Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1956-1961

Rating:
Summary: Very informative but dry
Review: This book is a decisive history of Thurgood Marshall's actions and the effects that he had on the civil rights of African-Americans while he worked with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His successes, failures, and discussions of his effects make it a very informative book. It is quite obvious that the author spent a great amount of time researching his topic of choice. The book is absolutely full of quotes from people of the time and very detailed factual accounts of events. Unfortunately, the content is not written in an extremely appealing matter. It tends to drone on and on about various cases and actions which have no major significance in history nor in the life of Marshall. If you can read through the dry spots, though, its a great book. You can really get a felling for the social climate of the era as well as the thoughts and feelings of Marshall himself. As a research tool, this was definitely the most valuable book I came across. If I was rating this book based on its information it would be an easy five. Ultimately, it is a good book for pleasure reading but not the best. I would have to say that Juan Williams' Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary is the best. If you are interested in Marshall's career, though, you want to look at Tushnet's other book Making Constitutional Law : Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 1961-1991.