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Recommended reading: Lane and Hajdu

By Mark Obbie

I'm back from the mountains: tanned, rested, and ready. Thank goodness I already was tanned before leaving, considering the amount of rain northern New York saw during my week there. But it was a good, unplugged getaway. Before I plunge back in to blogging and real work, a couple of plugs for the two books of legal history by journalist authors that I read when I wasn't hiking or snoozing:Chuck Lane's reason for leaving the Washington Post's Supreme Court beat -- upon his return from book leave he moved to the editorial pages -- was well worth it. The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction is moving, enraging, and essential reading for anyone interested in civil rights history. Chuck pulled at a thread that he noticed while reporting on the beat, and out came this tale of a horrific crime and its aftermath, resulting in one of the Court's most infamous opinions. It's a great read. One question that it never really seems to answer, though, is whether the Court's ruling in the Colfax Massacre case was legally incorrect, and not just a terribly unfortunate political outcome.My former Newhouse School colleague David Hajdu's book, The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, is more social than legal history. But it's a gem of First Amendment lore that has been largely overlooked in recent decades. I'm in awe of Hajdu's deep reporting and research, and the narrative that it yields, thanks to his talents.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on July 28, 2008 (boomark / email).