Chutzpah

Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. First Edition. First Printing. Hardcover. Very good/fair. ix, [1], 378, [4] pages. Illustrations. Notes. Index. Small tears and creases to DJ edges. Presentation copy signed by the author. Alan Dershowitz Dershowitz's personal reminiscences about growing up Jewish in America, and his reflection on his generation of Jews in America--the changes they have witnessed, the changes they have created, and the changes that must still take place. Alan Morton Dershowitz (born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law in 1993. Dershowitz is a regular media contributor, political commentator, and legal analyst. Dershowitz has taken on high-profile and often unpopular causes and clients. As of 2009, he had won 13 of the 15 murder and attempted murder cases he handled. Dershowitz has represented such celebrity clients as Mike Tyson, Patty Hearst, Leona Helmsley, Julian Assange, and Jim Bakker. Major legal victories have included two successful appeals that overturned convictions, first for Harry Reems in 1976, then in 1984 for Claus von Bülow, who had been convicted of the attempted murder of his wife, Sunny. In 1995, Dershowitz served as an adviser on the murder trial of O. J. Simpson, part of the legal "Dream Team", with Johnnie Cochran and F. Lee Bailey. He was a member of President Trump's defense team in his first impeachment trial in 2020. Dershowitz is the author of books about politics, the law, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Derived from a Kirkus review: Flamboyant Harvard Law professor and appellate advocate Dershowitz writes engagingly and bluntly of the unique problems and challenges of being Jewish in general, and being Jewish in America in particular. With all the persuasiveness and `chutzpah'' for which he has become renowned in his criminal-defense work, Dershowitz assails the view that American Jews are merely `guests'' in a predominantly Christian America, and that American Jews must defer to views and sensibilities of non-Jewish citizens. He also rejects the notion that American Jews are `second-class Jews'' simply because they live in the heterodox US and have not migrated to Israel. American Jews, he says, `need not compromise either...Americanism or...Jewishness.'' Using as starting points personal anecdotes of his own childhood in the Orthodox community of Brooklyn, his education at Brooklyn College and Yale Law School, his brief period of law-firm practice, his Supreme Court clerkship, his academic career, and his involvement with such cases as the Jonathan Pollard spy case and a libel case against the anti- Semitic Polish Cardinal Glemp, Dershowitz explores issues of anti-Semitism, discrimination against Jews, and loyalty to Israel. Proudly, he urges American Jews to assert their own self- interest without guilt or fear. His narrative is absorbing, his discussions lively, and his arguments often convincing. An energetic and stimulating exposition of the primary political and cultural issues confronting Jewish Americans.