2013 WINNER: LAW
2013 FINALIST: US HISTORY
2013 SILVER: MULTICULTURALISM
"This thorough text stands apart ... It deserves a place on the shelf of anyone interested in legal studies, the radical social movements of the 1960s, or African-American studies."
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- Alyssa Vincent, The Library Journal, Vol. 137, Issue 3, p.116
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"...a fascinating look at this very important case of the twentieth century."
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- James A Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Midwest Book Review
THE SKY'S THE LIMIT: PEOPLE v. NEWTON
The REAL Trial of the 20th Century? [Regent Press 2012]
[A history of the American 20th Century that compares the Newton trial to other headline trials of the century between the years 1901 and 2000.]
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Anyone fascinated by true crime and legal thrillers will want to read The Sky’s The Limit: People v. Newton, The Real Trial of the 20th Century? In comparing the 1968 trial of Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton to other riveting American trials from 1901 to 1999, author Lise Pearlman revisits historic legal battles featuring murder, rape and kidnapping, skeletons in celebrity closets, class warfare, fixing the World Series, evolution versus creationism, abuse of power and political conspiracy. Each “trial of the century” serves as a window into its own era, but the author asserts that the Newton murder trial following a shootout with two Oakland policemen—where the accused revolutionary put America itself on trial for 400 years of racism—should head the list. The author contends that the jury’s surprising verdict still reverberates today—had it turned out otherwise Barack Obama would likely not be President.
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- REGENT PRESS
Lise Pearlman’s mother, artist Mali Pearlman, created this painting commemorating the protests on Yale’s campus in the spring of 1970 of the then pending murder trial of Black Panther leaders Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins. Lise was among the student volunteers for the defense polling members of the New Haven community on their views about the presumption of innocence. Yale’s President Kingman Brewster was famously quoted at the time saying that he doubted the ability of a black militant to obtain a fair trial anywhere in the country. You can read about the context in both The Sky’s the Limit: People v. Newton, the REAL Trial of the 20th Century? and American Justice on Trial: People v. Newton. Lise donated the painting to Yale University in 2012, and it now hangs in the Yale Afro-American Cultural Center.
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