What a neat book! Towing the careful and thin line that exists between a non-fiction narrative and a pure history book, Healy presents Holmes plainly — in all that he was and wasn’t. Perhaps most impacting to me is the context in which the free-speech discussions and debates took place back in the 1910s. The US wasn’t nearly the bastion of speech freedoms that it is today, it was actually significantly more limited and punishable.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this one. I’m grateful and better off having a deeper understanding of how Holmes’ great dissent came to be and have a much greater appreciation for the “liberal” movements at the time. How far things have come.