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Start giftingOliver Wendell Holmes
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Learn moreOliver Wendell Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls missed his heart and spinal cord by a fraction of an inch. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, unremitting scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity.
Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age sixty-one, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court’s reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms. As a pioneering legal scholar, Holmes revolutionized the understanding of common law by showing how the law always evolved to meet the changing needs of society.
Drawing on many previously unpublished letters and records, Stephen Budiansky's definitive biography offers the fullest portrait yet of this pivotal American figure, whose zest for life, wit, and intellect left a profound legacy in law and Constitutional rights, and who was an inspiring example of how to lead a meaningful life in a world of uncertainty and upheaval.
Stephen Budiansky is a military historian and the author of several books about military history, intelligence and espionage, science, and the natural world, including Battle of Wits, The Bloody Shirt, and Her Majesty's Spymaster. He received a master's degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University and worked on classified military studies as a Congressional Fellow. He is a former editor and writer at U.S. News & World Report and the Atlantic as well as the former Washington editor of the scientific journal Nature. His articles have appeared in the Economist, the New York Times, and U.S. News & World ReporT. He lives in Virginia.
Robertson Dean has recorded hundreds of audiobooks in most every genre. He's been nominated for several Audie Awards, won nine Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine's Best Voices of 2010. He lives in Los Angeles, where he records books and acts in film, TV, and (especially) on stage.