Reviews for A practitioner's guide to the European Convention on Human Rights

The average rating for A practitioner's guide to the European Convention on Human Rights based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-12 00:00:00 Mary Robinson One of the most endearing qualities about Harry Truman, at least from my perspective, is his ever-present honesty. While I have, with varying degrees, admiration or respect for all of the men (minus one) who have held the office of President, vey few have struck me as being as decent and honest as Truman was. That honesty is on display in this curated collection of Truman's correspondence, memorandums, and diary entries that spans his presidency and long retirement. Quite a few of the letters during his presidency are to his family, especially his sister and cousins. While later on almost all of them are to government officials past and present. We see Truman for all of his faults and his virtues here. He is partisan to a fault, especially once he is out of the presidency. And he often repeats the same themes or issues. He displays a fascination with, and a high level of understanding of, ancient history, frequently writing about Rome, Greece, and conquerors of the past. He also comments (or is it more like complains of?) more mundane topics such as Daylight Saving Time (Truman was not a fan) and the increasing efficiency of plane travel (he definitely liked this and was amazed by it). Many of the letters and diary entries are personal in nature, and show his earthiness at its finest. Some of the more vitriolic entries are unsent letters. Truman had a habit of, when angry with someone, writing a scathing letter to that person, blasting him for the perceived or real wrong, only to end up shoving the letter in his desk drawer and thinking better of it. This was a way for Truman to harmlessly release his frustration with that individual. Despite that, some of the letters that he did send were pretty salty and did not mince words. Truman's sense of humor is on display here as well. There are numerous examples, so I pulled one: On page 323 he writes about General Douglas MacArthur (Truman had famously fired him in April 1951 for repeated acts of insubordination in relation to the Korean War; Truman was widely pilloried at the time, but history has vindicated him and sustained his action): "When an egotist is punctured, a lot of noise and whistling always accompanies the escaping air." Most politicians, at least until the last few years when it now seems like personal insults are acceptable, would not have been so blunt. The papers were edited by Robert Ferrell. He does provide footnotes to help the reader make sense of people or events that Truman refers to that someone reading decades later would not automatically know. Yet, I found there was not as much context provided as I would have preferred to see. Many times Truman writes to someone about a specific situation, but we do not find out if there was any resolution, with Ferrell only infrequently noting what the end result was. Also, I wonder what his criteria was for inclusion in this collection. Did he cut some stuff out simply because it would have been repetitive? I could see that, as already there were more than enough references to Roman emperors. Yet there are gaps where I think inclusion of something would have been nice. For instance, there is no mention of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Surely Truman wrote about it, either in diary entries or in correspondence, very possibly both. Nonetheless, this was an enjoyable journey into the past with someone who, you could tell, really loved his country and tried his best to make it a better place even though he made mistakes, could frequently be too quick to judge, and was not entirely successful in his endeavors. Grade: A-

Review # 2 was written on 2019-07-04 00:00:00 Kevin Smith Learned a lot from this book. It gave a rare glimpse at the man behind the Office. Highly recommend.