"Half Brother, Half Son" The Letters of Louis D. Brandeis to Felix Frankfurter
From Library Journal This collection of 671 letters from Brandeis to Frankfurter--a third of which are previously unpublished--stretches from June 1910 to August 1941, five weeks before Brandeis's death. Revealing a steadily growing trust and friendship, they also tell something of Brandeis's views on the law, legislation, mutual friends, and judicial decisions. To read them is to be lost in a newsreel archive with American makers and shakers. Then, too, the letters also convey Brandeis's passions and concerns: the case of Sacco and Vanzetti, "Zionist unity" and a Jewish homeland, the fortunes of Harvard Law School, civil liberties, the cause of labor and labor unions, et al. Reflecting a busy life, they are spare indeed, not to be prized for their form or their sensibility. Yet they are valuable as testimony of a participant observer of wisdom and humanity. Anyone interested in the Supreme Court or the events of these decades will find these letters illuminating. - Milton Cantor, Univ. of Mas sachusetts, Amherst Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.