... fascinating and revelatory ... The book is billed as an 'intimate portrait' of O’Connor, and it certainly is ... Thomas makes the most of this bounty, producing a richly detailed picture of [O'Connor's] personal and professional life ... Thomas avoids the case-by-case death march that is the plague of judicial biographies, and by focusing on a handful of decisions he gives a clear sense of how she understood her role ... Thomas pretty much lets O’Connor off the hook for her shabbiest moment on the court — her decisive role in the 5-to-4 travesty that was Bush v. Gore ... Evan Thomas’s book is not just a biography of a remarkable woman, but an elegy for a worldview that, in law as well as politics, has disappeared from the nation’s main stages.
...illuminating and eminently readable ... Thomas vividly sketches the attributes [O'Connor] used to clear the high barriers to female ascendancy ... In Thomas’s more generous interpretation, O’Connor’s judicial 'minimalism' flowed naturally from a realpolitik she’d honed as, well, a real politician ... The scenes of O’Connor retiring early to help care for husband as he struggles with Alzheimer’s are poignant; the news of her own diagnosis with that same brutal disease even more so ... Thomas gives O’Connor the credit she deserves.
...a book about a life more than a book about a judge ... From the many cases in which O’Connor participated, Thomas wisely emphasizes those that illustrate either her influence on the Court or an important turning point in her tenure ... Thomas’s description of O’Connor’s motivation [in Bush v. Gore] is plausible ... In the pages of this fine biography, we see O’Connor emerge as exceptional not only for being the first female Supreme Court justice, but for standing astride an ever-widening ideological gulf.
To his credit, Thomas does not shy away from the messier parts of O’Connor’s character ... By the end of Thomas’s book, one cannot but feel grateful to O’Connor. Superb as other women might have been as the First, none possessed her essential political ability, moderate tendencies, or unshakable belief in incremental changes to the law. It is hard to imagine that any other woman could have captured the same amount of public affection or respect ... First delivers the timely message that what the world needs now isn’t love, necessarily ... Deeply researched, benefiting from unprecedented cooperation from the O’Connor family, and richly entertaining, First is the happy product of that rare publishing phenomenon: the marriage of a historically significant subject with a mature, gifted, and empathetic writer. If the result is not the definitive work on the subject, it is as intimate a look into O’Connor as we may ever get.
The life of a judge is rarely the stuff of gripping biography. In the life of a Supreme Court justice, there is that magical moment when the president phones, but after that it’s mainly a lot of cases and opinions. Evan Thomas’s First: Sandra Day O’Connor ... inevitably suffers from that limitation, and the author’s gushing veneration of his subject doesn’t help ... There are delightful moments ... The question of when 'practical' becomes 'results oriented'—when a judge becomes less like a judge and more like a policy maker—is the great jurisprudential question of the past half-century. Mr. Thomas prefers to sidestep it.
A major biography like First by Evan Thomas draws its power not only from the people and events it depicts but also from the culture into which it’s launched. The white-hot polarization in the age of Trump makes Sandra Day O’Connor’s preference for cool civility and compromise seem especially appealing ... Thomas vividly sketches the attributes [O'Connor] used to clear the high barriers to female ascendancy: a knack for brushing past insults, relentlessness belied by a pretty smile, an almost superhuman level of energy, and, not least, a heroically supportive husband ... does give us a real sense of Sandra Day O’Connor the human being ... Thomas gives O’Connor the credit she deserves.
Peppered with tidbits about her personal life, the overall well-rendered portrait bears out the contradictory truths of her liminal position between traditional and evolving roles for women. At times, Thomas’ conclusions border on restrained, but that befits his subject ... Thomas ably shows O’Connor’s pivotal role in reaching resolutions regarding such issues as abortion, affirmative action, and voting rights. The author also sheds light on O’Connor’s nuanced legal prowess and her sensitivity to the tumultuous rise of partisanship. An important biography of a trailblazing woman, the book illuminates its subject’s strength at pinpointing a path forward in complex times.
