Scalia

"[A] fair-minded biography. . . . Murphy's deeper and more scholarly focus on Scalia offers . . . an opportunity to study one justice's progress from the Reagan administration's great right hope to the more problematic character he's become."--Paul M. Barrett "The San Francisco Chronicle " "An intellectual biography of one of [the Supreme Court's] most colorful members. . . . A lucid account of a wide variety of topics through the lens of judicial biography."--Alexander Tsesis "The Chicago Tribune " "Thoroughly researched and accessible . . . a lively and informative account of Scalia's upbringing; his education at Georgetown University, where he excelled in debate; his academic career at the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago; his work in the Nixon administration in the offices of telecommunication policy and legal counsel (in the Department of Justice); and his years on the bench."--Glenn C. Altschuler "The Boston Globe " "Murphy does Scalia the unwarranted honor of treating originalism seriously but does not flinch when he gets to the bottom line: At least in Scalia's hands, originalism is not a method of judicial interpretation, it is a device to import his values into the Constitution."--Jim Newton "The Los Angeles Times " "A compelling biography of one of the most conservative, combative, and bombastic Supreme Court Justices in our nation's history. . . . A terrific start to understanding Justice Scalia and his impact on American constitutional law."--Kevin J. Hamilton "The Seattle Times " "In Bruce Allen Murphy, Scalia has met a timely and unintimidated biographer ready to probe. . . . In his view, understanding one of the most dazzling and polarizing jurists on the Supreme Court entails, above all, examining the inevitably murky relationship between judicial decision making and religious devotion. . . . Murphy does not shrink from adjudicating Scalia's dueling public claims: that separating faith from public life is impossible and, at the same time, that he himself has done just that on the Court."--Dahlia Lithwick "The Atlantic " "May be the most exhaustive treatment of a sitting justice ever written. . . . Scalia is a skeptical, often critical look at its subject, but free of snark; it does its readers the service of taking Scalia's ideas seriously."--Jeff Shesol "The New York Times Book Review "