First: Sandra Day O'Connor
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, drawing on exclusive interviews and first-time access to Justice O’Connor’s archives—as seen on PBS’s American Experience
“She’s a hero for our time, and this is the biography for our time.”—Walter Isaacson
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post
She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings—doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.
She became the first ever female majority leader of a state senate. As a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law. When she arrived at the United States Supreme Court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, she began a quarter-century tenure on the Court, hearing cases that ultimately shaped American law. Diagnosed with cancer at fifty-eight, and caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s, O’Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise.
Women and men who want to be leaders and be first in their own lives—who want to learn when to walk away and when to stand their ground—will be inspired by O’Connor’s example. This is a remarkably vivid and personal portrait of a woman who loved her family, who believed in serving her country, and who, when she became the most powerful woman in America, built a bridge forward for all women.
Praise for First
“Cinematic . . . poignant . . . illuminating and eminently readable . . . First gives us a real sense of Sandra Day O’Connor the human being. . . . Thomas gives O’Connor the credit she deserves.”—The Washington Post
“[A] fascinating and revelatory biography . . . a richly detailed picture of [O’Connor’s] personal and professional life . . . Evan Thomas’s book is not just a biography of a remarkable woman, but an elegy for a worldview that, in law as well as politics, has disappeared from the nation’s main stages.”—The New York Times Book Review
“She’s a hero for our time, and this is the biography for our time.”—Walter Isaacson
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post
She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings—doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.
She became the first ever female majority leader of a state senate. As a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law. When she arrived at the United States Supreme Court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, she began a quarter-century tenure on the Court, hearing cases that ultimately shaped American law. Diagnosed with cancer at fifty-eight, and caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s, O’Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise.
Women and men who want to be leaders and be first in their own lives—who want to learn when to walk away and when to stand their ground—will be inspired by O’Connor’s example. This is a remarkably vivid and personal portrait of a woman who loved her family, who believed in serving her country, and who, when she became the most powerful woman in America, built a bridge forward for all women.
Praise for First
“Cinematic . . . poignant . . . illuminating and eminently readable . . . First gives us a real sense of Sandra Day O’Connor the human being. . . . Thomas gives O’Connor the credit she deserves.”—The Washington Post
“[A] fascinating and revelatory biography . . . a richly detailed picture of [O’Connor’s] personal and professional life . . . Evan Thomas’s book is not just a biography of a remarkable woman, but an elegy for a worldview that, in law as well as politics, has disappeared from the nation’s main stages.”—The New York Times Book Review
BUY THE BOOK
Community Reviews
I enjoyed this book.
There are several archetypes of stories about women. Most humanize their subjects and help you understand the very real psychological challenges and trade offs that come with great achievement. There are a sliver that try to convince you the subject effectively makes no tradeoffs and is a damn near perfect employee, employer, wife, mother, community member, and role model. This is the second kind.
1. How did we wind up getting our first woman on the supreme court?
I’ve spent a reasonable amount of my life reading abstract arguments for why such things should happen, but why do they?
"She rose by a combination of political skills, self-restraint, and comity." The evidence shows it took a pragmatic, determined, politically deft, intellectually and interpersonally gifted person. That person had to land in a political climate where it was advantageous to the careers of dozens of powerful men to push her forward. She then had to charm and flatter those men using the cultural framework they were familiar with without sacrificing the intellectual bona fides required of her new world.
The self restraint, discipline, and performative demands placed on Ms O’Connor are beyond what anyone ought to have to deal with. I cannot figure out whether I should be depressed that such rare circumstances are required for progress or whether I should be glad they happen at all. I suppose I won’t make a conclusion but will just walk away having learned it don’t work like they tell you it ought to in the philosophy books.
2. What about the Court stuff?
Book is at its best when its exploring the inter-personal relationships and social dynamics between the justices. Absolutely loved this. Brennan's politicking, Scalia's bull in a china shop, Blackmun's sulking, and O'Connor's sorta community organizer feel? It was fun and interesting and I'll probably read a few more books about the Supreme Court now.
The book also analyzes O'Connor's major rulings and tries to analyze her leftward turn over the course of her career. The author starts with a dominant theme: O'Connor's pragmatism grew from her time growing up on a ranch and this guided her approach to law (and also maybe she had an instinct / empathy to protect certain groups of people because of her experience as a woman and mother). Seemed reasonable enough - I don't particularly have a legal background sufficient to challenge it. That said, I was somewhat left scratching my head on the leftward turn. The author throws out a lot of possible reasons it could have occurred and you're sorta just left to contemplate them all. The author is probably as confused as we are.
And maybe that's the point. O'Connor is an enigma because she had to be an enigma. At no point does she relax and speak freely, even after thirty years on the bench of the Supreme Court. She's just that careful - and I think with that sort of person you have to accept you're never really going to have access to the inner psyche. It's not on display. Partly I think she got it from her dad - lonely rancher type. Partly I think she had to play a hyper-polished version of herself her whole life - on account of the judgment and sometimes harassment she faced as a woman.
I sorta wish there were some way she could have let some of that inner psyche out though, because I think she would be a lot more useful as a role model to future generations if they had some access to the why instead of just the what and the how.
3. What about Bush v Gore?
Bush v Gore got the right amount of coverage, but the wrong kind.
It seems clear the justice regretted the decision almost immediately after she made it. The author has to get deeper into the psychology of this.
Part of the problem with hagiography is that it does not deal with the human emotions: regret, shame, disappointment. The author feeds us a helping of "Sandra made a tough call in the moment with all available information and then we all moved on," but given the access that he had I needed more. This is the test that breaks pragmatism - how do you balance things out in this situation? I think a less sympathetic author could have delved into whether there wasn’t something about her judicial philosophy that made her particularly susceptible to this sort of ruling - and particularly surprised by the duration and intensity of the backlash. But I digress - it’s not in the book and I cannot make it up.
4. Other notes
One thing you do not want to be in a hagiography is a person in a dispute with the subject. Perspective on Blackmun felt a bit one-sided. Author explicitly states Blackmun had a neurotic, distrusting relationship to O'Connor. Could be. Reading a few more books on Blackmun and on Brennan, will be interesting to see the same incident from another point of view.
Thought it was interesting that O'Connor single handedly brought civility and mutual respect to the court, made the justices eat lunch with each other, and helped people get along. When I told my wife this she said "well of course a woman would do that when she joined." Huh!
O’Connor triple checked every opinion bc she fet if she made a public mistake there would not be another female justice for fifty years. That is an insane amount of pressure to live under and I literally cannot imagine what that would feel like - but I think most of the time you probably don't think about it but then two or three times a day you might have a little bout of terror that you had done something that would ruin it for generations and wow...
O’Connor is clearly super (unheathily) competitive and that comes out in sports and trivial pursuits where she is aggressive and directs people around her. But in the serious stuff (politics, judging) she doesn't just put a lid on the competitive stuff but suppresses it completely and basically spends her life making other people feel validated and important. The amount of restraint that would require - in terms of how far she was pushing herself from her core personality - it's remarkable.
At the end of the day the author concludes brusquely that real revolutionaries make conservative steps from a point of common understanding (O'Connor) rather than setting out radical positions and going right there. The author argues that a country-club attending, ego-suppressing, insanely hard working, do-it-all and complain about none of it woman was what was necessary to have change be accepted by the powers that be.
Jeez I sorta hope she's wrong?
Anyhow, Four Stars!
There are several archetypes of stories about women. Most humanize their subjects and help you understand the very real psychological challenges and trade offs that come with great achievement. There are a sliver that try to convince you the subject effectively makes no tradeoffs and is a damn near perfect employee, employer, wife, mother, community member, and role model. This is the second kind.
1. How did we wind up getting our first woman on the supreme court?
I’ve spent a reasonable amount of my life reading abstract arguments for why such things should happen, but why do they?
"She rose by a combination of political skills, self-restraint, and comity." The evidence shows it took a pragmatic, determined, politically deft, intellectually and interpersonally gifted person. That person had to land in a political climate where it was advantageous to the careers of dozens of powerful men to push her forward. She then had to charm and flatter those men using the cultural framework they were familiar with without sacrificing the intellectual bona fides required of her new world.
The self restraint, discipline, and performative demands placed on Ms O’Connor are beyond what anyone ought to have to deal with. I cannot figure out whether I should be depressed that such rare circumstances are required for progress or whether I should be glad they happen at all. I suppose I won’t make a conclusion but will just walk away having learned it don’t work like they tell you it ought to in the philosophy books.
2. What about the Court stuff?
Book is at its best when its exploring the inter-personal relationships and social dynamics between the justices. Absolutely loved this. Brennan's politicking, Scalia's bull in a china shop, Blackmun's sulking, and O'Connor's sorta community organizer feel? It was fun and interesting and I'll probably read a few more books about the Supreme Court now.
The book also analyzes O'Connor's major rulings and tries to analyze her leftward turn over the course of her career. The author starts with a dominant theme: O'Connor's pragmatism grew from her time growing up on a ranch and this guided her approach to law (and also maybe she had an instinct / empathy to protect certain groups of people because of her experience as a woman and mother). Seemed reasonable enough - I don't particularly have a legal background sufficient to challenge it. That said, I was somewhat left scratching my head on the leftward turn. The author throws out a lot of possible reasons it could have occurred and you're sorta just left to contemplate them all. The author is probably as confused as we are.
And maybe that's the point. O'Connor is an enigma because she had to be an enigma. At no point does she relax and speak freely, even after thirty years on the bench of the Supreme Court. She's just that careful - and I think with that sort of person you have to accept you're never really going to have access to the inner psyche. It's not on display. Partly I think she got it from her dad - lonely rancher type. Partly I think she had to play a hyper-polished version of herself her whole life - on account of the judgment and sometimes harassment she faced as a woman.
I sorta wish there were some way she could have let some of that inner psyche out though, because I think she would be a lot more useful as a role model to future generations if they had some access to the why instead of just the what and the how.
3. What about Bush v Gore?
Bush v Gore got the right amount of coverage, but the wrong kind.
It seems clear the justice regretted the decision almost immediately after she made it. The author has to get deeper into the psychology of this.
Part of the problem with hagiography is that it does not deal with the human emotions: regret, shame, disappointment. The author feeds us a helping of "Sandra made a tough call in the moment with all available information and then we all moved on," but given the access that he had I needed more. This is the test that breaks pragmatism - how do you balance things out in this situation? I think a less sympathetic author could have delved into whether there wasn’t something about her judicial philosophy that made her particularly susceptible to this sort of ruling - and particularly surprised by the duration and intensity of the backlash. But I digress - it’s not in the book and I cannot make it up.
4. Other notes
One thing you do not want to be in a hagiography is a person in a dispute with the subject. Perspective on Blackmun felt a bit one-sided. Author explicitly states Blackmun had a neurotic, distrusting relationship to O'Connor. Could be. Reading a few more books on Blackmun and on Brennan, will be interesting to see the same incident from another point of view.
Thought it was interesting that O'Connor single handedly brought civility and mutual respect to the court, made the justices eat lunch with each other, and helped people get along. When I told my wife this she said "well of course a woman would do that when she joined." Huh!
O’Connor triple checked every opinion bc she fet if she made a public mistake there would not be another female justice for fifty years. That is an insane amount of pressure to live under and I literally cannot imagine what that would feel like - but I think most of the time you probably don't think about it but then two or three times a day you might have a little bout of terror that you had done something that would ruin it for generations and wow...
O’Connor is clearly super (unheathily) competitive and that comes out in sports and trivial pursuits where she is aggressive and directs people around her. But in the serious stuff (politics, judging) she doesn't just put a lid on the competitive stuff but suppresses it completely and basically spends her life making other people feel validated and important. The amount of restraint that would require - in terms of how far she was pushing herself from her core personality - it's remarkable.
At the end of the day the author concludes brusquely that real revolutionaries make conservative steps from a point of common understanding (O'Connor) rather than setting out radical positions and going right there. The author argues that a country-club attending, ego-suppressing, insanely hard working, do-it-all and complain about none of it woman was what was necessary to have change be accepted by the powers that be.
Jeez I sorta hope she's wrong?
Anyhow, Four Stars!
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.