Taking the Stand; My Life in the Law

New York: Crown Publishers, 2013. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. ix, [1], 518 pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and academic. He is a scholar of United States constitutional law and criminal law and a noted civil libertarian. He began his teaching career at Harvard Law School where, in 1967, at the age of 28, he became the youngest full professor of law in its history. He held the Felix Frankfurter professorship there from 1993 until his retirement in December 2013, and has been a regular media contributor, political commentator, and legal analyst. He is also a prominent voice on the Arab-Israeli conflict and has written a number of books on the subject. Much of his legal career has focused on criminal law. His clients have included high-profile figures Patty Hearst, Harry Reems, Leona Helmsley, Jim Bakker, Mike Tyson, Michael Milken, O.J. Simpson and Kirtanananda Swami. Dershowitz reportedly was one of Nelson Mandela's lawyers. Derived from a Kirkus review: This memoir opens with an account of his boyhood, his intellectual awakening at college and his years at Yale Law School. After clerking for for Arthur Goldberg on the U.S. Supreme Court, Dershowitz became the youngest full professor ever at Harvard Law School. For more than four decades, he has used this perch to teach, write and speak about the law's intersections with science and psychiatry and especially about matters pertaining to constitutional and criminal law. Dershowitz has maintained an active appellate practice, and he narrates his life in the law through the many cases he's handled. Many of these feature high-profile clients like Leona Helmsley, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson and Bill Clinton. Known as a stout defender of Israel, Dershowitz has become an important voice in the evolution of American law, touching on a great breadth of issues, including capital punishment, affirmative action, pornography, national security, academic freedom and human rights.