A review by bryson_handy
The Great Dissenter: The Story of John Marshall Harlan, America's Judicial Hero by Peter S. Canellos

4.0

Originally I was set to give this book a three star review. While large portions were interesting and perfectly detailed the life of Justice John Marshall Harlan, other parts were redundant or could have been excluded. However, the important subject of the book, receiving the presence of Justice Harlan in the popular imagination leads me to give it another star. The gravity of Justice Harlan’s dissent in Civil Rights, Antitrust, Labor Rights, and the Insular Cases during the Gilded Age later the framework for the modern realisation of equal rights in America. For that, the book earns an extra star. While I don’t think the book needed to be this long, it still shed light on an important figure in the historic, and modern, United States.