Picture 1 of 1

Stock photo

Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas - Picture 1 of 1

Wild Bill : The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas by Bruce Allen Murphy (2003, Hardcover)

Brenham Book Company (648)

93.7% positive Feedback

Price:

US $25.83

Approximately£19.25

+ $71.33 postage

Estimated delivery Mon, 28 Jul - Mon, 11 Aug

Returns:

30 days return. Buyer pays for return postage. If you use an eBay delivery label, it will be deducted from your refund amount. Policy depends on postage service.

Condition:

New

Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas

About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherRandom House Publishing Group

ISBN-100394576284

ISBN-139780394576282

eBay Product ID (ePID)2287615

Product Key Features

Book TitleWild Bill : the Legend and Life of William O. Douglas

Number of Pages736 Pages

LanguageEnglish

Publication Year2003

TopicPolitical, Lawyers & Judges

IllustratorYes

GenreBiography & Autobiography

AuthorBruce Allen Murphy

FormatHardcover

Dimensions

Item Height2.1 in

Item Weight40 oz

Item Length9.5 in

Item Width6.4 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

LCCN2002-023114

Dewey Edition21

ReviewsPraise for Bruce Allen Murphy Fortas: The Rise and Ruin of a Supreme Court Justice "The tragedy of Abe Fortas, who would have been one of the great chief justices ever, in my opinion, is detailed in vivid fashion by Murphy, who has a case to build and builds it well." -Larry King,USA Today "One of the best recent biographies I have read. It brings Fortas to life, explaining his career and how he operated. More than that, it tells the most complete story we have about the events that led to Fortas's downfall. It will be the standard work on this personal and professional tragedy." -Bernard Schwartz, Edwin D. Webb Professor of Law, New York University, author ofSuper Chief: Earl Warren and His Supreme Court "An engrossing tale. As in Greek tragedy, flaws of character and hubris led to disaster."-Raoul Berger, Harvard Law School, author ofGovernment by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices "Murphy challenges us in this pathbreaking and thoroughly documented study to reexamine our preconceptions of the role of the judiciary in American government and society." -Richard Bernstein, Harvard Law Record

Dewey Decimal347.73/2634 B

SynopsisWilliam Orville Douglas was both the most accomplished and the most controversial justice ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court. He emerged from isolated Yakima, Washington, to be dubbed, by the age of thirty, "the most outstanding law professor in the nation"; at age thirty-eight, he was the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, cleaning up a corrupt Wall Street during the Great Depression; by the age of forty, he was the second youngest Supreme Court justice in American history, going on to serve longer-and to write more opinions and dissents-than any other justice. In evolving from a pro-government advocate in the 1940s to an icon of liberalism in the 1960s, Douglas became a champion for the rights of privacy, free speech, and the environment. While doing so, "Wild Bill" lived up to his nickname by racking up more marriages, more divorces, and more impeachment attempts aimed against him than any other member of the Court. But it was what Douglas did not accomplish that haunted him: He never fulfilled his mother's ambition for him to become president of the United States. Douglas's life was the stuff of novels, but with his eye on his public image and his potential electability to the White House, the truth was not good enough for him. Using what he called "literary license," he wrote three memoirs in which the American public was led to believe that he had suffered from polio as an infant and was raised by an impoverished, widowed mother whose life savings were stolen by the family attorney. He further chronicled his time as a poverty-stricken student sleeping in a tent while attending Whitman College, serving as a private in the army during World War I, and "riding the rods" like a hobo to attend Columbia Law School. Relying on fifteen years of exhaustive research in eighty-six manuscript collections, revealing long-hidden documents, and interviews conducted with more than one hundred people, many sharing their recollections for the first time, Bruce Allen Murphy reveals the truth behind Douglas's carefully constructed image. While William O. Douglas wrote fiction in the form of memoir, Murphy presents the truth with a narrative flair that reads like a novel.

LC Classification NumberKF8745.D6M87 2002