According to the poet Victor Hugo, the year 1870/71 was France's annee terrible. The country suffered a humiliating defeat by the Prussian military, and Parisians endured a cruel siege. In the wake of the siege, Paris exploded and revolutionaries proclaimed the birth of the Paris Commune. The conservative government of the young Third Republic portrayed the Communards as savage destroyers of civilization. The Communards were depicted as plagued by original sin, the evil nature of fallen man, and atavistic degeneration. These alleged traits aligned them with tribal peoples who were...

Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634), the first judge to strike down a law, gave us modern common law by turning medieval common law inside-out. Through his resisting strong-minded kings, he bore witness for judicial independence. Coke is the earliest judge still cited routinely by practicing lawyers. This book breaks new ground as the first scholarly biography of Coke, whose most recent general biography appeared in 1957, and draws revealingly on Coke's own papers and notebooks. The book covers Coke's early life and career, to the end of the reign of Elizabeth I in 1603 (a second volume will cover...