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jkeesan's review
4.0
Recommended for anyone considering pursuing a career in litigation, in that this book captures both the exciting highs (the camaraderie! courtroom battles! finding that breakthrough document!) and, equally, the draining lows (the delays, a cycle of endless post-trial motions and appeals that defer any true sense of finality, the tantalizing frustrations of settlement conferences, etc. etc.).
lkubed's review
3.0
nonfiction law case it was okay a bit boring in parts gives a good idea about what goes into a case
purplepierogi's review
5.0
read this book while in Ecuador, it was the first english-lang book I had read for fun in literal years and I remember thinking, wow! I can actually read so quickly in english! it's a compelling, emotional, well researched legal thriller about a very real water contamination and cancer cluster case, and eye opening to the economic, emotional and scientific barriers to proving causality in a case like this
es_blackwood's review
challenging
informative
tense
slow-paced
5.0
the ending is what i can only compare to a farewell to arms but instead of an alcoholic misogynist grieving it’s jan schlichtmann (dilf) getting shafted by every appellate judge in the commonwealth of massachusetts
book_concierge's review
4.0
A work of nonfiction that explores the circumstances around a civil suit filed in Massachusettes, which alleged that industrial pollution contaminated a town's drinking water supply, leading to an unusually high number of childhood leukemia cases. Fascinating reading.
kkonda's review
3.0
Obviously A Civil Action can't be bad, with so many non-fiction prizes under its belt. (We refuse to add a John Travolta film to this reasoning.) But from what I had heard I was disappointed. Yes, it's well-written. Yes, it's a compelling story. But the three parts (I'll call them History, Discovery, and Litigation) are not well matched in interest and storytelling. I was very engrossed by the first part but kept waiting to be truly engaged by the whole thing. Harr let me down in the description of litigation, so badly that I skipped about 45 pages. Perhaps with a better editor...