100 books like Supreme Power

This Pulitzer Prize-winning study is the best single-volume history of America in the Age of FDR.  Meticulously researched, ambitiously conceived, and vividly written, it crafts superb portraits of the presidencies of Herbert Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Kennedy offers a balanced assessment of FDR’s New Deal, concluding that his reforms enhanced the socio-economic security of millions of Americans despite their overall failure in the 1930s to achieve economic recovery, which would only come about through the crucible of war in the early 1940s. However, the real heroes of the book are the American people for their resilience and resolve in the face of the Great Depression and World War 2, the two greatest challenges the United States faced in the twentieth century.  

This remarkable volume offers a selection from the millions of letters that ordinary men and women sent FDR in response to his radio Fireside Chats. Roosevelt used these talks to explain his policies to the American people, many of whom wrote him in return (for the cost of a 3-cent postage stamp) to communicate their thoughts about his presidency and the state of the nation during the depression and war years. Their letters reveal the multiple images that Americans had of FDR: friend, neighbor, trusted leader, protector—or, far less often, violator of the Constitution, enemy of sound economics, warmonger. They provide a timely reminder for our own times of the presidency’s capacity for civic education and the importance of dialogue between leaders and citizens.

This is a vivid retelling of the US production miracles that enabled America and its Allies to win World War 2. Instead of overwhelming readers with dry numbers, the book comes alive by focusing on the human dimension. Klein credits FDR for understanding that the US had to become the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ to win the war, while lionizing innovative industrialists and engineers who turned this vision into reality and the federal officials who cleared the way for their operations to succeed. He also highlights the struggles of the millions who endured disruption and discomfort in migrating to undertake war work far from their home regions. This is essential reading to understand the home front in America’s greatest foreign war. 

This is an intimate account of the collaboration between the quartet who led America to victory in World War II: FDR, Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, and Commander-in-Chief of the US Fleet Admiral Ernest King. The four sometimes disagreed: the military men initially worried that FDR sought to shape war strategy for political purposes; the president overruled their preference for an Anglo-American invasion of Nazi-occupied France in 1943, something he considered premature. Far more often, the quartet set aside personal, political, and professional differences to pull the nation through its darkest days of the twentieth century. Superbly researched and written, this book offers illuminating commentary on how wars are won.

Justice William Brennan reportedly would tell his new law clerks each year that the most important thing to understand about the Supreme Court was the number five. 

He meant that it takes the votes of five justices to set precedent and change the law. In this very readable study Epstein & Knight explore how justices act if they wish to move the law as close as possible to their preferred outcome. 

Based on careful reading of the papers of four Justices, Epstein & Knight make a persuasive case that justices who wish to change the law act strategically. That is, rather than casting a vote based on what they belief is the legally correct outcome, they often join majorities that don’t reflect their genuine beliefs but move the law closer to them.

Mary Ziegler is arguably the country’s foremost expert on abortion law; I hear her on NPR every time judges and justices weigh in on women’s reproductive freedom.

This is her account not of how Roe v. Wade got decided or what the law did, but instead of how the case has become symbolic of the Supreme Court writ large and the struggles over women’s autonomy in the United States. In essence, this is a history of how we have all come to invest so much in the myth of Roe, even as it was recently overturned.

I find Ziegler to be a lively storyteller, and she brings a variety of perspectives to the book, interrogating Roe’s relationship to racial justice, religious liberty, privacy (of course), and the role of science in public life. 

How do Supreme Court justices make decisions? Law students are taught that justices apply a consistent and principled jurisprudence to examine the facts of the case before them, precedent, and the statue or constitutional provision at issue. 

Segal and Spaeth argue that this understanding is a myth.  Rather, they argue that Supreme Court justices base their decisions on their attitudes, values, and political preferences. Using the highly reliable US Supreme Court Judicial Data Base, compiled by Professor Spaeth, their analysis explains and predicts Supreme Court decisions with a stunning degree of accuracy. 

Their conclusion is that debates over originalism, judicial activism, judicial restraint, and the like are simply a distraction that hides the true reason justices decide cases.

In this majestic study Friedman explores the relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court decisions over American history. 

Friedman’s central argument is that the Supreme Court does not stand apart from the rest of the society in which it operates. Building on the work of Robert McCloskey and Robert Dahl, Friedman argues that over time the Supreme Court reflects the views of society at large. 

The book is very well-researched and filled with fascinating, sometimes delightful, historical tidbits. It is written for an educated general audience.

Our public schools are where most people first encounter the power of the government. In this pathbreaking and dazzling book, law professor Justin Driver discusses the Supreme Court’s decisions on students’ rights, ranging from locker searches and drug testing to corporal punishment and dress codes. 

Driver’s prose is clear and engaging. His descriptions of the Court’s school cases bring the unforgettable litigants to life, almost as if he had written a short story collection. He skillfully uses the education cases as a lens for understanding the Supreme Court and its Justices.

I believe in having heroes, and the more human and relatable they are, the better. In this book, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor tells her amazing story while also showing that she is not so different from the rest of us.

And while it’s a fascinating and inspiring story, what I love about this book is the same thing that I love about the person who wrote it. She’s normal and relatable, a person who has struggled with diabetes since she was small, who grew up in the most modest of circumstances, and who rose to become the first Hispanic person on the Supreme Court both because she is extraordinary and because she is just like the rest of us.