History

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence....

How much do you know about the Constitution of the United States or even about those brave men who are considered Founding Fathers? Sure, you may have been forced to read the Declaration of Independence in elementary school but do you even remember its intent? Listen to find out more….

The definitive account of the O. J. Simpson trial, The Run of His Life is a prodigious feat of reporting....

Esteemed legal scholar Michelle Adams tells the epic story of the struggle to integrate Detroit schools—and what happened when it collided with Nixon-appointed justices committed to a judicial counterrevolution.

Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The story of Thurgood Marshall's defense - depsite death threats and KKK intimidation - of four Black youths falsely accused of rape....

The dramatic story of the 1925 Scopes trial, which captivated the nation and exposed profound divisions in America that still resonate today—divisions over the meaning of freedom, religion, education, censorship, and civil liberties in a democracy.

Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes....

In this comprehensive and novel critique of originalism, Jonathan Gienapp targets originalists' unspoken assumptions about the Constitution and its history.

Stuart Banner's The Most Powerful Court in the World is an authoritative history of the United States Supreme Court from the Founding era to the present.

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army....

In his acclaimed #1 bestseller Dark Towers, David Enrich presented the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality....

In The Words That Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered....

Enemies is the first definitive history of the FBI’s secret intelligence operations....

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before....

A rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it....

Though often taken for granted, the modern American public defender is a recent invention with a surprisingly contentious history - one that offers insights not only about the "carceral state" but also about the contours and compromises of 20th-century liberalism....

No right seems more fundamental to American public life than freedom of speech. Yet well into the 20th century, that freedom was still an unfulfilled promise....

The author of the celebrated Victory tells the fascinating story of the intertwined lives of Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg....

Exhaustively researched and compellingly presented, The Presidents and the Constitution shines new light on America's brilliant constitutional and presidential history....

Jack M. Balkin argues that fights over constitutional interpretation are often fights over collective memory. Balkin shows how lawyers and judges channel history through standard forms of legal argument that shape how they use history and even what they see in history.

A documentary drawn from testimony at the Coast Guard’s official inquiry looks anew at one of the most storied, and mysterious, shipwrecks in American history....

The remarkable story of John Marshall who, as chief justice, statesman, and diplomat, played a pivotal role in the founding of the United States....

The fascinating story of the century-long attempt to control nature in the American wilderness, as told through the prism of a tragic death at Yellowstone....

In more than 2000 opinions, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. delineated an impressive legal philosophy that profoundly influenced American jurisprudence, particularly in the area of civil liberties and judicial restraint....

America after the Civil War was a land of shattered promises and entrenched hatreds....