Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self - Hardcover

About the Author:
G. Edward White is University Professor and John B. Minor Professor of Law and History at the University of Virginia. A noted legal scholar, his books have won several awards, including a Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association in 1983, for Earl Warren, and the James Willard Hurst Prize of the Law and Society Association in 1990, for The Marshall Court and Cultural Change.

"Belongs in a prominent spot in the library of any student of law in the United States. In the future, any treatment of this Brahmin from Boston will be judged against White's insightful account. Through his exhaustive research and lucid writing, Holmes the Justice becomes Holmes the
man....This scholarly yet accessible biography is sure to become the standard work. Highly recommended."--Library Journal

"White's exhaustive research into Holmes both on the Massachusetts bench and as a Supreme Court justice makes this biography a fine look at a great legal mind."--Booklist

"What distinguishes this volume from earlier Holmes biographies is the scope and sophistication of its legal analysis....A particularly valuable aspect of this biography is Mr. White's coolheaded appraisal of the classic Holmes opinions that turned the justice into a national idol....A
valuable and original work."--New York Times Book Review

"Whites valuable accomplishment has been to synthesize the Holmes record and to connect his thought, motivations and experience to his public career. In that process, the already-chipped marble icon of the 'Yankee from Olympus' vanishes forever into the mists of myth, and a complex, flawed
human emerges."--The Philadelphia Inquirer

"G. Edward White, as a prominent biographer, Supreme Court historian and legal scholar, is uniquely qualified to cut through the clouds of incense which have so long obscured the figure of Justice Holmes. His analysis and revaluation of the man, the warrior, the judge, the 'liberal'
philosopher, and even the lover reveal a Holmes who is more human, more fallible, more interesting and even in some ways more admirable than the superman usually depicted."--Louis Auchincloss

"For the Holmes scholar, White presumes everything in offering fresh and challenging perspectives; for other readers he presumes nothing, producing an admirable study of a total self. This is an unflinching analysis and interpretation of Holmes as thinker, jurist, and fellow pilgrim."--David
H. Burton, author of Progressivew Masks: Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Franklin Ford

"A monumental contribution to Holmes literature. A work of painstaking and judicious scholarship, artfully constructed, it breaks new ground in numerous important ways, dispels accumulated myths and demonstrates the relation between the persona of the Justice and his varied products. It caps
the work of previous biographers and will be a required reference for all future studies of Holmes."--John S. Monagan, author of The Grand Panjandrum: Mellow Years of Justice Holmes

"A brilliant lawyer, a resourceful and insightful historian, and a gifted writer, G. Edward White has written an illuminating and eminently readable account of the remarkable life of Holmes the Civil War soldier, Holmes the Boston Brahmin, Holmes, the 'man of letters,' Holmes the visitor to
English society, and Holmes the greatest figure in American legal history. Nobody has done a better job of exploring the connections and relationships between Holmes's remarkable life and his many accomplishments."--Yale Komisar, University of Michigan Law School

"Delicate assembling every revelant scrap of detail, White has successfully united Holmes's personal and intellectual biographies. His book has novel insights on Holmes's marriage, his Boston milieu, his Irish romance with Clare Castletown, and his free speech jurisprudence, among many other
topics. Of the four recent biographies of Holmes, this one is by far the best."--Robert W. Gordon, author of The Legacy of Oliver Wendell Holmes