<![CDATA[Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas]]>

false <![CDATA[Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178854941m/846671.jpg 846671 1 William Orville Douglas was both the most accomplished and the most controversial justice ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court. He emerged from isolated Yakima, Washington, to be dubbed, by the age of thirty, “the most outstanding law professor in the nation”; at age thirty-eight, he was the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, cleaning up a corrupt Wall Street during the Great Depression; by the age of forty, he was the second youngest Supreme Court justice in American history, going on to serve longer—and to write more opinions and dissents—than any other justice. In evolving from a pro-government advocate in the 1940s to an icon of liberalism in the 1960s, Douglas became a champion for the rights of privacy, free speech, and the environment. While doing so, “Wild Bill” lived up to his nickname by racking up more marriages, more divorces, and more impeachment attempts aimed against him than any other member of the Court. But it was what Douglas did not accomplish that haunted him: He never fulfilled his mother’s ambition for him to become president of the United States. Douglas’s life was the stuff of novels, but with his eye on his public image and his potential electability to the White House, the truth was not good enough for him. Using what he called “literary license,” he wrote three memoirs in which the American public was led to believe that he had suffered from polio as an infant and was raised by an impoverished, widowed mother whose life savings were stolen by the family attorney. He further chronicled his time as a poverty-stricken student sleeping in a tent while attending Whitman College, serving as a private in the army during World War I, and “riding the rods” like a hobo to attend Columbia Law School. Relying on fifteen years of exhaustive research in eighty-six manuscript collections, revealing long-hidden documents, and interviews conducted with more than one hundred people, many sharing their recollections for the first time, Bruce Allen Murphy reveals the truth behind Douglas’s carefully constructed image. While William O. Douglas wrote fiction in the form of memoir, Murphy presents the truth with a narrative flair that reads like a novel. 832188 4 3 2003 Wild Bill: The Legend and Life of William O. Douglas total:17|5:2|4:9|3:2|2:3|1:1| 17 59 32 5 4 0 false false Mon Feb 25 18:45:40 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 25 18:51:50 -0800 2008
William O. Douglas may not have been a saint. But he was a legal visionary, environmental activist, prolific writer and ...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Nov 23 12:18:14 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 23 12:20:09 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Tue Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Fri Oct 30 11:43:23 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 30 11:44:33 -0700 2009 5 0 false false Sat Oct 20 14:36:30 -0700 2007 Sat Oct 20 14:37:31 -0700 2007 2 0 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 23 18:44:03 -0700 2008 Mon Apr 07 20:11:43 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Mon Oct 19 17:26:44 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 17:26:44 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Aug 19 08:42:09 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 19 08:46:51 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Jun 08 12:25:59 -0700 2009 Mon Jun 08 12:25:59 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon May 25 21:09:33 -0700 2009 Mon May 25 21:09:37 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun May 24 05:58:32 -0700 2009 Sun May 24 05:58:32 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Apr 06 08:40:35 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 06 08:40:35 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Thu Apr 02 12:28:31 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 02 12:28:45 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Sun Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Fri Mar 20 11:02:16 -0700 2009 Fri Mar 20 11:02:30 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Feb 24 08:19:28 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 24 08:19:28 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Jan 16 18:05:52 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 16 18:05:52 -0800 2009 4 0 false false Sun Jan 11 05:31:45 -0800 2009 Sun Jan 11 05:31:45 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Fri Oct 17 20:33:02 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 17 20:33:02 -0700 2008 0 0 false false Sun Sep 14 15:52:55 -0700 2008 Sun Sep 14 15:52:55 -0700 2008 1 0 false false Sat Aug 16 14:13:53 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 16 14:13:53 -0700 2008 4 0 false false Sun May 23 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Wed May 28 12:37:57 -0700 2008 Wed May 28 12:38:21 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=846671