The best books about lawyers

What is my book about?

Odetta is the stirring but never-before-told story of the folk singer and civil rights icon who inspired countless artists—from Harry Belafonte and Bob Dylan to Janis Joplin and Carly Simon—and provided the soundtrack to the protest movements of the 1960s. The book traces Odetta’s life from early childhood in deeply segregated Birmingham, Alabama, to her breakout stardom in the late ’50s and her deep commitment—through her music, trailblazing Afro and work on behalf of the civil rights movement—to foster black pride and freedom.

What is my book about?

Suspense, romance, and high action in an explosive political thriller. A junior aide to the British Prime Minister is falsely implicated in an assassination attempt, and has to fight for his life against unknown forces, using only his inside knowledge of Number Ten's operations and the help of a female insider.

“Wow! Number Ten begins in explosive fashion and maintains a high-octane, fast pace until the very last word. A glorious thriller that kept me enthralled throughout.” Linda Hill (top 500 Amazon reviewer)

What is my book about?

Our Man in the Dark is a noir take on the American civil rights movement of the 1960s. Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference have led the civil rights struggle to a point of unprecedented progress. J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI want to ruin King.

Their best chance falls on John Estem, a lonely accountant working for the SCLC, who has just embezzled $10,000. Estem’s greed and desperation attract the attention of the FBI, and they seize the opportunity to blackmail and force him into becoming an informant.

What is my book about?

Call Me Phaedra provides an inside view of activism during the McCarthy Era, the Civil Rights Movement, Free Speech Era, the rise of black power, and the Women’s Rights Movement. It chronicles the extraordinary life and career of Fay Stender as a rare female criminal defense lawyer who championed black revolutionary clients and became a ground-breaking prisoners’ rights advocate. Her work both won her international acclaim as a top Movement lawyer and propelled her to a tragic end.

Stender’s saga will fascinate readers of all ages interested in the history of American activism and, particularly, women who challenged white-male monopoly power. Those working to change American society for the better today can draw valuable lessons from this award-winning biography and history book – the only published biography of Fay Stender.

What is my book about?

Ancient peoples enlighten contemporary humankind in a mystery as old as time. Rachel Blackstone, a Santa Fe reporter, is recruited by the spirit world to prevent a cataclysm: the end of the Fourth World of the Hopi. As earthquakes rumble and a supervolcano threatens to blow, it becomes imperative she discovers the root of all evil. Can she stop the greedy men intent on plundering Mother Earth and killing those who would stop them? The survival of an unaware civilization depends on Rachel getting it right. 

What is my book about?

I wrote King Richard as the Shakespearean tale of the leader who made himself- and then destroyed himself. Another journalist, Theodore White, wrote a series of acclaimed books titled The Making of the President, but how often does one get to tell the even more remarkable story of the unmaking of a president, from the inside, as it happened? In January 1973, Richard Nixon had just been inaugurated after winning re-election in a historic landslide. By April 1973, his presidency had fallen apart as the Watergate scandal metastasized into a full-blown cancer, in the phrase of White House counsel John Dean. I take readers behind the scenes in the White House to relive the tension-packed hundred days when the Watergate burglars and their handlers turned on one another in a desperate attempt to defect blame. At the center of the drama is Nixon himself, a man whose strengths, such as his determination to win at all costs, became his fatal flaws.

What is my book about?

On Account of Race details how white supremacists in the post-Civil War South succeeded in undoing all the advances of Reconstruction, reclaiming total political power, and establishing a Jim Crow society, slavery in all but name. None of this could have succeeded unless voting rights for African Americans, guaranteed by two Constitutional amendments, could be denied. And so they were, with the full approval and even sponsorship of the Supreme Court.

On Account of Race, winner of the 2021 Lillian Smith Book Award, tells the story of an American tragedy, the only occasion in United States history—to date—in which a group of citizens who had been granted the right to vote then had it stripped away. We as a nation will be forced to decide whether we are willing to have it happen again.

What is my book about?

The Fourteenth Amendment, enacted after the Civil War, changed the Constitution, and America, in more ways than we can count. It is the Amendment’s Citizenship Clause that made birthright citizenship part of our fundamental law; the Equal Protection Clause that doomed school segregation and other racist laws; the Due Process Clause that guarantees the right to use contraceptives, choose abortion, or marry a partner of either sex.

The story of that Amendment’s Framing in 1866 is often referred to but seldom told. Democracy Reborn is the only current one-volume history of how the Amendment came to be. The story memorably involves such figures as Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Charles Sumner, Andrew Johnson, and Walt Whitman.

What is my book about?

If her brother could stop existing, could she too?

Sixteen-year-old Bea Pearl knows her brother isn’t dead—even if her parents don’t agree. Even if the entire town doesn’t believe her. She knows it’s true. When orders came to evacuate Lake George, Alabama due to rising floodwaters, Bea Pearl saw Jim head toward the river. She followed him. Only she returned. 

What is my book about?

Beatrice, an up-and-coming corporate lawyer, is looking forward to taking some much-needed time off during a long weekend stay with her cousin Holly and her family, who are hosting a charity ball at their country house, along with some extra house guests, officers from her uncle’s regiment. On arrival, Beatrice is faced with Benedict, a charismatic but obnoxious army captain she had met the previous year, whom she loathes. She’s startled to realize that she and Benedict have explosive sexual and romantic chemistry that will change their lives.

Inspired by Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, this novel takes Beatrice and Benedict’s witty bantering to a whole new level.