Straight had worked for Brandeis’s nemesis J. P. Neither the chart nor the article ultimately appeared in TNR. “I want you to understand right away that this chart and article will not be published without your consent,” Croly assured Straight. On one side, the chart connects each of the signers of the petition, led by Harvard President Abbot Lawrence Lowell, to each of the five hubs on the other side, the signers are connected to each other. There are five circles on the chart delineating the various hubs of the Brahmin oligarchy: the Somerset Club, banker, State Street, Back Bay resident, and large corporation connections. Croly enclosed a draft editorial called “The Motive of Class Consciousness,” and also a chart prepared by a lawyer in Brandeis’s office showing the overlapping financial interests, social and business connections, and directorships of fifty-two prominent Bostonians who had signed a petition opposing Brandeis’s nomination. In 1916, Herbert Croly, the founder and editor of The New Republic, wrote to Willard Straight, the owner of the magazine, about the Supreme Court nomination of Louis Brandeis. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon, 955 pp., $40) These letters record his controversies, his activities, his observations, and his hopes. Always an alert and perceptive observer of our national ways, he now found himself situated in Washington, the very center of the political and economic life of the American people. Defending his previous career, working for a Jewish homeland, traveling through Europe and the Middle East, quarreling with fellow Zionists, Brandeis retained a lively interest in world affairs. The period from the beginning of 1916 through the middle of 1921 was a period of dramatic activity for Brandeis. On January 28, 1916, President Wilson stunned the nation by nominating Brandeis to the Supreme Court, and the first half of the book constitutes a spirited defense of a life of controversy and public service, and the closest Brandeis ever came to an autobiography. The excitement and quality of drama which these letters convey spring from the exciting and dramatic events which called them forth.

The letters in this volume are easily the most intrinsically interesting of any that Louis D.

Louis D. Brandeis by Melvin I. Urofsky