"Using Terri"

Over the weekend, I read the new book by Jon Eisenberg, Using Terri: The Religious Right's Conspiracy to Take Away Our Rights. Eisenberg was one of the lawyers who represented Michael Schiavo in the Schiavo federal-court litigation, and his book is a very readable statement of the right-to-die side of that case. The book isn't without its flaws: Eisenberg puts himself into the story too much, and some of the writing is tendentious. Disability rights opponents of the right to die come across as deluded tools of the Religious Right, rather than as people with well-grounded concerns (but perhaps a wrongheaded policy prescription). But if you want a forceful lawyer's brief for the right-to-die side of the Schiavo case (in language the lay reader can easily understand), you could do a lot worse than this book.