Fight of the Century, Michael Chabon
Fight of the Century, Michael Chabon
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Fight of the Century
Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases

Author: Michael Chabon, Ayelet Waldman

Narrator: an All Star Cast

Unabridged: 11 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/21/2020


Synopsis

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case.

On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue.

Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance.

These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever today, and that we can never take our liberties for granted.

Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

About Michael Chabon

Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of many books, including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Gentlemen of the Road, Telegraph Avenue, Moonglow, Pops, and the picture book The Astonishing Secret of Awesome Man. He is the editor, with Ayelet Waldman, of Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation and Fight of the Century.

About Ayelet Waldman

Ayelet Waldman is the author of the memoir, A Really Good Day, as well as of novels including Love and TreasureRed Hook Road, and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. She is the editor of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women's Prisons, and with Michael Chabon, of Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation and Fight of the Century


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ben on December 12, 2019

This book is a conglomeration of essays by generally famous and excellent writers and artists. Each essay writer takes on one of the ACLU’s most famous cases and describes the case and it’s effects sometimes in a macro level and other times micro and personal. Often the shorts are quite moving and b......more

Goodreads review by Erik on June 09, 2020

If you were to take a moment and consider what life would be like in the United States had 100 years ago the founders of the ACLU not realized the necessity for a legal organization to protect our civil liberties, you might have shivers sent down your spine. In "Fight of the Century" a litany of hea......more

Goodreads review by Donna on March 10, 2020

In celebration of the 100th anniversary of the American Civil Liberties Union, a large cross section of the finest writers alive have written essays, each about one landmark case. Chabon and his co-editor, Ayelet Waldman, contributed their advance to the organization, and all of the contributing aut......more

Goodreads review by Porter on April 16, 2020

This book has multi personality disorder. Every chapter is written by a different position/person. Every chapter is read by somebody else. Some are told in first person, other in 3rd. Some are serious expirations into the case, others are simply people telling personal anecdotes. This creates a disj......more


Quotes

"This collection of essays highlights major case law argued by the American Civil Liberties Union over the last century. Works by authors such as Viet Thanh Nguyen, Neil Gaiman, George Saunders, and more are narrated by performers such as Samuel L. Jackson, Patrick Stewart, and Lucy Liu. Beyond providing a fascinating exploration of the work accomplished by the ACLU, the audiobook also presents listeners with a rich history of case law that makes aspects of the past and present meaningful and personal. Issues such as the internment of Japanese–Americans during WWII gain new perspective in relation to ICE raids and child detention centers. On the whole, the narrators prove to be well suited to the essays and quite often have personal ties to their topics."