The Man (published in 1964) - the turmoil when a Black Man becomes President of the United States

Irving Wallace was born in Chicago, to Jewish parents,Bessie and Alexander Wallace Who had Emigrated from Russia. He completed his studies in California and started out as a journalist at a tender age of 15. He studied creative writing at the Williams Institute in Berkley and from the mid-30s he worked as a free-lance correspondent. In 1941 he married Sylvia Kahn; they had two children. Irving Wallace served in the air force during world war two and later collaborated in several movies as a writer. His first book “Sins of Peter Fleming" did not attract much attention. But his second book influenced by the Kinsey report was a best seller. He has been a prolific churner of best sellers and his books have been adapted as major movies.
As you read The man, you just feel that Wallace is holding a mirror to the society which has to prove itself in accepting people who we ourself prove to be different. Today the Barack Obama presidency rolls on you just cant be amazed by the events of the 60's where a racially charged America forced to accept a black president comes up to our expectation to truly prove its secular and equality credentials.



A quirky accident, kills the American president, vice president and the pro term speaker which throws up the question of succession. Douglas Dilman, the President Pro Tempore, largely a ceremonial position, is thrust in to the limelight to succeed the slain president. The ultimate question remains in the book lingering, will America boiling in the race cauldron accept a black president. The book follows the ethical and moral questions about race discrimination which emotionally scars and almost overwhelms a capable man.
Douglas has to maintains a distance with everybody. He cannot encourage any black friends for the fear of alienating white constituents. His family itself is torn between his son who enjoys being the beacon of black power to the daughter who has given up on her race. His relationship with his secretary, Edna Foster is very cautious one which involves a no close door policy. The other senators and right wing newspapers pillory his every stance right on domestic policies and international relations. The author portrays each cruel barb with such force that the reader feels enraged by the tactics of the villains. The portrayal of Eaton and Zeke Miller as ambitious upwardly mobile whites in a racially vitiated atmosphere is real.
But Douglas Dilman is no remote controlled mannequin. He slowly comes on his own confident in his abilities and truth which makes his opponents desperate. So the motion is set in to remove the president, the motion of impeachment. Soon character assassinations, threats and bogus impediments are laid down which actually befuddle the public. But will the truth survive, will the senate be blinded by color believe the lies of Miller and Co or uphold the constitution which says “ All Men Are Equal” and will Douglas Dilman win the trust of his children, lady love and the public to be true inspiration and commander in chief?
These burning questions remain and shades of Harper Lee's “try to kill a mocking bird also emerges”. A true inspirational story which will resonate through generations.

The Odessa File - Frederick Forsyth (1972)

After the Second World War, there was a quest to hunt for the Nazis to bring them to justice, and yet, a number of them were never caught. Some of them escaped to various countries in South America, others were co-opted by both the Western and Communist countries and some of them tried to stay underground in Germany itself. There has always been the belief that there was an organization called ODESSA (Wikipedia link) that sought to provide an environment in which former SS (the most feared and devoted Nazi) members would be supported and provided escape routes, and such an organization would seem logical as the war was ending, and former SS members knew that they would be persecuted by both the Soviet and Western forces. No less a Nazi hunter than Simon Wiesenthal believed that such an organization existed and accounted for how SS members managed to escape the manhunt.



Frederick Forsyth normally researches his novels in great detail, and you can see the results in this novel itself. The novel details the way in which ODESSA works, and how a reporter manages to get involved with the network. The story is set in 1963, and deals with Peter Miller, a freelance crime reporter who reaches the apartment of a suicide victim - the suicide is that of Salomon Tauber, a Jewish Holocaust-survivor from the Riga concentration camp, which was commanded by Eduard Roschmann, also known as "The Butcher of Riga" (wikipedia). He soon obtains a diary, which records that Tauber had witnessed Roschmann shooting a German Army captain.
After finding that there is not much resolve to convict ex-Nazis, he is approached by former concentration camp survivors and soon, he is determined to get into the ODESSA. After some training, he manages to get inside after meeting a lawyer who works for ODESSA. He slowly starts getting information on the entire system, but a chance mistake means that he is revealed, and now there is a hitman after him. It is now a quest to get away from the hitman while trying to get Roschmann. Will he succeed ?

Book Review: Thug By Mike Dash

Thug, (ठग), a member of the murderous Indian cult
Thug, slang for a gangster, a petty thief, or a minor villain, deriving from the above cult

For nearly two centuries, this lethal murderous cult made the life of the highway travelers hell throughout the central India, Rajputana and South (to some extent as well). Thugs were normal native people - nothing different about them - they used to do farming at their homes and then due to certain problems (like famine, bad crops, loans, etc...) they get onto highway and murder people for as little as eight annas.



The Thuggee cult was suppressed by the British rulers of India in the 1830s, due largely to the efforts of the civil servant William Sleeman, who started an extensive campaign involving profiling and intelligence. A police organization known as the 'Thuggee and Dacoity Department' was established within the Government of India, with William Sleeman appointed Superintendent of the department in 1835. Thousands of men were either put in prison, executed, or expelled from British India.The campaign was heavily based on informants recruited from captured thugs who were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew. By the 1870s, the Thug cult was extinct.

'Thug: The true story of India's murderous cult' by Mike Dash is the result of three years of research in the voluminous archives of the English East India Company, preserved in London, New Delhi and Bhopal. Mike Dash gives a competent historical account of Thug beliefs and practice, through to their extermination by Sleeman and his men. This book traces the history of Thugs, looks into their lives, their modus operandi, their victims, their leaders and their decline.

A wonderfully researched and written book, Thug by Mike Dash, is a honest attempt towards understanding this controversial subject.

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie (Wikipedia) was one of the most prolific writers in the detective genre and created two most unlikely characters in the form of detectives. Till then, the character of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes defined the character of the detective - a man who is exceedingly smart and knows it, but is not very vain, and who can be urged to great action when he needs to, also a man of great physical strength (even if his frame does not suggest it). Both the characters created by Agatha Christie were very different, with Miss Marple being a frail old lady, but with a terrific mind and ability to think through things (most of which occur in her village) even when she is engrossed in daily routine manners, and then the other character who is the central character of this novel, the egg shaped Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.
A vain man, who knows that he is very smart, and is not above telling other people about this. He is obsessed with things being proper, making sure that his mustache is well maintained and becomes uncomfortable when he finds out that people do not know about him. At the same time, he is very capable, like Sherlock Holmes, of putting facts together, and of being able to find the discrepancies that help him crack the crime. Hercule Poirot was introduced by Agatha Christie in 1920 in 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles' and appeared in 33 of Christie's novels and 54 short stories.



The story has a twist in the end, when Hercule Poirot actually presents 2 different options as to who did the murder, and presents it in such a way that the decision will eventually go only one way. The novel is set on the Orient Express, near Belgrade. Poirot is returning from a case in Syria, and gets a berth on the Orient Express with difficult, due to the help of his friend Monsieur Bouc, a director of the company which operates the Express. He meets a number of people on the train (and is very surprised at the fact that it is full, something very unlikely at this time of the year). He also meets a man who exudes violence, Mr. Ratchett, who asks him to act as his defender from people out to get him and Poirot refuses.
On the second night, he hears a noise in the night from the neighboring compartment, occupied by Mr. Ratchett. After some time, the conductor is called by Mrs. Hubbard who is terrified that somebody is in her coach. There is some further commotion, but then he sleeps. When he gets back, he is notified that the train will not move further since it is stuck in a snowdrift, and also learns that Mr. Ratchett has been murdered during the night, struck multiple times with a knife; and Poirot is the one called on for help.
After some investigation, Poirot discovers that Mr. Ratchett was actually a leader of a criminal gang and his real name was Cassetti. He was the chief leader of the plot to abduct the rich heiress Daisy Armstrong, and she was then murdered inspite of the ransom having been paid by her parents. Both her parents died subsequently, her mother in grief which induced an early childbirth and she died, her father shooting himself. It also caused suspicion in other house members such as the maid who was suspected and who killed herself because of this suspicion.
Poirot finds that the clues and events of the night are set in such a manner that every person has an alibi, sometimes from unexpected resources; and eventually starts to think in a holistic sense, trying out a theory that the other members of the investigating party (the official and the doctor) are unable to think through. Finally, through some conjecture (and this was the weak link in the book - everything seemed to settle through easily), he is able to deduce the actual facts and the names of the murderer(s). He then presents this theory, as well as an alternative theory to the other members of the team, and asks them to pick the one that they prefer. What choice do they make of the theory to present to the Yugoslav police when they will reach there ?

Tom Clancy: Executive Orders

If you have read some of my earlier reviews, you would not be faulted for assuming that I am a fan of Tom Clancy's writings. I have read most of his books, and found fault with few of them; in each of them I have gained a bit of knowledge about matters about which I did not know previously, whether it be the working of the US Government and its intelligence agencies (although this knowledge would be outdated with the sweeping changes introduced after the September 11 attacks in the entire intelligence hierarchy and the demotion of the CIA), the interaction between the various arms of the US Government (executive, legislature and judiciary), knowledge of financial institutions and the stock market, and the precise attention to detail that is paid to military matters. Some are controversial, including the one that starts this book.
The power of Tom Clancy as an author is in terms of how his various plots drag you into the novel (feel free to disagree if it does not have the same effect on you), and typically there are a number of sub-plots that seem to merge as you move on, and culminate towards a gripping conclusion. Of course, the conclusion is unlike a detective novel (where you might find out whodunit on the last page), you would know where all this is going to land up when reading the last 50 pages (except for the prequel to this novel, the 'Debt of Honor').



Surprisingly for Clancy, this novel has a couple of weaknesses in the sense that one of the sub-plots involving the anarchists never made much of an impact, and the ending of that plot was also a bit weak, and he could have removed it without any impact on the book (unless he made it stronger). Additionally, the concept of a sleeper agent exists, but for one to rise undetected through the ranks and reach so close to the President was a bit hard to believe, you would believe after all that such a person would sooner or later get swayed by the influence of the culture he lives in. Also, some of his characters are painted in a fairly negative way, for example the Iranian leader, even while explaining his motives, does not have anything positive for you to understand him as a complex character.
From this point on, there will be some detailing of the story, so if you want to avoid spoilers, you can jump away at any point and go ahead and read the novel.
Executive Orders was released in 1996 and starts where Debt of Honor concludes as a renegade Japanese pilot takes his jumbo jet and pilots it into the Capitol (The US Congress). (Imagine the shock when the September 11 attacks took place involving large jets colliding with buildings, including the fourth jet, brought down by passengers that was supposed to be attacking the US Congress). When you read the book including the details, you can begin to understand as why the World Trade Towers actually went down, and feel for the people who were affected.
Jack Ryan was supposed to be brought into the building for confirmation as the Vice-President, and since the President is now dead, he is defaulted as the new President, at a time when most of the Washington based central administration is dead (Cabinet Secretaries, Senators, Congressmen, Supreme Court Justices, all). As the book says, the US Government was gutted.
Tom Clancy has the concept of honor woven into his books, and Jack Ryan is a honorable man (different from most politicians) and will do what it takes to build the administration of the country up again, assisted by some able advisors such as the experienced Chief of Staff, a straight FBI agent made as the Acting Director, and his friends in the CIA as the CIA head (and he is accused of building up the Government in his image, maybe rightfully so, since putting your friends in prominent positions is a form of nepotism). He also has an unusual challenge where the resigned Vice-President, Ed Kealty claims a honor also by claiming that he did not officially resign and hence he should be the President by simple law. Unfortunately, Jack Ryan controls the Government and hence has a major lead.
Given that the heads of most Governments have not read the previous books :-) and do not know the inner strength of Jack Ryan, they under-estimate his capabilities. For example, when he does not display a seemingly political speech at the memorial of the victims, he is seen as not presidential and his overseas enemies feel that the time is right to defeat the United States.
The major incidents of the book get started when a person seemingly Saddam Hussein (although not by name), is assassinated by a deep undercover ready-to-die Iranian agent under the control of the Iranian cleric (Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei), Iraq is ripe for the picking (especially since Saddam never let a second line of command build up). Soon, in a carefully choreographed yet quick turn of events, all resistance inside Iraq melts and it joins Iraq (a bit difficult to believe since the rulers were all Sunni, very resistant to Shia Iran and would not have so easily joined up, but anyhow, let us continue). Now, if only they can get Saudi Arabia, then the United Islamic Republic would be in control of the holy places and the largest oil exporter in the world.
What stops them from doing do? Primarily the US, since it would not like the Saudi regime to be replaced by an clerical Iranian controller. So how to stop the the US from doing so; get some countries such as India and China to act as distractors, and then incapacitate the US by crippling with with a biological attack (an Ebola based warfare, lethal and described in great detail) as well as an assassination attack on the President directly.
The novel has some great parts on how Ryan acts as per his instincts, which are decidedly not leaning towards the Democratic Party (his spiel for strict constructionists for the Supreme Court sounds very much like Samuel Aito, John Roberts, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia - people whom I consider can set the rights of individuals back by a large degree), and his debate on whether to limit cross-state travel (though sounding correct) can be very ominous indeed, given that the current debates are all about using the need for fighting terrorism to set more control.
In the end, his struggle to beat Ebola is successful, and he is also able to set forth a principle about making leaders responsible by getting the Iranian leader killed; at the same time that a small section of his army, using its high-tech wizardry is able to beat the UIR army in a very believable way.
Why is the novel called Executive Orders ? Because the President governs within the ambit of laws made by Congress, and in the absence of Congress, he can govern with the issue of Executive Orders.

Tom Clancy: Without Remorse

Without Remorse is an attempt by the author to explain the emergence of his other main character (the main character is Jack Ryan, but there is also a CIA operational executive called John Clark), the man who carried out a number of field operations including execution and even spying (with mention in many books such Clear and Present Danger, Sum of all Fears, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders, Rainbow Six, Bear and the Dragon). The movie is set in 1971, in the middle of the Vietnam War.
Most people know of the Vietnam War as a major disaster where the US lost 54,000 soldiers and where it had to beat a humiliating retreat, but the Vietnam War was also the one where the US military developed its special operations forces to a major extent, including the SEAL teams, trained in extraction, working behind enemy lines, underwater jobs, and enemy executions. The novel tells the story of one extraction, as well as the story of a former SEAL whose girl-fried was killed by drug dealers in a macabre way, and his revenge using all his abilities. Without Remorse refers to this fightback and the cold blooded way in which this former special operations man targets drug dealers without any pity.
In the Vietnam War, many Americans Prisoners of War were kept in bad Prisoner of War camps, ill-treated and many times not reported to the Red Cross. They were interrogated and treated very badly. It was a mission for the Special Operations team to try and extract them, but this was also a political mission, needing permissions from the political leadership, with the risk of such operations being revealed. In fact, a previous such operation had been a failure, and given that there were also peace talks ongoing, the State department did not want to agree to such operations due to the fear of the peace talks collapsing.
The hero of this book, John Kelly was a former SEAL and a hero who had taken part in many operations in Vietnam, being a part of the SOG (Special Operations Group). He is now retired, and is in pain, having lost his wife in a road accident. At this point, he meets up with Pam, who has escaped from the torture of a brutal drug dealers network where she was one of the couriers as well as the comfort women for the drug dealers. However, as she is getting cured, in an exaggerated sense of bravado, Kelly exposes her to danger and she is taken from him (while he is shot to a near death state). She is soon killed by them in a particularly brutal way.
As Kelly recovers, he learns, and and that is when he vows to use his specialities to hunt down her killers (in a pretty well written part, the nurse and his future wife, Sandy, sees death in his face, a controlled and determined death). He starts his mission of recovery while the police case does not go anywhere. He is also approached by the military for another rescue mission in Vietnam because of his knowledge of the location. For this mission training, he is given a CIA moniker, John Clark, and starts training with the military.
He also starts dealing with the drug dealers, first finding the dealer who started Pam onto the life of prostitution, killing him, and then starting to kill more of them after interrogating them to find out about the main drug dealers, no mercy involved. In fact, were it not for the fact that Clancy was writing about death and murder, those are very well-written and detailed sections. He also rescues a girl and hands her to Sandy Toole (the nurse who helped him), thus making it clear to Sandy that in fact John is doing the drug dealer killing that is making the newspapers. When this girl is also killed after being rescued, he suspects that the police is also infiltrated and is more convinced that the drug dealers need to be killed. There is a very detailed section on the interrogation of one of the capture drug dealers using a standard compression and decompression chamber.
He rescues more girls, and in a stand off, kills the drug dealers behind the killings of Pam. By now the police have identified who could be behind this, although they have no evidence against him. In his rescue mission, he fails somewhat because the rescue mission has been leaked, but he kills the brutal Camp Commander and captures a Soviet air officer who was interrogating the prisoners. This is used to transfer the prisoners to a safe location so that they would not be killed.
In the end, Kelly gives up his identify and becomes a full fledged CIA person by faking a boating accident as he is being pursued by the police and the Coast Guard.

Tom Clancy: Patriot Games

This novel was written in 1987, after The Hunt for Red October became a major success. It is supposed to be set before that book, and in here is described the series of events that would turn Jack Ryan into a major character, and get him to enter the CIA. The book is pretty tautly written, and I have read it a number of times.
This time when I was reading it, there are so many passages in this book that are relevant now. The description of terrorism, human rights, how society should fight terrorism without becoming a ruthless instrument itself, all these are very eloquently mentioned in this book. It was worth reading just to get a feel of all this discussions, and the book talks about Irish Republican terrorists, who are not known for mass murders. In the current context, we deal with terrorists who are inspired by the more violent teachings of Islam and do not shirk from mass murder, on a scale not seen before from terrorism.
In addition, there are passages about how to counter international terrorism, with an event where there is cooperation between French, British and American intelligence to hunt down terrorism, and how such international cooperation is necessary. There is also a mention of a French military tribunal secretly convicting some anti-French terrorists whose capture was also a secret, and even though this sounds illegal, it seems necessary. When the French had tried to do an open trial, the terrorists had subverted the trial through illegal means, and hence the tribunal. Sounds somewhat similar with the current plans to have a military tribunal to convict the Al-Qaeda detainees. And this is where we have a clash - the concept of rule of law and justice is deeply ingrained, but it is also realistic that the terrorists do not respect any of these. As the movie 'The Siege' so eloquently put it, you need information to stop a bombing, there is a guy who knows it but is not going to disclose, and as per current law, you cannot force him to do this. I am sure that no one would want to be a decision maker in such a case, what do you do ?
This book is about Jack Ryan, a historian and former marine, also involved with CIA in a small way. He is in London for research, when he sees an attack by terrorists. He jumps in, kills one, wounds another and the third escapes. Jack also gets injured. Turns out he saved the Prince, Princess of Wales and their baby from a kidnapping plot by the ULA (Ulster Liberation Army), an offshoot of the IRA. After some time, the wounded terrorist escapes while being transported.
After being much feted, he returns to the US and back to his regular job; somewhat uneasy about the terrorists coming to the US to get back to him. However, logic says that foreign terrorists have never attacked the US inside the country (thanks to the FBI as well) and their funding will be impacted if they do so.
Well, they do, and Jack's wife and daughter are severely injured, but recover. This pushes Jack over to the CIA for getting back at the terrorists the way he can, and soon makes a name for himself. In another major section of the book, the Prince and Princess want to visit Jack at his home when they are in the US. The terrorists, aided by a local terrorist group, manage to attack the heavily guarded home and kill off most of the defenders and temporarily capture all the inhabitants. However, they manage to get free and are chased by the terrorists over water, eventually reaching a naval base where the terrorists are all captured.
This is a very gripping book, and the section about Jack's unease with regard to society and its interaction with the terrorists is very gripping indeed.

Mario Puzo: The Godfather

I guess more people would have seen the Godfather movies rather than read the book; but let me start by saying that this is a great book. The book is a fairly gripping book, establishing both the history of why the godfather became the godfather (Vito Corleone), and also the birth of the next Godfather, Michael Corleone. It does meander a bit in between when trying to explain various things, but overall is a very taut book.
The book takes the Corleone family, one of the 5 mafia crime families and the tensions between them. The book explains the motives and the development of characters for some of the main characters of the book, Vito Corleone, Sonny Corleone, Michael Corleone, Connie, Kay (Michael's wife), Tom Hagen, and a few others, but whose characters are not so well developed.
The book also explains numerous mafia activities to people who may not be well-enough acquainted with some of these terms, terms such as button man, hitting the matresses, omerta, La cosa nostra, etc.
The story explains how a poor Italian immigrant, a man of quiet nature, but internally a very powerful individual, slowly starts to be seen as a man of power, a man of stature and one who can influence things. He can get his people justice, deferment from the army, rough justice against anyone who has harmed them and so on. While reading this book, it would not seem strange at all that all these activities are illegal :-), they just seem natural. Slowly, he starts to build an empire consisting of political connections, book-keeping, races, and many other vices including the illegal running of alcohol. However, even such people have their own scruples, such as being against prostitution and drugs.
And this is what brings him down and decides the rest of the book. Vito refuses help to another family seeking to expand in the drugs field, and provokes an assassination attempt in which he is injured, and which brings his violent son Sonny into the field as the interim leader (his other son Michael is outside the family business, being a decorated soldier). Hence, in a quirk of fate, Michael gets involved, kills 2 people and escapes the country. In the ensuing gang warfare, Sonny is killed and Vito Corleone, The Godfather, gets up from his sick bed in an attempt to ensure the safe return of his son Michael back.
Vito makes a deal in which he accepts Sonny's death and foreswears all vengeance (although he is perceived as weak due to this lack of revenge) in order to get Michael back. The aim of course is long-term, to get Michael to take the revenge after setting him up as the Godfather. The latter part of the book is about this effort; how Michael gains the power of the family, how he turns from being a loyal American to the head of a major criminal family, and how he eventually carries out the revenge (by killing a number of the opposition families leaders, and also killing his own brother-in-law for the role he had in getting Sonny killed).
It is only at the end where the author puts a touch about that these people are bad people, when you see that the women of the family are praying for their souls. The book also depicts women and the African-American community in a bad light, thus depicting the inherent racism of the Italian (and maybe others) community as of that time.

Sydney Sheldon: If tomorrow comes

This is an incredibly interesting novel. The common motif running through Sydney Sheldon's novels is that of a strong woman character who faces challenges, and eventually triumphes.
If tomorrow comes is about a woman called Tracy Whitney, who is seemingly well set. She is in love with a rich handsome guy, and he, over parental disapproval is all set to marry her. In a tragedy, she finds that her mother has committed suicide after being cheated by a local hood. She attacks him, and he uses that incident to get her jailed, as well as convicted of a painting theft (so that he can benefit). She gets betrayed by her lawyer and the judge.
She is now in jail, subject to the pressures over there, and having been dumped by her fiancee who can't have relations with anybody who has been convicted for theft and is an attempted murderer. In jail, she comes across inmates who are used to dominating others, and is setup as a target by one of these. Another one such defends her, but she really needs to escape from jail. She gets a plot, but as she is moving away, she makes the choice of saving the jailor's son who is drowning.
She is now a heroine, and eventual public pressure gets her a pardon. So she is now out, but without a job. After not luck regarding a career (due to being an ex-felon), she joins a cheating crowd, and starts becoming an expert at cheating people. First she takes revenge on the people who betrayed her (and this is interesting reading, especially the part about the judge getting convicted of spying in Russia). The rest of the book is all about her various adventures in cheating people, as well as the attemtps of an investigator who is always on her trail.
This is a pretty gripping novel, and not something that you can easily put down. Fun to read, and the incidents don't seem very unrealistic. You can actually emphatize with the heroine, who is actually cheating people.

Book Review: "Of Power and Right"

So here I was browsing through a bookstore when I saw that they had a section for books on discount. Now I am always a sucker for good books at reduced prices, so off I went. There was this book lying there with a black cover that seemed to be about the US Supreme Court. Now I have always been interested in legal histories and constitutional law, and so I picked the book up. I have never regretted the move.
The book is called "Of Power and Right: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and America's Constitutional Revolution" by Howard Ball and Philip J Cooper (1992).
I am not a citizen of the US, nor am I affected by the laws governing the US, so why am I writing a review of the book?
The book presents an epic view of the US legal and social society through the goings-on in the US Supreme Court from the time of the New Deal to the removal of the race-segregation laws, and to the emergence of cases dealing with the rights of the state (government) vs. the rights of the individual. There are essentially 2 streams of thoughts about the power of the judicial system: Judges need to respect that the legislature is the expression of the will of the people and not try their own interpretation, vs. the interpretation that the role of a judge is to hold the constitution supreme and effectively use this as the benchmark for determining the validity of a law.
Justice Hugo Black was a believer in the first thesis (power), while justice William Douglas believed in the second one (right). The book details their initial career before their movement into the Supreme Court, and then really comes into its own. The interactions between the Justices, between the executive and the Justices, and the process (including persuasion and disagreements) used by the Supreme Court to come out with a judgement is all brought out in great detail, and helps to provide a high level of understanding. The cases dealing with the internment of the American citizens of Japanese descent during the second world war, the military tribunals dealing with German spies caught on American land, and specifically the most famous case of the racial segregation era (Brown vs. Board of Education) are all brought out in great detail in this book.
For a layman, the legal and judicial system is wrapped up in mystery when it comes to its intricacies. This book will go a long way in helping people understand how the judicial system works, and how the opinions of Justices drive the US Supreme Court.