Hugo Black's odyssey was long, varied, unlikely, and remarkably successful. It began in 1886 in the Alabama hill country and ended in 1971, when Americans were demonstrating in the streets. As a United States senator from 1927 to 1937 and then for thirty-four years on the United States Supreme Court as its most passionate civil libertarian, Black fought for the rights and welfare of all people. Here is the first full-scale biography of this commanding figure. Never before has the story been so richly told. Roger Newman reveals much we did not know -- about Black's activities in the Ku Klux Klan and the furor over his appointment by FDR to the Supreme Court. He takes us behind the scenes at the Court and into its secret conferences, showing us the preparation of opinions and explaining the relationships among the justices. Black is seen as he was -- a brilliant trial lawyer, the investigating senator called by one reporter "a walking encyclopedia with a Southern accent," and the wily politician and astute justice who led the redirection of American law toward the protection of the individual. Black's story, is also an American story, filled with vivid accounts of his friendships and often dramatic encounters with FDR, Harry Truman, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, Earl Warren, Lyndon Johnson, and William J. Brennan, Jr. Newman gives us a fascinating portrait of Black -- the captivating charmer with the steel backbone and stronger will, and the self-taught, scholarly, cracker populist who termed himself "a rather backward country fellow." More than a decade in the making, drawing upon an astonishing array of sources, including Black's family papers, to which Newman had exclusive access, and more than one thousand interviews, this moving, instructive biography is written with grace, sweep, and verve. A book to stand beside Beveridge's classic life of John Marshall and Catherine Drinker Bowen's popular Yankee from Olympus, Hugo Black is the extraordinary story of a man who bestrode his era like a colossus. Supreme Court Associate Justice Hugo Black is described by the author as controversial and influential: controversial for an earlier Ku Klux Klan membership; influential for his lasting impact on the law. Best known for an absolutist belief in the Bill of Rights as a guarantee of civil liberties, Black helped define modern American constitutional law. Newman almost lovingly delves into the private and public life of this complex man who characterized himself as merely a "country fellow." While there are other prominent works on Black, most, like Howard Ball and Phillip J. Cooper's Of Power and Right (Oxford Univ. Pr., 1992), focus on Black's often stormy relationships with Court colleagues like William O. Douglas and Felix Frankfurter. Black's memoirs, Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black (LJ 3/1/86), provided a first look at the private man. Now, Newman has brought both sides together in an admirable biography. If there is any real reservation, it is only that Hugo Black will compete for the reader's time and attention with Gerhard Gunther's Learned Hand (LJ 5/1/94). But we can only feel satisfied with two excellent judicial biographies appearing in the same year. Highly recommended. Jerry E. Stephens, U.S. Court of Appeals Lib., Oklahoma City Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. A majestic biography of the man who shed his Ku Klux Klan robes to become one of the most influential and liberal justices in Supreme Court history. Newman (Law/New York Univ.) spent 26 years researching Black's life, and the result is a massive work of uncommon depth and grace. In subtle, luminous prose, he describes Black's merchant-class childhood in Clay County, Ala., haunted by his drunkard father; his prosperous years as ``Ego'' Black, the personal-injury lawyer whose courtroom oratory and theatrical cross-examination style brought him statewide fame and a position in the Klan; his two terms as Alabama's senator, during which he transformed himself from an intolerant populist into a power-brokering New Dealer, well-versed in ancient classics and modern politics; and his 34 years on the Supreme Court, championing the Bill of Rights and judicial restraint. Newman plainly reveres his subject, but he is clear-eyed and sometimes critical: He presents Black's various self- contradictory rationalizations for having served as KKK ``Kladd'' (whose job it is to induct new members into the Invisible Empire), then notes that Black ``never really grasped, or could admit, the genuine outrage that the Klan caused, and not only among Catholics, Jews and Negroes.'' Newman also criticizes Black's failure to grasp ``the profound meaning gathered within the Fourth Amendment's words'' (forbidding unreasonable searches and seizures). But he celebrates and illuminates the rest of the enormous body of Black's jurisprudence, which includes the ideas that the Bill of Rights applies in its entirety to the states and that the First Amendment