni Verazzano and Filippo Mazzei. It was particularly interesting to compare Vespucci and Verazzano's explorations, and their reactions to the native people they encountered.

I learned much more about Vespucci than I had known. We are told in school, "he was a mapmaker and so America got named after him." But that's a real distortion, because he was actually the first European "discoverer" of South America. Verazzano was the first European to set foot in Manhattan. There's a stone from the family castle enclosed in a wall of the Verrazzano Bridge.

Mazzei was trained as a doctor, and practiced in a wide variety of places, including Smyrna and London, but eventually headed to America, where his agricultural and ideological interests brought him into contact with, among others, Thomas Jefferson, whose good friend he became. His philosophical exchanges with our Founding Fathers influenced the War of Independence and, later, the U.S. Constitution. Eventually, he was involved with both French and Polish progressive movements.

These men may not have "invented" America, but they were certainly in at the "creation", so to speak!

A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exposition

A Parisienne in Chicago: Impressions of the World's Columbian Exposition, by Mme. Léon Grandin. Translated and with an Introduction by Mary Beth Raycraft

It is 1893 in Chicago. Just two decades earlier, the city had experienced a fire that destroyed a large part of it. Now it had been rebuilt with energy and innovation. Architects like William LeBaron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, and Holabird and Roche were introducing Chicago and the country and the world to the skyscraper. And Daniel Burnham and the firm of Burnham and Root were coordinating the building of the Exposition that was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America.

The Columbian Exposition brought to Chicago visitors not only from all over the country, but from all over the globe. Among them were the sculptor, Léon Grandin, and his wife Marie. But their visit was a lengthy one, stretching over ten months, for Grandin was there to work with Frederick MacMonnies on the Columbian Fountain. Fortunately for us, Marie Grandin, who had been an elementary school teacher in France, was curious, intelligent, a keen observer, and kept a journal, which formed the basis for her book, Impressions d'une parisienne à Chicago. Equally fortunate for us, Mary Beth Raycraft has given us a respectful translation as well as an introduction that provides us with background information about Mme. Grandin, and contrasts her experience and book with those of other French women writing about America.

What makes Grandin's observations more substantial than many others is the fact that she did stay in one place for so long. In her ten months here, she stayed in boarding houses and residential hotels; visited schools (as a teacher, a particular interest of hers), stockyards and department stores; and made friends with fellow boarders and the social élite alike (she gave French lessons to Bertha Palmer, chair of the Expositions Board of Lady Managers).

Of her first glimpse of Chicago, Grandin says, "The very appearance of [State Street] took me aback and gave me my first inkling of the immense sprawl and grand scale of this city . . . this idea was never dispelled." It's fascinating to read Grandin's images of Chicago, and her comparison of its habits, buildings, customs and people with those of her native France. She is shocked at the relationship between employer and servant, finding the latter insolent and lazy. But she finds the teacher-student relationship, their "easy rapport", far preferable to the "frigid dignity" found in France.

Grandin does not merely describe, she thinks about what she has seen, she makes considered comparisons and analyses. It's apparent from this that Grandin was a progressive and forward-thinking woman. Her descriptions of American child-rearing practices, the schools she visited, the treatment and behavior of women, all show this. "This tendency toward social mobility is certainly one of the American virtues that I appreciate the most. Nothing is worse than for an intelligent person to be boxed in and limited. Nothing is worse than being stuck, as only a sense of powerlessness, silliness, and stupidity can come from caged rats."

Perhaps it was this sense of freedom and mobility that led Mme. Grandin to say, as she left the United States, "I will come back!" And come back she did, sans husband. Raycraft's introduction gives an account of her life after Chicago, which shows (despite the minimal evidence available) that her intelligent curiosity and civic involvement continued to her death.

As a Chicagoan, I enjoyed Grandin's views of places and institutions with which I am familiar. I have attended performances at the Auditorium Theatre, where she attended a ball. I have shopped all my life at Marshall Field's, visited the animals at Lincoln Park Zoo, am a life member of the Art Institute. To "see" these things through the eyes of a woman of more than a century ago gives one a new perspective and appreciation of them, and, often, a sense of sadness at what no longer exists.

When I walk out the door of my apartment building, turn right, and walk a couple of blocks, I see in front of me the only building that remains standing from the 1893 Columbian World’s Exposition: the Museum of Science and Industry, which is housed in what was the Palace of Fine Arts.

If I keep going, past the Museum and across a bridge, I find myself in an oasis of serenity, an island set in small lagoons, graced by a Japanese Garden, the island also a remnant of that fair. A bit more of a walk, and I come upon a golden woman, “The Republic”, a replica of a larger statue that stood at the gateway Court of Honor. And just to the west is a long park for strolling, ice skating in winter, listening to jazz in the summer, the Midway Plaisance, which, during the Exposition, was a focal point of carnival-style entertainments.

So the history of the Exposition is dear to my heart, and I eagerly opened A Parisienne in Chicago. It did not disappoint. Grandin's writing, as revealed by Raycraft's fluid translation, has an immediacy that compels one to keep reading. The text is accompanied by a section of drawings and photographs of 1893 Chicago that show us what Mme. Grandin would have seen. The endnotes and index are a great help, and there is a selected bibliography for those who are intrigued enough to want to read further, be it about Chicago, French women writers, or the World's Fair. This is a wonderful addition to the literature of women's history, social history and the history of Chicago.

Website: A Parisienne in Chicago

Other suggested reading:

Fairground Fiction: Detective Stories of the World's Columbian Exposition, edited by Donald K. Hartman

World's Fair Notes: A Woman Journalist Views Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition, by Marian Shaw

The Fair Women: The Story of the Women's Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann

And for your listening pleasure:

Women at an Exposition: Music composed by women and performed at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.