Download First Sandra Day O'Connor Evan Thomas 9780399589287 Books
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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, drawing on exclusive interviews and first-time access to Justice O’Connor’s archives—by the New York Times bestselling author Evan Thomas.
“She’s a hero for our time, and this is the biography for our time.”—Walter Isaacson
She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings—doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.
She became the first ever female majority leader of a state senate. As a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law. When she arrived at the United States Supreme Court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, she began a quarter-century tenure on the Court, hearing cases that ultimately shaped American law. Diagnosed with cancer at fifty-eight, and caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s, O’Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise.
Women and men who want to be leaders and be first in their own lives—who want to learn when to walk away and when to stand their ground—will be inspired by O’Connor’s example. This is a remarkably vivid and personal portrait of a woman who loved her family, who believed in serving her country, and who, when she became the most powerful woman in America, built a bridge forward for all women.
Advance praise for First
“A great storyteller has found his greatest subject in trailblazer Sandra Day O’Connor. Evan Thomas has written one of the most insightful and thoroughly captivating biographies I have ever read A clear and compelling illumination of Sandra Day O’Connor’s unique voice and place in American history is told through her remarkable life’s journey from a rancher’s daughter to the first woman appointed to the highest court in the land.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Leadership In Turbulent Times
“A vivid, humane, and inspiring portrait of an extraordinary woman and how she both reflected and shaped an era.”—Drew Faust, president emerita, Harvard University
Download First Sandra Day O'Connor Evan Thomas 9780399589287 Books
"Given all the recent adulation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I was wondering if everyone was just going to skip over the "First." Sandra Day O'Connor preceded RBG by 12 years, and was the trailblazer who opened the way for women to break up the all-boys club of the Supreme Court.
Evan Thomas's biography is addictively readable! I started reading at about 9:30 at night and kept telling myself, "Just one more page!" Well, 405 pages later, I was closing the book, fully read. I didn't look at the clock! Mr. Thomas has interviewed not only Justice O'Connor, but seemingly everyone in her life, from childhood through her senior years. What emerges is a fully rounded portrait of a child, a student, a career woman, a wife, mother, employer, friend and neighbor, as well as a groundbreaker on the Supreme Court. Justice O'Connor is a multi-faceted person who exuded the dignity and fastidiousness of the bench, but also reveled in her personal life, charming everyone with her undivided attention, her wit... and her dancing skills! This fascinating woman, raised on a hardscrabble ranch in Arizona, seemingly felt at home anywhere she and her beloved husband, John, lived, even in the political rat's nest of Washington, D.C.
In this book, not only do you get a full picture of Justice O'Connor, but the author weaves into her story everything you need to know about how the Supreme Court works, what goes on in the so-called "Marble Palace," and the issues Justice O'Connor faced in her tenure -- abortion, affirmative action, sexual harassment, states rights. We get an education about law clerks and what they do. The law clerks who worked for Justice O'Connor are candid about her, suggesting both the good and the bad of working for a person as intense as Sandra Day O'Connor. You want to get on her good side? Show up for her 8 a.m. aerobics class!
Having access to John O'Connor's unpublished diary, and interviews with Justice O'Connor herself, allows the author a keen insight into John and Sandra O'Connor's marriage and into the mighty struggle with Alzheimer's that eventually claimed John's life and descended on hers. It is truly heartbreaking to walk that sad journey with them. Even the brightest stars are no match for this horrible disease.
Mr. Thomas sums up Justice O'Connor, with all her contradictions, this way: "She could be charming or brusque. She could be disarmingly straightforward; she could also be roundabout and sly," he writes. "It is difficult to reconcile the 'bossy' O'Connor, who would tell passengers exactly where to sit in a car, with the modest O'Connor, who practiced judicial 'minimalism,' preferring to stick to the facts and let the law slowly evolve rather than making broad pronouncements." In Mr. Thomas's book, all of these sides to Sandra Day O'Connor are fully explored. You'll want to stay up late reading, too!"
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First Sandra Day O'Connor Evan Thomas 9780399589287 Books Reviews :
First Sandra Day O'Connor Evan Thomas 9780399589287 Books Reviews
- While I was reading this book, I saw that author Evan Thomas mentioned Joan Biskupic's biography of Sandra Day O'Connor (titled Sandra Day O'Connor) as a source (one of many sources) while writing the book. I found a copy of that bio, first published in late 2005, and read both books, comparing as I went along. Both writers make an effort to portray O'Connor as more than a Supreme Court Justice, going into her childhood and career before the Supreme Court. Both authors did interview O'Connor, although Biskupic's interviews were conducted as part of her reporting on the Court, while Thomas interviewed O'Connor after her retirement specifically for the biography. Thomas's biography included some sources that Biskupic didn't have access to such as John O'Connor's (Sandra Day O'Connor's husband) unpublished memoir and his diaries. Thomas also discusses O'Connor's life after her retirement, while Biskupic's book ends just as O'Connor is retiring from the Supreme Court. Thomas interviewed many, nearly all, of O'Connor's law clerks from her Supreme Court years, giving a little extra insight into her day to day activities at the Court.
Still, I came away thinking that if you had to choose between the two books, you might do better to read Biskupic's than Thomas's. For instance, Biskupic showed how O'Connor had been political well before her rise through the court system -- she had even lobbied Nixon to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court (she endorsed a colleague, but it's easy to believe she thought she herself might also be a good candidate) and had been active in Republican politics since serving on Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign. Biskupic was also more descriptive about William Rehnquist's views on race, leaving the reader with little doubt that he had racist views, while Evan Thomas glosses over the subject with a footnote mentioning rumors of racist behavior. This was relevant to a book about O'Connor because Rehnquist and O'Connor were very close (even romantically close at one point in their college years) and decided almost identically during O'Connor's first years on the Supreme Court, although as time went on, she broke with the conservative bloc more often. The Bush v Gore decision comes across as a shockingly poor judicial decision in both books.
Both books are full of interesting inside the court information as well as fascinating analysis of court cases and how they were decided. - Given all the recent adulation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I was wondering if everyone was just going to skip over the "First." Sandra Day O'Connor preceded RBG by 12 years, and was the trailblazer who opened the way for women to break up the all-boys club of the Supreme Court.
Evan Thomas's biography is addictively readable! I started reading at about 930 at night and kept telling myself, "Just one more page!" Well, 405 pages later, I was closing the book, fully read. I didn't look at the clock! Mr. Thomas has interviewed not only Justice O'Connor, but seemingly everyone in her life, from childhood through her senior years. What emerges is a fully rounded portrait of a child, a student, a career woman, a wife, mother, employer, friend and neighbor, as well as a groundbreaker on the Supreme Court. Justice O'Connor is a multi-faceted person who exuded the dignity and fastidiousness of the bench, but also reveled in her personal life, charming everyone with her undivided attention, her wit... and her dancing skills! This fascinating woman, raised on a hardscrabble ranch in Arizona, seemingly felt at home anywhere she and her beloved husband, John, lived, even in the political rat's nest of Washington, D.C.
In this book, not only do you get a full picture of Justice O'Connor, but the author weaves into her story everything you need to know about how the Supreme Court works, what goes on in the so-called "Marble Palace," and the issues Justice O'Connor faced in her tenure -- abortion, affirmative action, sexual harassment, states rights. We get an education about law clerks and what they do. The law clerks who worked for Justice O'Connor are candid about her, suggesting both the good and the bad of working for a person as intense as Sandra Day O'Connor. You want to get on her good side? Show up for her 8 a.m. aerobics class!
Having access to John O'Connor's unpublished diary, and interviews with Justice O'Connor herself, allows the author a keen insight into John and Sandra O'Connor's marriage and into the mighty struggle with Alzheimer's that eventually claimed John's life and descended on hers. It is truly heartbreaking to walk that sad journey with them. Even the brightest stars are no match for this horrible disease.
Mr. Thomas sums up Justice O'Connor, with all her contradictions, this way "She could be charming or brusque. She could be disarmingly straightforward; she could also be roundabout and sly," he writes. "It is difficult to reconcile the 'bossy' O'Connor, who would tell passengers exactly where to sit in a car, with the modest O'Connor, who practiced judicial 'minimalism,' preferring to stick to the facts and let the law slowly evolve rather than making broad pronouncements." In Mr. Thomas's book, all of these sides to Sandra Day O'Connor are fully explored. You'll want to stay up late reading, too! - I have read Joan Biskupic’s biography of Sandra Day O’Connor (1930-) and have read O’Connor’s memoirs and other books. Thomas’s book was written after she retired from the Court so contains more information about her later life. Thomas also had access to John O’Connor’s papers, diary and unpublished memoir.
The book is well written and meticulously researched. Thomas interviewed almost all of O’Connor’s law clerks and staff as well as friends and colleagues. I found the information about how each of the male Justices had to adapt (or not) to a female Justice interesting. I found the lunch meeting between O’Connor and Ginsburg most interesting. This meeting took place just after O’Connor was appointed to the Supreme Court and long before Ginsburg was appointed to the Court. Thomas provided a number of insights as well as material not covered in prior books. This book is well worth the read. I noted how far women attorneys have come since the day O’Connor graduated from Stanford Law School and found out that firms would not hire women.
I read this as an e-book on my app for my iPad. There were lots of photographs. I wished I had the photograph with all the women Justices together. The book was 455 pages and published by Random House.
