Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., has been called the greatest jurist and legal scholar in the history of the English-speaking world. In this collection of his speeches, opinions, and letters, Richard Posner reveals the fullness of Holmes' achievements as judge, historian, philosopher, and master of English style. Thematically arranged, the volume covers a rich variety of subjects from aging and death to themes in politics, personalities, and law. Posner's substantial introduction firmly places this wealth of material in its proper biographical and historical context.
"A first-rate prose...

This fine collection is accompanied by an essay by Sir John Pollock that skillfully places the writers' ideas in the perspective of recent experience. A crucial document for lawyers, the letters are also delightful reading. Clifton Fadiman, in The New Yorker, noted that, taking in "questions of philosophy, history and literature, touching--often wittily--on hundreds of famous personages and appealing, I should think, to anyone interested in the play of two first-rate minds...these volumes recall to us something forgotten these days: the charm...of scholarship when it is the easy tool...

The Common Law is Oliver Wendell Holmes' most sustained work of jurisprudence. In it the careful reader will discern traces of his later thought as found in both his legal opinions and other writings.

At the outset of The Common Law Holmes posits that he is concerned with establishing that the common law can meet the changing needs of society while preserving continuity with the past. A common law judge must be creative, both in determining the society's current needs, and in discerning how best to address these needs in a way that is continuous with past judicial decisions....

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., distinguished American jurist, and Patrick Augustine Sheehan, an Irish clerical-savant, enjoyed a warm and notable friendship based largely on their exchange of letters from 1903, when they first met in Ireland, until 1913, the year of Sheehan's death. This correspondence illuminates what is otherwise a largely hidden and little appreciated side of the mind and faith of Justince Holmes. Sheehan was able to draw from his friend an awareness and s ympathy for human frailty and its counterpoint, faith in a divine plan of earthly things, thoughts and feelings that...

Holmes's wartime letters and diary entries have attracted students of war as well as biographers of Holmes as rare glimpses into the mind and heart of a soldier who withstood the great slaughter.

Holmes's wartime letters and diary entries have attracted students of war as well as biographers of Holmes as rare glimpses into the mind and heart of a soldier who withstood the great slaughter.

A reprint of the Little, Brown edition of 1943. Acidic paper. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose original profession and calling was as a Unitarian minister, left the ministry to pursue a career in writing and public speaking. Emerson went on to become one of America's best-known and best-loved 19th century figures. Along with Thoreau, Hawthorne, Fuller, the Peabody sisters, the Alcott family, Jonas, Very, the Ripleys, and the Channings, Emerson helped shape a circle of poets, reformers, artists, and thinkers who helped to define a new identity for American art. In this biography, written by American physician, poet, and humorist Oliver Wendell Holmes,...

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (1809 -1894) was an American physician, professor, lecturer and author. Holmes wrote his first book of essays entitled "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table in 1831. While in medical training Holmes was able to write another two essays detailing life as seen from his boarding house breakfast table. This collection describing many topics discussed at the Boston boarding house breakfast table.

A decisive influence on sociological jurisprudence, legal realism and the general development of Anglo-American law in the twentieth century. Rejecting the reigning positivist ethos of the nineteenth century, Holmes proposed that the law was not a science founded on abstract universal principles but a body of practices that responded to particular situations. This functionalist interpretation led to his radical conclusion that law was not discovered, but invented. This theme is announced at the beginning of Lecture I: The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The Common...