In this sweeping and revealing insider study, Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel shine a bright light on the life, career, and thought of William Brennan (1906-1997), widely considered the Supreme Court's most influential twentieth-century justice, as well as its greatest liberal and preeminent strategist.

Stern and Wermiel make available for the first time a striking new view of Brennan based on what Jeffrey Toobin has called "a coveted set of documents"--Justice Brennan's very personal case histories of the major battles that confronted the Supreme Court during the past half century. Roe...