Book Review the Furniture of My Mind: Hon. Robert Satter. the Carriage House Press (east Hampton, Ny) 1999. 256 Pp. $20.00

• Publication year: 2021
• Pages: 341

Connecticut Bar Journal Volume 74.

74 CBJ 341. BOOK REVIEW THE FURNITURE OF MY MIND: Hon. Robert Satter. The Carriage House Press (East Hampton, NY) 1999. 256 pp. $20.00

BOOK REVIEW

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341

THE FURNITURE OF MY MIND: Hon. Robert Satter. The Carriage House Press (East Hampton, NY) 1999. 256 pp. $20.00

JAMES D. BARTOLINI(fn*)

Eighty years young. Hard to imagine. Hard to realize that when I tried my first case before Judge Satter, he was nearly my present age. I remember how hard he worked at making the right rulings for the right reasons. His respect for the law and his delight in presiding over a case well tried was evident to lawyers, litigants and jurors alike.

The Furniture of My Mind, judge Satter's third book, is a beautiful collection of essays covering a landscape of personal experiences and remembrances. Many of the essays were previously delivered or published in a variety of settings -from the 1945 Rutgers' Alumni magazine (Judge Satter's alma mater), to The Hartford Courant articles written in the 1960's, 70's and 80's. Mixed in with these previously published essays and speeches are a number of essays crafted specifically for this collection. Many of the essays are very personal and self-revealing, especially those stories recounting painful memories of confrontation with his father, a man who had little regard for formal education - "studying to become a dope" was how he described people who wasted their time on impractical studies. As mechanically inclined as the judge's father was, able to fix anything, judge Satter describes himself as a handyman klutz, a child never able to live up to his father's ideal of what a...