The making of a justice Reflections on my first 94 years

PATSY, by Nicole Dennis-Benn. (Liveright, $26.95.) The title character of Dennis-Benn's second novel leaves her young daughter behind in Jamaica when she comes to America as an undocumented immigrant to reconnect with a female lover. The book avoids cliché, finding ample pleasure with the pain and sacrifice. A GOOD AMERICAN FAMILY: The Red Scare and My Father, by David Maraniss. (Simon & Schuster, $28.) With poignant honesty, Maraniss, a skilled biographer and historian, scrutinizes the life of his father, a communist sympathizer who was subpoenaed before the House Un-American Activities Committee, harassed by the F.B.I. and blacklisted in his career as a newspaperman. THE MAKING OF A JUSTICE: Reflections on My First 94 Years, by John Paul Stevens. (Little, Brown, $35.) The 99-year-old Stevens looks back on his 35 years as a justice on the Supreme Court, reflecting on cases in which he played a key role and also on larger themes like the shape of American democracy. CLYDE FANS: A Picture Novel, by Seth. (Drawn & Quarterly, $54.95.) Twenty years in the making, this substantial graphic novel tells a multi-generational story of a family-owned electrical fan business in Toronto - the ups and downs of livelihoods tied to sales and fathers and sons who grapple with changing times. MRS. EVERYTHING, by Jennifer Weiner. (Atria, $28.) Balancing her signature wit with a political voice that's new to her fiction, Weiner tells the story of the women's movement through the lives of two sisters raised in 1950s Detroit. The book holds up the prism of choice and lets light shine through from every angle. DEAF REPUBLIC: Poems, by Ilya Kaminsky. (Graywolf, paper, $16.) This extraordinary poetry collection is structured as a two-act play, in which an occupying army kills a deaf boy and villagers respond by marshaling a wall of silence as a source of resistance. "Our hearing doesn't weaken," one poem declares, "but something silent in us strengthens." THE LAND OF FLICKERING LIGHTS: Restoring America in an Age of Broken Politics, by Michael Bennet. (Atlantic Monthly, $27.) The Colorado senator and Democratic presidential candidate presents his views, based on personal experience, of the partisan stalemate in Washington and how to overcome it. RUNNING TO THE EDGE: A Band of Misfits and the Guru Who Unlocked the Secrets of Speed, by Matthew Futterman. (Doubleday, $28.95.) A deputy sports editor at The Times profiles the coach who helped make American distance runners a threat. THE THIRTY-YEAR GENOCIDE: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924, by Benny Morris and Dror Ze'evi. (Harvard, $35.) This study ventures beyond the well-known Armenian death marches to attacks on other minorities as well. The full reviews of these and other recent books are on the web: nytimes.com/books

Retired from the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010, Stevens here recalls his 35 years on the bench. While the decisions in which he participated will be of primary interest, Stevens' recollections of his upbringing in Chicago, naval service in WWII, and legal career in the 1950s and 1960s will also sustain attention. Stevens remembers meeting aviation celebrities Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart when they stayed at his father's hotel, and his interest in sports prompts many enlivening tales. Stevens became an anti-trust specialist and a Republican, and his connection to Illinois U.S. senator Charles Percy factored into his appointment in 1970 to the federal appellate court, from which President Gerald Ford elevated him to the Supreme Court in 1975. Stevens' anecdotes about the court's members during his tenure show that friendships arise despite differences in judicial outlook. Stevens, for example, champions analyzing legislative history, a method abhorred by the late Justice Scalia. Stevens' illumination of the court's internal processes, accounts of cases, and often caustic opinions of its results form an important contribution to legal literature.--Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2019 Booklist

In this dense autobiography focused, except for a few brief opening chapters, on professional matters, former Supreme Court Justice Stevens revisits his 35-year tenure on the court, 1975-2010. This period saw significant shifts in the Court's constitutional jurisprudence on gender and race discrimination, LGBTQ issues, the death penalty, campaign finance, the regulation of firearms, and affirmative action. While Stevens eschews a gossipy take on Court personalities, he is more than happy to take the gloves off when criticizing the opinions of other justices-he calls a 1985 William Rehnquist decision, on the police brutality case Oklahoma City v. Tuttle, "one of the worst opinions" decided during his term on the court-and instances in which he believes the Court has taken radically wrong turns, among them the rulings that hold the Second Amendment essentially prohibits gun regulation; the Court's bar on state regulation of campaign finance; Bush v. Gore, which stopped the Florida vote recount in the 2000 presidential election; and a decision holding that there is no compelling state interest in maintaining racial diversity in public schools. Stevens explicates a dizzying number of decisions and often delves deeply into recondite areas of constitutional law. Dedicated court followers will find this rewarding, but readers without a legal background, and even some who with, will find this difficult to navigate. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.