Lost Ground: Welfare Reform, Poverty, and Beyond, Vol. 1 Book

Murphy is a Cook County family court judge whose courtroom I've sat in a couple of times. Both times I felt like he tried to bigfoot me. The first time he knew I was writing a story which was going to be embarrassing to him, and he asked me to say hello to one of my senior colleagues. The second time he questioned me from the bench in front of both sides in a case I was covering, albeit in a friendly way.

Anyway, I asked the colleague about Murphy after that second encounter and the colleague lent me this book. Turns out Murphy is a big deal nationally in child protection. "Wasted" is part autobiography, part screed against some of the more idiotic aspects of juvenile justice and protection. He beats up the left for never holding screw-up kids or screw-up parents accountable, and he beats up the right for not giving a crap about black kids in the city. He's been in the trenches since the 60s so he's earned the right to rant.

I normally don't pick out "won't somebody please think of the children" type books. But it's hard to come to any other conclusion than that Murphy has genuinely devoted his life to helping kids and that his apparent attempts to bigfoot me, who has never done anything to help anyone, are fair enough.