Jeffery Toobin's Newest Tome

Jeffery Toobin's newest book, The Nine hits your favorite bookstore today. Here's a book synopsis and a few of the early reviews and some info on JT's other writings.

"Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land.Just in time for the 2008 presidential election—where the future of the Court will be at stake—Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of conservative disgust with the Court have finally produced a conservative majority, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, presidential power, and church-state relations.Based on exclusive interviews with justices themselves, The Nine tells the story of the Court through personalities—from Anthony Kennedy's overwhelming sense of self-importance to Clarence Thomas's well-tended grievances against his critics to David Souter's odd nineteenth-century lifestyle. There is also, for the first time, the full behind-the-scenes story of Bush v. Gore—and Sandra Day O'Connor's fateful breach with George W. Bush, the president she helped place in office. The Nine is the book bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin was born to write." ~Amazon book description

"A major achievement, lucid and probing." ~ Bob Woodward, co-author of The Brethren

"This is a remarkable, riveting book. So great are Toobin's narrative skills that both the justices and their inner world are brought vividly to life." ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

"It's not laws or constitutional theory that rule the High Court, argues this absorbing group profile, but quirky men and women guided by political intuition. New Yorker legal writer Toobin (The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson) surveys the Court from the Reagan administration onward, as the justices wrestled with abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. Despite a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. The real power, he argues, belonged to supreme swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor, who decided important cases with what Toobin sees as an almost primal attunement to a middle-of-the-road public consensus. By contrast, he contends, conservative justices Rehnquist and Scalia ended up bitter old men, their rigorous constitutional doctrines made irrelevant by the moderates' compromises. The author deftly distills the issues and enlivens his narrative of the Court's internal wranglings with sharp thumbnail sketches (Anthony Kennedy the vain bloviator, David Souter the Thoreauvian ascetic) and editorials (inept and unsavory is his verdict on the Court's intervention in the 2000 election). His savvy account puts the supposedly cloistered Court right in the thick of American life." ~ Publisher's Weekly

To purchase this book or to read more reviews just follow the link.

Did you know....

Jeffery Toobin served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn?

He also served as an associate counsel in the Office of Independent Counsel Lawrence E. Walsh?

Toobin earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard College and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review?

Toobin remains a staff writer at The New Yorker where he has been covering legal affairs for the magazine since 1993? (information obtained from Jeffery Toobin's CNN bio)

Other Jeffery Toobin books:

A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal that Nearly Brought Down a President

The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson

Too Close to Call: The 36-Day Battle to Decide the 2000 Election.