Customer Reviews

Judging Thomas: The Life and Times of Clarence Thomas

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Any book about the current Supreme Court's most controversial justice is not going to please everybody. Thomas remains radioactive as a topic even after more than a decade on the Court. The author, an investigative reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, however has written a fairly balanced biography that neither embraces Thomas nor condemns him. In fact, although the author did not have access to the Justice's private papers and correspondence, he did extensively interact with Thomas in covering the Court and in researching this volume. This is not to say the book is without deficiencies. The most notable problem is that a very limited amount of attention is devoted to Thomas's decisions. Instead, readers are referred by the author to Gerber's First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas for in-depth analysis. The focus here is predominantly biographical and that has strengths and weaknesses in doing a judicial biography. The acid test of any Thomas biography, of course, is the Anita Hill controversy; here the author is somewhat too inclined to stake out an unsatisfying middle position: "Although it was plausible that Thomas said what Hill alleged, it seems implausible that he said it all in the manner Hill described"(at 251). Whatever one's views of Thomas, this book does afford a valuable insight into the forces that shaped him and how he ended up arriving on the Court. It will be interesting to see how Thomas's own forthcoming autobiography addresses the same issues as are covered here.

Several years ago, The Weekly Standard ran a cover story calling Clarence Thomas the most powerful conservative in America. He truly was at that time.

Foskett does a fair job stripping away the controversy and polemic to examine the man, his background, and his life. There is obviously the story of Thomas' confirmation to the Supreme Court, and a fair amount of time is devoted to those few weeks in the Justice's life. Far more interesting than that is his life before Washington, and before the political appointments, while he was still growing up under the stern eye of his grandfather, Myers Anderson.

Without understanding the world that incubated Thomas it is impossible to understand why he could view the world and the American judicial system as he does. To understand Clarence Thomas more fully one must understand Myers Anderson, the dominant force in his early years. Foskett accounts for the apartheid caste system of the Jim Crow south that trapped and warped so many people.

Passionate reactions about Thomas will exist for a long, long time. His ideas stand on their own merit. This book truly gives the reader a glimpse at the humanity of a man who thinks for himself and will set the judicial tenor of the court for years to come.

Few people are dispassionate about Clarence Thomas, but the author manages to hold passion in abeyance in presenting a well balanced -- and in many ways, inspirational -- review of the Supreme Court Justice's life and times. Love him or loathe him, it's hard for any reader not to come away from this book with enhanced respect for Thomas. . . for his success in overcoming obstacles in Jim Crow southern Georgia; for his equanimity and courage during the Senate confirmation process; and for the personal warmth and compassion that he masks behind a taciturn, often dour public demeanor. The author goes to great lengths to show how the values forged by Thomas's grandfather, Myers Anderson -- self-reliance, industriousness, relentless work ethic, pride, individual charity, skepticism toward government -- have helped to inform the Justice's worldview. The reader does not have to march in lockstep with Thomas's views to admire his Horatio Alger lifestory.

I was left wanting more. I felt the book was written to achieve a certain number of pages instead of providing me information about Judge Thomas. The book often provides far to much information about the people passing through his life. I was not interested in reading so much informatin about the people who employ him or the people he met on his life journey.

The book did address some of Judge Thomas early social ideas, but the book seem to be written without much input from Judge Thomas. I did not get the sense that I knew Judge Thomas after I completed the book.

such as "For a different view than the first four I see here, November 16, 2004 Reviewer: Felix (Silicon Valley).....see the review by Randall Kennedy for the Washington Post"

Why, Felix? The WP is one of the three worst newspapers in the USA, along with the L.A. Times and the N.Y Times. These "newspapers" are no more than left wing propaganda machines. They proved themselves to be far left during the election. Every day the WP prints whatever they can think up against the President and anyone in the administration, and almost never anything good that is going on in the country, or the good that has been done in Afghanistan, and Iraq. You don't know about the good because the "People's Propaganda" machines will not print it.

Of course, the WP will find, or dream up, or twist, or misinterpret, or tell half-truths and lies about Clarence Thomas. That's what they live for; to tell all the worst things they can dream up about every conservative. Did you see these major newspapers support Clinton's accusers like they supported the lying Anita Hill? Anyone could watch Anita and tell she was a liar; it was all over her face, and was apparent in her demeanor. That woman had one objective, and every left-wing wacko, radical feminist, socialist, communist,and liar on the planet tried to support her false claims that she twisted into ugly lies about innocent events.

These "reviews" are a waste of time. The left-wingers will write bad reviews and say the good ones don't help them. The conservatives will support Thomas, but at least they aren't lying.

Watch what the man does, and how he lives, then judge from what's true, not what's jaded opinion.

Under the link above "product details" to "see all editorial reviews," see the review by Randall Kennedy for the Washington Post