Social reformers toiling at ground level are often unknown. Herbert Sturz, who has spearheaded far-reaching changes in New York City, is no exception. Sam Roberts’ book, “A Kind of Genius,” is the first extensive account of Sturz’s remarkable accomplishments, which include transforming an unjust and inefficient bail system, preparing former drug addicts for the workforce and unclogging city courts.
Sturz was but a young man when he tackled bail reform. In 1960s New York, the bail system penalized the indigent: Prisons were packed with people accused of minor crimes who were too poor to pay even small sums to a bail bondsman.
Sturz hypothesized that suspects with strong community ties (a spouse, a job, kids) would not be flight risks. If many people could be released on their own recognizance, he reasoned, prison populations would thin and taxpayers would save money. Experiments proved he was right.
Roberts does a fine job of showing how Sturz succeeded not only by having good ideas but also by appealing to “government’s enlightened self-interest.” Systems change when systems see a selfish reason to change.
In our time of national transformation, it’s a valuable lesson.
NONFICTION
A Kind of Genius: Herb Sturz and Society’s Toughest Problems
by Sam Roberts
$27.95
A five-sentence obituary with the headline “Conservationist Killed” inspired Vanity Fair journalist Mark Seal’s biography of documentary filmmaker Joan Root, who was murdered in Kenya in 2006. The modest obituary suited a woman who spent much of her life behind the scenes of the groundbreaking wildlife films she made with her husband, Alan Root — coaxing the animals out of hiding, rescuing her husband after a hot-air balloon crash and packing up their Land Rover with supplies for month-long shoots.
Root was so quiet, self-effacing and stoic that her only response to being stung by a scorpion (on her honeymoon, no less) was a demure “Oh.”
It took a threat to her beloved animals to break Root out of this meekness. She refused to abandon her Lake Naivasha home — and the hippos, birds and snakes that lived nearby — when fish poachers thrust her neighborhood into lawlessness.
Was her murder a robbery gone wrong, as the police insist, or were poachers fed up with the woman who stood between them and their profits?
More significant than Seal’s investigation into Root’s murder is his portrait of this extraordinary adventurer, whose life story is also being developed into a film, with Julia Roberts as star and producer.
FICTION
Wildflower: An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa
by Mark Seal
$26
