Book Reviews,  FOUR STARS ****,  Law,  NON FICTION

The Nine by Jeffrey Toobin **** (of 4)

There’s a good reason this book made many top ten lists for 2007. It’s a very easy read full of insider information about the Supreme Court, but presented so off-handedly and contextually that the book never feels salacious or gossipy. Toobin, the New Yorker legal affairs correspondent, recounts stories we know well — abortion rights debates, the Lewinsky scandal, Bush v. Gore, the Anita Hill hearings — but he fits them into a grander story line of the evolution of the court over thelast 40 years and attaches personalities to judges that seem so remote in Nina Totenberg’s stories on NPR. December 2007