Feb 27, 2009
Feb 26, 2009
Feb 25, 2009
One More Indication That I Should Have Been a Left-Handed Relief Pitcher
The NYT gathers a bunch of gloomy quotes and statistics about the state and future of university liberal arts.
Walt Dangerfield Speaks
35 days until Buyout. Since there are 35 chapters in the book, and each one is introduced by the voice of Walt Dangerfield (his homage and pseudonym), I'll be posting Walt's rants and ruminations as a countdown until the book appears. Read on...
Feb 24, 2009
Booklist on Buyout
From the upcoming issue of March 15--read the last line first. (That's what I hear you're supposed to do...)Buyout
Irvine, Alexander C.
Mar 2009. 336 p. Del Rey, paperback, $14.00. (9780345494337).
Painfully honest and not necessarily apt to think things through, Martin Kindred is the only man in his family who isn’t a cop. He has a lot to prove, he thinks, and being hired to be the front man for life-term buyouts seems like the perfect opportunity. “Life-term buyouts?” With ever-rising prison populations, the only solution seems to be privatization. The question then becomes how to make a profit or at least keep enough liquidity. The answer is simple: offer those serving life without parole early buyouts; that is, give the prisoner millions for any specified beneficiary in exchange for accepting lethal injection. Martin is buyout’s public face, who reaps the benefits of attendant popularity but takes the fall when things go wrong. Of course, buyouts are controversial from the very beginning, and things go bad. The political underpinnings of the buyout system start to come clear when Martin lets it get personal. Irvine expertly manages an atmosphere of pressure and political machination to complement the development of a discomfiting imagined future.
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