Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Susan-Mary Grant is Professor of American History at Newcastle University. Her previous books include A Concise History of the United States of America, The War for a Nation: The American Civil War, North Over South: Northern Nationalism and American Identity in the Antebellum Era, and Themes of the American Civil War: The War Between the States (co-edited with Brian Holden-Reid).

"In this stylish distillation of the life of a towering American, Susan-Mary Grant wrestles brilliantly with the question of what Oliver Wendell Holmes’s Civil War experience meant for his subsequent career as a jurist. Richly informed and elegant in argument, this is contextualised biography of a very high order."— Richard Carwardine, author of The Global Lincoln"This is a superb biography of one of the most influential American jurists of all time. Consistently incisive, it demonstrates not only how Justice Holmes was affected by his jarring experience of battle during the Civil War but also how, subsequently, he sought to negotiate his country’s equally painful transition to modernity."—Robert Cook, author of Secession Winter: When the Union Fell Apart"Susan-Mary Grant expertly tracks Holmes from the battlefields of the Civil War to the legal minefields of the Progressive era, deftly navigating his complex positions on slavery, free speech, and other issues. Understanding Holmes, we better understand America's passage into the twentieth century."—Paul Quigley, author of Shifting Grounds: Nationalism and the American South, 1848-65

• Part I: Oliver Wendell HolmesIntroductionChapter 1: An Antebellum AdolescenceChapter 2: Citizen Soldier: The Brahmin on the BattlefieldChapter 3: The Doubts of Civil Life, Law and LogicChapter 4: A Soldier’s Faith Chapter 5: The Strenuous LifeConclusionPart II: DocumentsSelected Bibliography