The Prosecutors: Inside the Offices of the Government's Most Powerful Lawyers

James B. Stewart's "The Prosecutors" is a worthy follow-up to his solid first book, "The Partners," another take on the real-life practice of American law in the 1980s that focuses this time on those the state relies on to penalize lawbreakers. For readers in 2005, the most interesting aspect of the book is its early take on likely future presidential aspirant Rudolph Guiliani, called "Rudi" here as well as other less flattering things. Stewart doesn't do a hatchet job exactly, he offers Guiliani's side of the story, but as he is described in "The Prosecutors" Guiliani comes off as the boss from hell, undercutting his own prosecuting team to make nice with some corporate wrongdoers and writing off their subsequent complaints as the whining of "jerks." I wouldn't want the guy Stewart describes running my country, put it that way. "There are ways of doing what Giuliani did gracefully," one unnamed member of his U.S. Attorney's office in Manhattan claims. "We'd hear the rumors that somebody was out for weeks. By the time there was a memo or announcement it was an established fact. The person being fired was usually the last to know. Rudi's hatchet was bloody." "The Prosecutors" is about more than Giuliani, though. It's a nice cross section of actual cases, from the somewhat humorous takedown of a Japanese corporate espionage ring operating in Silicon Valley to a taut murder mystery outside CBS News headquarters in New York that plays like a good "Law & Order" episode. Stewart does provide sage analysis, and demonstrates a clear understanding of how the law operates which a careful reader will take much away from. The big negative is his writing style is somewhat flat and juiceless, not breaking out of the high-toned Wall Street Journal-form Stewart cultivated in his years of reporting for that publication. That and he doesn't offer much in the way of dates to help the reader figure out the chronology of the often-complex cases he relates. But the six cases he relates are well chosen for the different views they give of prosecutors at work, sometimes succeeding, sometimes going down in flames. Unlike "The Partners," the book holds together as a single work, with a nice job from Stewart of tying the various stories into a narrative whole. Most interestingly, Stewart delves into the psyches of the people who take on the role of prosecutors, and examines when its wise to press forward with a case when the wrongdoing isn't clear-cut and when its better to step back. He quotes Henry Singer, a Depression-era prosecutor, as saying: "Anyone who seeks to become a prosecutor should be disqualified on that ground alone." Maybe that's overstating it a bit, but if you ever watched an episode of "Perry Mason" and ended up wondering about poor Hamilton Burger, this book should be plenty interesting.

The Prosecutors is a good book. It is very insightful about the world of U.S. Attorneys--both the legal and political aspects--and their prosecution of white-collar crime. Stewart chose several good case studies to analyze how prosecutors work and also highlight the political reality of their position. The book paints an unflattering picture of the Reagan Administration's handling of crimes by large businesses, including the machinations of Rudy Guliani who is made out as a machiavellian up and comer. This is a good book for people interested in law and specifically prosecution, but hopefully it does not frighten people away from such a career path. It is also has some interesting history of the Reagan Administration and Guliani, but it is fairly dated information now and doesn't have the same impact it would have when the book was first published. All in all, I would recommend this book and encourage aspiring attorneys to read it.

This is an excellent collection of true life vignettes about prosecutors and the cases they work on. The chapter discussing Rudy Giuliani's tenure in the justice department during the Reagan administration (written long before he became mayor of NYC) is particularly interesting because it portrays him in a very unflattering light. An entirely different perspective on the man the country has come to love after 9/11.Anything by James Stewart is worth reading.