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The 10 Best Legal History Books list have been recommended not only by normal readers but also by experts.
You’ll also find that these are top-ranking books on the US Amazon Best Sellers book list for the Legal History category of books.
If any of the titles interest you, I’d recommend checking them out by clicking the “Check Price” button. It’ll take you to the authorized retailer website, where you’ll be able to see reviews and buy it.
Let’s take a look at the list of 10 Best Legal History Books.
10 Best Legal History Books
Now, let’s dive right into the list of 10 Best Legal History Books, where we’ll provide a quick outline for each book.
1. One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History by Ted Cruz Review Summary
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One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AMAZON BESTSELLER With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s sudden passing, control of the Supreme Court–and with it the fate of the Constitution–has become the deciding issue for many voters in the 2020 presidential election. And the stakes could not be higher. With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left will have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made our country a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing the Republic that the Founders handed down to us. Our most precious constitutional rights hang by a thread. Senator Ted Cruz has spent his entire career on the front line of the war to protect our constitutional rights. And as a Supreme Court clerk, solicitor general of Texas, and private litigator, he played a key role in some of the most important legal cases of the past two decades. In One Vote Away , you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote. One vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith. One vote will determine whether your children enjoy their full inheritance as American citizens. God may endow us with “certain unalienable rights,” but whether we enjoy them depends on nine judges–the “priests of the robe” who have the last say in our system of government. Drawing back the curtain of their temple, Senator Cruz reveals the struggles, arguments, and strife that have shaped the fate of those rights. No one who reads One Vote Away can ever again take a single seat on the Supreme Court for granted.
2. Licensed to Lie by Sidney Powell Review Summary
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Licensed to Lie
This true legal thriller debunks everything the media and the government told us about the Department of Justice’s destruction and prosecution of the venerable accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch executives who did one business transaction with Enron, Alaska Senator Ted Steven’s, and more. The common thread through it all is a cabal of narcissistic federal prosecutors who broke all the rules and rose to great power. Still in the news today―Robert Mueller s “pitbull” Andrew Weissmann and other members of Obama’s inner circle―are wreaking havoc on our Republic. This is the book that began exposing “the Deep State.”
3. First: Sandra Day O'Connor by Evan Thomas Review Summary
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 ” 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
4. The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham Review Summary
The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
*NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES* A gripping true-crime story of a shocking miscarriage of justice, from international bestselling thriller author John Grisham, author of A Time to Kill , The Firm and The Whistler. In the baseball draft of 1971, Ron Williamson was the first player chosen from Oklahoma. Signing with Oakland, he said goodbye to his small home town and left for California to pursue his dreams of glory. Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits – drinking, drugs and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept 20 hours a day on her sofa. In 1982, a 21 year-old cocktail waitress, Debra Sue Carter, was raped and murdered, and for five years the crime went unsolved. Finally, desperate for someone to blame, police came to suspect Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with murder. With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to Death Row. But as Grisham methodically lays out, there was no case against him. Ron Williamson was wrongly condemned to die. If you believe that in America you are innocent until proven guilty, this book will shock you. If you believe in the death penalty, this book will disturb you. If you believe the criminal justice system is fair, this book will infuriate you. In 2018, THE INNOCENT MAN was adapted by Netflix into a gripping six-part true crime series. ‘A master at the art of deft characterisation and the skilful delivery of hair-raising crescendos’ – Irish Independent ‘John Grisham is the master of legal fiction’ – Jodi Picoult ‘The best thriller writer alive’ – Ken Follett ‘ John Grisham has perfected the art of cooking up convincing, fast- paced thrillers’ – Telegraph ‘Grisham is a superb, instinctive storyteller’ – The Times ‘Grisham’s storytelling genius reminds us that when it comes to legal drama, the master is in a league of his own.’ – Daily Record ‘Masterful – when Grisham gets in the courtroom he lets rip, drawing scenes so real they’re not just alive, they’re pulsating’ – Mirror ‘A giant of the thriller genre’ – TimeOut
5. Licensed to Lie by Sidney Powell Review Summary
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Licensed to Lie
This true legal thriller debunks everything the media and the government told us about the Department of Justice’s destruction and prosecution of the venerable accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch executives who did one business transaction with Enron, Alaska Senator Ted Steven’s, and more. The common thread through it all is a cabal of narcissistic federal prosecutors who broke all the rules and rose to great power. Still in the news today―Robert Mueller s “pitbull” Andrew Weissmann and other members of Obama’s inner circle―are wreaking havoc on our Republic. This is the book that began exposing “the Deep State.”
6. Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice by Michel Paradis Review Summary
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Last Mission to Tokyo: The Extraordinary Story of the Doolittle Raiders and Their Final Fight for Justice
A thrilling narrative that reveals a key but untold story from World War II: The Doolittle Raids and the international war crimes trial that changed history. In 1942 , freshly humiliated from the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt demanded a show of strength against the Japanese. Jimmy Doolittle, a stunt pilot with a doctorate from MIT, came forward and led eighty young men on a seemingly impossible mission across the Pacific. Dubbed “The Doolittle Raiders,” they struck the mainland of Japan and permanently turned the tide of the war in the Pacific. But their legendary mission was only the beginning of the story… In his debut history, legal scholar and historian Michel Paradis uncovers one of the last untold stories of a seminal moment in World War II. With incredible and gripping detail, set amidst the intrigue of wartime Shanghai, Last Mission to Tokyo recounts the dramatic aftermath of the Doolittle mission, which involved two lost crews captured, tried, and tortured at the hands of the Japanese; the dramatic rescue the survivors in the last weeks of the war; the international manhunt that followed; and the war crimes trial in which two dynamic young lawyers – Major Robert Dwyer, a prosecutor determined to bring justice to the Raiders, and Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Bodine, a decorated pilot reluctantly assigned to defend the Japanese – faced off over what constitutes a fair trial, when we should show mercy to our enemies, and right and wrong in the fog of war. The result is a heart-stopping, perspective-shifting courtroom drama that opens our eyes to a final act in the story of the Greatest Generation. Like compelling World War II histories such as Lucky 666 , Unbroken , and Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial , Last Mission to Tokyo is a thrilling war story meets courtroom drama that also offers a deep dive into the Japanese perspective that fans of Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima and John Dower’s Embracing Defeat will find fascinating.
7. The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town by John Grisham Review Summary
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The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence. NOW A NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY SERIES ” Both an American tragedy and [Grisham’s] strongest legal thriller yet, all the more gripping because it happens to be true.”– Entertainment Weekly In the town of Ada, Oklahoma, Ron Williamson was going to be the next Mickey Mantle. But on his way to the Big Leagues, Ron stumbled, his dreams broken by drinking, drugs, and women. Then, on a winter night in 1982, not far from Ron’s home, a young cocktail waitress named Debra Sue Carter was savagely murdered. The investigation led nowhere. Until, on the flimsiest evidence, it led to Ron Williamson. The washed-up small-town hero was charged, tried, and sentenced to death–in a trial littered with lying witnesses and tainted evidence that would shatter a man’s already broken life, and let a true killer go free. Impeccably researched, grippingly told, filled with eleventh-hour drama, The Innocent Man reads like a page-turning legal thriller. It is a book no American can afford to miss. Praise for The Innocent Man “Grisham has crafted a legal thriller every bit as suspenseful and fast-paced as his bestselling fiction.” — The Boston Globe “A gritty, harrowing true-crime story.” — Time “A triumph.” — The Seattle Times
8. One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History by Ted Cruz Review Summary
One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History
WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER USA TODAY BESTSELLER PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AMAZON BESTSELLER With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s sudden passing, control of the Supreme Court–and with it the fate of the Constitution–has become the deciding issue for many voters in the 2020 presidential election. And the stakes could not be higher. With a simple majority on the Supreme Court, the left will have the power to curtail or even abolish the freedoms that have made our country a beacon to the world. We are one vote away from losing the Republic that the Founders handed down to us. Our most precious constitutional rights hang by a thread. Senator Ted Cruz has spent his entire career on the front line of the war to protect our constitutional rights. And as a Supreme Court clerk, solicitor general of Texas, and private litigator, he played a key role in some of the most important legal cases of the past two decades. In One Vote Away , you will discover how often the high court decisions that affect your life have been decided by just one vote. One vote preserves your right to speak freely, to bear arms, and to exercise your faith. One vote will determine whether your children enjoy their full inheritance as American citizens. God may endow us with “certain unalienable rights,” but whether we enjoy them depends on nine judges–the “priests of the robe” who have the last say in our system of government. Drawing back the curtain of their temple, Senator Cruz reveals the struggles, arguments, and strife that have shaped the fate of those rights. No one who reads One Vote Away can ever again take a single seat on the Supreme Court for granted.
9. Sisters in Law by Hirshman Review Summary
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Sisters in Law
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER The author of the celebrated Victory tells the fascinating story of the intertwined lives of Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the first and second women to serve as Supreme Court justices. The relationship between Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg– Republican and Democrat, Christian and Jew, western rancher’s daughter and Brooklyn girl–transcends party, religion, region, and culture. Strengthened by each other’s presence, these groundbreaking judges, the first and second to serve on the highest court in the land, have transformed the Constitution and America itself, making it a more equal place for all women. Linda Hirshman’s dual biography includes revealing stories of how these trailblazers fought for their own recognition in a male-dominated profession– battles that would ultimately benefit every American woman. She also makes clear how these two justices have shaped the legal framework of modern feminism, including employment discrimination, abortion, affirmative action, sexual harassment, and many other issues crucial to women’s lives. Sisters-in-Law combines legal detail with warm personal anecdotes that bring these very different women into focus as never before. Meticulously researched and compellingly told, it is an authoritative account of our changing law and culture, and a moving story of a remarkable friendship.
10. The Law Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained by DK Review Summary
The Law Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained
Why do we need laws? What rights are protected by law? When was forensic evidence first used in court? This book explores big questions like these, explaining the laws and legal precedents, and religious, political, and moral codes that have shaped the world we live in. Written in plain English, The Law Book cuts through the legal jargon and is packed with pithy explanations of the most important milestones in legal history, with step-by-step diagrams and witty illustrations that untangle knotty concepts. From the earliest laws, such as the Code of Hammurabi, through groundbreaking legislation including Magna Carta and the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act, The Law Book offers an engaging overview of legal history across the world all the way into the 21st century with copyright in the digital age, same-sex marriage, and the “right to be forgotten”. Covering the fight for universal suffrage and workers’ rights, and the establishment of international legal bodies like INTERPOL and the European Court of Justice, The Law Book explains the stories behind each milestone development. Continuing the Big Ideas series’ trademark combination of authoritative, informative text, and bold graphics, The Law Book uses an innovative visual approach to make the subject accessible to everyone, whether you’re a law student, a legal professional, or an armchair expert.