The bestselling historian and journalist James Rosen provides the
first comprehensive account of the brilliant and combative Supreme Court
justice Antonin Scalia, whose philosophy and judicial opinions defined
our legal era.
With SCALIA: Rise to Greatness, 1936-1986, the opening installment in
a two-volume biography, acclaimed reporter and bestselling historian
James Rosen provides the first comprehensive account of the life of
Justice Antonin Scalia, whose singular career in government--including
three decades on the Supreme Court--shaped American law and society in
the twenty-first century.
Decades in the making, Rise to Greatness tells the story of the kid
from Queens who became the first Italian American on the Court and one
of the most profoundly influential figures of our time. This volume
takes us from Scalia's birth to his ascension to the Court, providing a
fresh and probing look at his Catholic upbringing and education; his
stints in academia and published works, some of them obscure and
long-overlooked; and his service in the Nixon and Ford administrations,
when Scalia played a central role in reforming the U.S. intelligence
community and in the approval of sensitive covert operations.
Deeply researched and based on unparalleled access to documentary and
personal sources, and written with an intellectual rigor and wit
befitting its subject, Rosen's narrative reads like a novel while
presenting startling new insight into the life, mind, career, faith, and
legacy of the man whom family and friends called "Nino." The result is a
compelling portrait of an American legend with whom the author
personally corresponded, broke bread, drank wine, and braved the streets
of the capital as a (nervous) passenger in the justice's famously speedy
BMW.
Rosen has unearthed previously unpublished writing from every phase of
Scalia's career, including private Supreme Court emails, and has
interviewed Scalia's family, classmates, students, colleagues from the
Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, priests, poker buddies, hunting
companions, and fellow judges and justices.
Rise to Greatness is a landmark of modern biography, a rich and moving
study, accessible to lay readers, that brings to life a towering figure
of American history. It is the book Scalia fans, and all citizens
interested in history and the law, have long awaited.
