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| Author: John Grisham
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
Buy New: $3.75
You Save: $24.20 (87%)
New (119) Used (190) Collectible (21) from $2.87
Avg. Customer Rating:  426 reviews
Sales Rank: 635
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.3
ISBN: 0385515049
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780385515047
ASIN: 0385515049
Publication Date: January 29, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Annoying - but with a powerful message August 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
John Grisham rings a warning bell with this sordid tale of corporate bigwigs going to lengths to screw people. As the story begins, a small Mississippi community has won a large verdict against Krane Chemical, whose illegal dumping contaminated the town's water supply and brought many cancer deaths. Annoyed by the verdict, Krane's billionaire CEO conspires with sleazy political operators to "fix" the appeal. How? By defeating a State Supreme Court judge at the polls with a candidate they'll control. They pick a well-meaning but stupid attorney named Ron Fisk to run on a family values, anti-gay marraige platform. The operators pour millions into Fisk's campaign, attacking the better-qualified incumbent with misleading, negative ads. If they can elect Fisk, they may get the verdict reversed on appeal.
THE APPEAL is rather contrived, and falls short of Grisham's top efforts. Yet it has a powerful message about slimey operators and corporate money buying elections via sham issues like gay marraige and family values. Don't laugh, it worked for Bush. A side issue not addressed in these pages is why corporate polluters that kill (not unlike priests that molest) seldom face criminal charges.
 Goodbye Grisham August 17, 2008
I have just wasted a portion of my life reading this book with an ending we readers do not deserve. I tried to rate it 0 but can't go less than 1.
Waste of Precious Time August 17, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Who's the protagonist? Who carries the story? I never could really grasp on to any single character as someone I cared about in this book. The characters are predicatble, stereotypical and uninteresting. They are underdeveloped, and overly-wordy. Grisham goes off on tangents that don't support the through line, throws in a zillion characters that are thinly developed and leaves us so unsatisfied at the end. The good guy doesn't win in this story, and in such a predictable book, he/she should, albeit done with craft and with an interesting twist. Grisham fails to deliver.
 Not so appealing August 16, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The bad guys win. Most Grisham novels have a political point, but this one has a political axe: do away with elected judges, folks with causes support and elect 'em. Maybe we can stop people from electing officials who support their ideas. Hey wait a minute, isn't that what democracy is all about. You don't like something, some law - you do not stick IED's along the street, you elect someone who will change it. Now most of us agree that there must be rules, but when the elite of any group starts preaching that the boobs in the American electorate must be replaced by those who know better( Let's leave courts to lawyer niominated, legislature appointed judges, School decisions to appointed superintendants not elected board members, classsrooms to teachers not parents, pulpits to televangelists) we are in touble. My objections to this novel are beginning to sound like the sermon which it is and you know what?? sermons are boring. He can do better.
Money and Politics: The Ultimate Leverage August 16, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
When a massive chemicals corporation loses a $41 million lawsuit in rural Mississippi, its top leadership vows to appeal to the state's supreme court. The nine-member court is notorious for upholding plaintiff's lawsuits, punitive damages and all, by a 5-4 split. However, these justices are elected officials--and elections are just around the corner. With deep pockets pitted against near bankruptcy, the race is on to either preserve or restructure the Supreme Court of Mississippi before the appeal can reach the bar.
Grisham has always been a social commentator and critic, but this side of him seems to be asserting itself more aggressively over the past several years. Two books prior to this one, Grisham published his first non-fiction work, a searing indictment of a legal system that too often entombs the innocent on death row. He has also become a high-profile crusader for the Democratic party and its candidates. In "The Appeal," his latest morality play, Grisham's agitation for social and political justice overwhelms the plot at every turn. The characters aren't quite cardboard props, but they're also no more than extras on a stage dominated by Grisham's boisterous diva--his displeasure with the concept of elective supreme courts. Though fascinating as a dramatized lecture on political theory, it winds up being more morality than play.
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