52 RI Bar J., No. 4, Pg. 35 (January, 2004). Book Review: Rhode Island in Rhetoric and Reflection: Public Address and Essay By Patrick T. Conley, J.D., Ph.D.

• Author: JERRY COHEN, ESQ.

Rhode Island Bar Journal

Volume 52.

52 RI Bar J., No. 4, Pg. 35 (January, 2004).

Book Review: Rhode Island in Rhetoric and Reflection: Public Address and Essay By Patrick T. Conley, J.D., Ph.D

Book Review: Rhode Island in Rhetoric and Reflection: Public Address and Essay By Patrick T. Conley, J.D., Ph.DJERRY COHEN, ESQ.Jerry Cohen is a partner of Tillinghast, Licht, Perkins, Smith & Cohen, LLP.Dr. Patrick T. Conley is well known to diverse communities - the Rhode Island legal community being one of many such - for his insightful speeches, articles and book reviews, many focusing on several interests of a particular community. This book provides 60 of them. They cover history of the state and its regions, the special stories of its ethnic and religious communities, and the lives of special people, including that of the author himself.The materials were done over a period of some 30 years encompassing periods of the author's building careers in real estate law and real estate development, teaching law and history and out front participation in a process of constitutional change for the state. The legal career continues even now. (fn1)Each of the items can be, and in its time was, a delightful experience to read as a reflective essay or book review or to hear as an inspired lecture or inspirational speech. Taken as a group they present a cavalcade of the state's historic periods of turbulence and of quiet development.Some mid-book collections grouped under the section titles, Immigration and Ethnicity and Catholicism are particularly moving. The included chapters cover people of Rhode Island's Irish, Franco-American, Italian, Ukranian, Syrian-Lebanese and Latin American communities, the panorama of Catholicism in the state and the life of Bishop Matthew Harkins: "The Bishop of the Poor." The occasions for several of these were contributions to collective works and the contributions are now supplemented with further detail. Conley shows uniqueness of each such immigration and absorption experience and the tolerance of the state going back to its roots that enabled such diversity.The book begins with several essays, reviews and speeches on colonial history, development of the U.S. and Rhode Island constitutions, including the Dorr Rebellion and, also remembrances of Conley's own experiences as secretary of the 1973 constitutional convention and, briefly, as...