Louis D. Brandeis: A Life by Melvin Urofsky

This is billed as the first biography of Brandeis (1856-1941) that covers his whole lifetime, and weighs in at 3 pounds and a 1000 pages, it is at least the heaviest biography. Since I have no prior knowledge of Brandeis out side the fact that he was a Supreme Court Justice, it was all news to me.
The biography is a bit on the dry side stylistically. It does not read like a gripping novel, or even like somebody sitting down to tell you what is really interesting about this guy. There are several things that I thought were laudable about it. The first was that it was balanced. Brandeis did have some relationships and some business dealings that when exposed to the light of day were perhaps less than laudable. Don't we all, but the biographer was balanced in his assessment of his subject. The story flows the best in two cases: when he is describing the impact of a particular belief of Brandeis, so in the case of his support of social justice, and then when he is describing Brandeis as a family man.
The thing I found most interesting about Brandeis was his involvement with labor and management disputes. It is a nice assessment of how things should run, from both Brandeis' view point and my own. He delineates the responsibilities of both sides, and adhers to those guidelines throughout the negotiations. When he was dealing with the railroads and price hikes, he did exhaustive research into their finances and demanded they use real numbers to justify their position. In the case of the gamrent workers strike and subsequent negotiations, he had issues with both sides, and managed to emerge appearing neutral to both of them--a true victory. He believed passionately in social justice and personal responsibility, and he live by those tenets himself. He gave time, money, expertise, and perspiration to the causes he beleived in. I found the description of his 37 years of practice prior to his appointment on the Supreme Court to be as interesting as his 23 years on the court.
The years that he was a Supreme Court Justice are at a remarkable time and reveal not just Brandeis' world view but also how the court worked at that time, with some juxtaposition related to the workings of the modern Supreme Court. This part of the book is very strong and very interesting. Highly recommended book. But hard to life. Consider an electronic edition, or consider it part of a weight lifting program.