John Marshall, Richard Brookhiser
John Marshall, Richard Brookhiser
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John Marshall
The Man Who Made the Supreme Court

Author: Richard Brookhiser

Narrator: Robert Fass

Unabridged: 9 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 11/13/2018

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

The life of John Marshall, Founding Father and America's premier chief justice.

In 1801, a genial and brilliant Revolutionary War veteran and politician became the fourth chief justice of the United States. He would hold the post for 34 years (still a record), expounding the Constitution he loved. Before he joined the Supreme Court, it was the weakling of the federal government, lacking in dignity and clout. After he died, it could never be ignored again. Through three decades of dramatic cases involving businessmen, scoundrels, Native Americans, and slaves, Marshall defended the federal government against unruly states, established the Supreme Court's right to rebuke Congress or the president, and unleashed the power of American commerce. For better and for worse, he made the Supreme Court a pillar of American life.

In John Marshall, award-winning biographer Richard Brookhiser vividly chronicles America's greatest judge and the world he made.

About Richard Brookhiser

Richard Brookhiser is the author of What Would the Founders Do? Founding Father, Alexander Hamilton, American, and America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918. Writer and host of the critically acclaimed PBS documentary Rediscovering George Washington, he is a columnist for Time magazine and a senior editor of National Review. He has also written for the New Yorker and the New York Times. Richard lives in New York City.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jean on December 14, 2018

In March 2018 I read Joel Richard Paul’s “Without Precedent Chief Justice John Marshall and His Time”. The book wet my appetite to learn more about John Marshall. When I saw this newly released biography of Marshall by Richard Brookhiser, I had to buy it. John Marshall (1755-1835) was the fourth Chie......more

Goodreads review by George P. on November 21, 2018

The life of John Marshall (1755–1835) spans the first and formative decades of the United States. Born in colonial Virginia, Marshall fought for American independence under George Washington, whom he revered as the beau ideal of a true republican and memorialized in a biography. “For the rest of his......more

Goodreads review by Ivor on March 04, 2019

John Marshal holds a very special place in American history. Without his leadership on the Supreme Court in the early years of the republic, establishing the Constitutional role of the Federal judiciary, this might be a different country today, if it would have survived at all. I have read two other......more

Goodreads review by Simon on August 18, 2024

Marbury had been a monument, this decision was monstrosity. I have doggedly dragged myself through lengthy biographies of George Washington and John Quincy Adams. It is therefore a nice change to knock off a short one of an early American public figure that conveys the parts that matter to me. It is......more

Goodreads review by Porter on March 30, 2019

This is a good introduction to some of the major Supreme Court cases that were tried under John Marshall, but is not nearly as good as Without Precedent: Chief Justice John Marshall and His Times by Joel Richard Paul. Brookhiser's book is not really a biography of Marshall. After a brief introduction......more


Quotes

"As Brookhiser shows in this brisk biography, Marshall's success was partly due to the power of his legal reasoning and partly to his brilliant management of the men who served with him on the Supreme Court...Marshall would doubtless be pleased that it is his ideas that dominate this biography, not his quarrels, debts, ambitions, or amours."—Foreign Affairs

"In Brookhiser's short and captivating biography, Marshall emerges as the institution's first great partisan operative.... The career of the great chief justice continues to this day to calibrate our expectations for the court."—New Republic

"Mr. Brookhiser explains [Marshall's] decisions, and the disputes that gave rise to them, with the clarity and verve that we have come to expect from his lapidary historical portraits...[A] fine book."—Wall Street Journal

"As Richard Brookhiser's fine new biography makes clear, the polarization of the age of Marshall matched (or even surpassed) our current battles over the composition of the Supreme Court...[A] balanced account."—New York Times Book Review

"Marshall's...sphinx-like quality has proved tempting to biographers, and Brookhiser's volume is the third to appear since the beginning of 2016. It is also the first that is genuinely satisfying.... Elegant and readable."— National Review

"Entertaining and instructive...Brookhiser brings to vivid life the gaudy facts and seamy characters behind such great cases as Dartmouth College and McCulloch."—Washington Post

"Informative without being dull, thesis-driven without being argumentative...Another good entry in the good series of works on the Founders that Brookhiser has been giving us all these years."—Washington Free Beacon

"Full of wisdom."—Florida Bar Journal

"A concise, informative, and at times entertaining biography of our nation's fourth chief justice."—Kirkus Reviews

"Richard Brookhiser brings his deep knowledge of the American founding, his appreciation for history's crisscrossing patterns, and his signature minimalist style to America's greatest chief justice. His book is also timely. For John Marshall's seminal conviction was that we were a single people, and that government was not 'them' but 'us.'"—Joseph J. Ellis, author of American Dialogue: The Founders and Us