By any measure, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., led a full and remarkable life. He was tall and exceptionally attractive, especially as he aged, with piercing eyes, a shock of white hair, and prominent moustache. He was the son of a famous father (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., renowned for "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table"), a thrice-wounded veteran of the Civil War, a Harvard-educated member of Brahmin Boston, the acquaintance of Longfellow, Lowell, and Emerson, and for a time a close friend of William James. He wrote one of the classic works of American legal scholarship, The Common Law, and he served with distinction on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was actively involved in the Court's work into his nineties.
In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, G. Edward White, the acclaimed biographer of Earl Warren and one of America's most esteemed legal scholars, provides a rounded portrait of this remarkable jurist. We see Holmes's early life in Boston and at Harvard, his ambivalent relationship with his father, and his harrowing service during the Civil War (he was wounded three times, twice nearly fatally, shot in the chest in his first action, and later shot through the neck at Antietam). White examines Holmes's curious, childless marriage (his diary for 1872 noted on June 17th that he had married Fanny Bowditch Dixwell, and the next sentence indicated that he had become the sole editor of the American Law Review) and he includes new information on Holmes's relationship with Clare Castletown. White not only provides a vivid portrait of Holmes's life, but examines in depth the inner life and thought of this preeminent legal figure. There is a full chapter devoted to The Common Law, for instance, and
throughout the book, there is astute commentary on Holmes's legal writings. Indeed, White reveals that some of the themes that have dominated 20th-century American jurisprudence--including protection for free speech and the belief that "judges make the law"--originated in Holmes's work. Perhaps most important, White suggests that understanding Holmes's life is crucial to understanding his work, and he continually stresses the connections between Holmes's legal career and his personal life. For instance, his desire to distinguish himself from his father and from the "soft" literary culture of his father's generation drove him to legal scholarship of a particularly demanding kind.
White's biography of Earl Warren was hailed by Anthony Lewis on the cover of The New York Times Book Review as "serious and fascinating," and The Los Angeles Times noted that "White has gone beyond the labels and given us the man." In Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, White has produced an equally serious and fascinating biography, one that again goes beyond the labels and gives us the man himself.
Industry Reviews
"A valuable and original work."--New York Times Book Review
"Nothing less than enchanting."--The Washington Post Book World
"Sure to become the standard work."--Library Journal
New York Times New & Noteworthy Paperback, February 11, 1996
"White examines the life and the jurisprudence, including Holmes's controversial ideas on judicial self-restraint and the protection of free speech."--Washington Post Book World
"[A] meticulously researched biography....The man that emerges from this rich and absorbing work is far more complex and ambiguous than the figure enshrined in myth."--The Irish Times
"A fascinating look at the life and thought of the great jurist and scholar that vividly connects his...legal pedantry and his remarkable life and personality."--Kirkus Reviews
"[A] thorough and insightful scholarly biography."--Publishers Weekly
"Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: Law and the Inner Self, lives up to its subtitle. It is an eminently successful combination of Holmes' intellectual and personal biographies....White...has not only placed Holmes' life in its social and historical context, he has also, with the greatest degree of success, integrated Holmes' life, thought, and influence. He has, for now, set the standard against which future views and biographies will be
measured."--South Dakota Law Review
"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."--The New York Times Book Review
"White's 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
"White's superb biography has succeeded in establishing the connection between Holmes's legal career and his personal life, and it represents a fascinating study, as the subtitle indicates, of the "law and the inner self" of America's greatest jurist."--Magill's Literary Annual
"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
"Surely the definitive biography of Holmes for our time. Broad in scope, exacting in scholarship and sensitive to personality....White has given us an absorbing and readable study of a fascinating character. Its wealth of information and White's insightful commentary make it essential reading for all students of the Magnificent Yankee."--John S. Monagan, author of The Grand Panjandrum: Mellow Years of Justice Holmes
"Subtle, thoughtful, and careful."--The New York Review of Books
"Nothing less than enchanting."--The Washington Post Book World
"A welcome addition to a recently growing body of scholarship on a man many regard as among the most enigmatic individuals ever to have served on the Supreme Court of the United States. White gives us the clearest picture yet of a man we may never really completely know."--Don R. Pember, University of Washington
