Overview

Oliver Wendell Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls missed his heart and spinal cord by a fraction of an inch. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, unremitting scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age sixty-one, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms. As a pioneering legal scholar, Holmes revolutionized the understanding of common law by showing how the law always evolved to meet the changing needs of society. Drawing on many previously unpublished letters and records, Stephen Budiansky's definitive biography offers the fullest portrait yet of this pivotal American figure, whose zest for life, wit, and intellect left a profound legacy in law and Constitutional rights, and who was an inspiring example of how to lead a meaningful life in a world of uncertainty and upheaval.

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9781665209403

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Reviews

"""A lively, accessible book...This biography of the second most important Supreme Court justice, after Chief Justice John Marshall, is a lively, accessible account of a contradictory figure whose influence on the nation and the law has extended well beyond his death in 1935."" -- ""New York Times Book Review"" ""Especially consequential...Budiansky's is now the most engrossing of the major Holmes biographies."" -- ""Harvard Magazine"" ""In this stunningly researched and compellingly written biography, Budiansky brings Holmes back to life."" -- ""Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author"" ""This book also shows how Holmes's experience as a thrice-wounded Civil War officer subtly shaped his social and juridical ideas during the next seventy years."" -- "" James M. McPherson, New York Times bestselling author"""

A lively, accessible book...This biography of the second most important Supreme Court justice, after Chief Justice John Marshall, is a lively, accessible account of a contradictory figure whose influence on the nation and the law has extended well beyond his death in 1935. -- New York Times Book Review Especially consequential...Budiansky's is now the most engrossing of the major Holmes biographies. -- Harvard Magazine In this stunningly researched and compellingly written biography, Budiansky brings Holmes back to life. -- Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author This book also shows how Holmes's experience as a thrice-wounded Civil War officer subtly shaped his social and juridical ideas during the next seventy years. -- James M. McPherson, New York Times bestselling author

Author Information

Robertson Dean has played leading roles on and off Broadway and at dozens of regional theaters throughout the country. He has a BA from Tufts University and an MFA from Yale. His audiobook narration has garnered ten AudioFile Earphones Awards. He now lives in Los Angeles, where he works in film and television in addition to narrating. Stephen Budiansky is a historian, biographer, and journalist, the author of more than a dozen books exploring intellectual and creative lives, military and intelligence history, and science and the natural world. He is the former Washington editor of the scientific journal Nature and a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal.

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