Roger Nash Baldwin and the American Civil Liberties Union (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780231119726)

Roger Nash Baldwin's thirty-year tenure as director of the ACLU marked the period when the modern understanding of the Bill of Rights came into being. Spearheaded by Baldwin, volunteer attorneys of the caliber of Clarence Darrow, Arthur Garfield Hays, Osmond Frankel, and Edward Ennis transformed the constitutional landscape. Company police forces were dismantled. Antievolutionists were discredited (thanks to the Scopes Trial). Censorship of such works as James Joyce's Ulysses was halted. The Scottsboro Boys and Sacco and Vanzetti were defended. The right of free speech for communists and Ku Klux Klansmen alike was upheld, and the foundations were laid for an end to school segregation.

Robert Cottrell's magnificent book recaptures the accomplishments and contradictions of the complicated man at the center of these events. Driven, vain, frugal, and tempestuous, America's greatest civil libertarian was initially also a staunch defender of Communist Russia, deferred to the U.S. government over the internment of Japanese Americans, and openly admired J. Edgar Hoover and Douglas MacArthur. His personal relationships were equally complex. Spanning a hundred years from the late 1800s through Baldwin's death in 1981, this riveting biography is an eye-opening view of the development of the American left.

Author: Robert Cottrell
ISBN-10: 0231119720
ISBN-13: 9780231119726
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/18/2001
Pages: 608
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.75lbs
Size: 9.26h x 6.23w x 1.35d

Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 01/15/2001 pg. 90
Publishers Weekly 01/22/2001 pg. 316
Booklist 02/15/2001 pg. 1090
Choice 07/01/2001 pg. 2020
Booklist 04/01/2002 pg. 1298