Anchorage Daily News

Justice at Guantanamo

By Kristine A. Huskey with Aleigh Acerni (The Lyons Press, $24.95)

The blurb: As a professional model and dancer in 1990, Kristine Huskey would never have guessed that by 2006 she'd be one of America's top human rights experts -- and an attorney defending the world's most controversial prisoners. Huskey tells how she went from a childhood in Alaska to a civil war in Africa to finally, her true calling -- law.

Excerpt: "In early news reports, according to the White House, the Geneva conventions applied to Taliban prisoners but not to al-Qaeda members. Later news reports clarified that the administration's position was that the protections of the Conventions didn't apply to anyone at Guantanamo because they were not 'prisoners of war' -- they were enemy combatants."

Signs of a Free Mind

By Robin B. Lipinski (Vantage Press, $24.95)

The blurb: Anchor Point author Lipinski's story is not about fancy words but of simplicity. It is about the closed mind each of us harbors, and about how we can all open up and, indeed, "free our minds." Along the way, he offers six "exercises" he feels readers can use to free up their thinking and thereby "open themselves up."

Excerpt: "Anger is as natural as water for us. And I know some of you still don't realize it, but anger in the just-right proportion, is as important as air. Now, unless we evolve out of having anger with us at birth, and a whole lot of other things evolve and change with us, then we are stuck with having to learn how to control anger. Because, if we don't, then we are still stuck with that evil cousin of anger: hate."

Compiled by Mike Dunham, Daily News arts editor.

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