Max Lerner

"Max Lerner taught generations of Americans about their government: who rules, why, and how. For almost half a century, the office of the presidency preoccupied his prodigious energies and unparalleled expertise. Lerner not only wrote about the men who inhabited the Oval Office during that time, he knew them personally, from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton - and he knew what made them tick. Here, collected for the first time, are Lerner's complete writings on the presidency and American presidents." "Wounded Titans contains Lerner's classic essays on the presidency and its development. Here, too, are his most famous presidential portraits of Jefferson and Lincoln - the presidents he believed most significantly shaped both the office and our perception of it - as well as of the men who inherited the modern-day office created by Roosevelt. Each portrait combines a rigorous and unblinking analysis of its subject's place in history with a sympathetic appreciation of his humanity. Everything about the office of the presidency fascinated Lerner, including how someone ran for it. This volume also contains the best of Lerner's campaign journalism, written for his widely syndicated column, which appeared in the New York Post for over four decades."--BOOK JACKET.

The United States Supreme Court looms large in the public imagination. To many, its magisterial facade stands for the rule of law and the triumph of justice, a lofty and daunting symbol of the principles America holds to be sacred. But behind those towering pillars there has been so much infighting, intrigue, and backstabbing over the years that the legendary justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., reportedly described the Court as "nine scorpions in a bottle.". Nobody appreciated all of this more than Max Lerner, who was the acknowledged dean of Supreme Court observers. Beginning with the seminal articles he wrote for the Yale Law Journal in the 1930s, through to the New York Post columns that ran almost until his death in 1992, Lerner was driven by a passion to demystify the Court and to uncover the historical, social, and psychological underpinnings of its landmark decisions. He also believed in the majesty and even the mystique of the forum in which some of America's grandest dramas have been enacted, beginning the moment judicial review was established in Marbury v. Madison. Lerner was clear-eyed about the Court's human dimensions and could identify its moments of shame, but underlying his work is pride in the durability of the Court, which for so long has both reflected and profoundly affected American culture. . Nine Scorpions in a Bottle is the work of a lifetime, and its is Max Lerner's final work. Here are his celebrated portraits of John Marshall, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Earl Warren, and of course Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., whose judicial vision Lerner most respected. Not all justices receive judicious treatment; Lerner makes clear which he believes were the great legal minds and which were not. He traces what he terms their "constitutional journey," evaluating their judicial range and stature and assessing the impact they have had on those who succeeded them. Here, too, are his timeless discussions of the cases that continue to shape American society and legal debate, such as Brown v. Board of Education, The U.S. v. Nixon, and Roe v. Wade. . Case by case, justice by justice, Nine Scorpions in a Bottle shows us the trajectory of Max Lerner's own constitutional journey, one marked above all by an exuberant joy in the rigors of legal warfare waged at the very highest level. It will enrich every American's understanding of the Supreme Court.

This work brings together Max Lerner's extended and enduring essays on Aristotle, Niccolo Machiavelli, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Thorstein Veblen, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Combining biography and interpretation, Lerner insightfully examines a cluster of thinkers who helped shape his own influential work in political theory and civilizational analysis. Viewed collectively, these essays show Lerner's method and mind at their best. Like Lerner himself, the "masters" were tough-minded realists - philosophers who saw human experience in all of its variety as central to study. Less inclined to metaphysical speculation, they wrestled with the real concerns and circumstances of their times - but always within the larger context of ultimate meaning and consequence. Lerner eloquently introduces each philosopher and his work, but he also provides his own criticism and commentary. Complicated subjects are clearly presented, and cross-disciplinary analysis enhances the reader's sense of the whole. In his introduction, Robert Schmuhl discusses why Lerner was attracted to these particular thinkers and how they refined his approach to the human sciences. Schmuhl also traces the influence of these figures on Lerner's work. Magisterial Imagination will be of importance to philosophers, political theorists, and sociologists.

"Janet Frame, born in 1924, is New Zealand's most celebrated and least public author. Her early life in small South Island towns seemed, at times, engulfed in a tide of doom: one brother stillborn, another epileptic; two sisters dead of heart failure while swimming; Frame herself committed to mental hospitals for the best part of a decade. Later her surviving sister was temporarily felled in adulthood by a stroke, an uncle cut his throat and a cousin shot his lover, his lover's parents and then himself." "All this propelled Frame into a territory resembling that 'where the dying spend their time before death'. Those who return alive from such a place, she would say, bring a point of view 'equal in its rapture and chilling exposure [to] the neighborhood of the gods and goddesses'.". "This is a biography of a woman who climbed out of an abyss of unhappiness to take control of her life and become one of the great writers of her time. And to enable her biographer to write this book scrupulously and honestly, Janet Frame spoke for the first time about her whole life. She also made available her personal papers and directed her family and friends to be equally communicative."--BOOK JACKET.