#1 New York Times bestselling author Alan Dershowitz recounts his extraordinary coming of age in this legal autobiography, as well as the cases that have changed American jurisprudence over the past fifty years, most of which he has personally been involved in. “Overflowing with fascinating and funny vignettes involving his cases and clients, and probing and provocative insights into contemporary legal controversies.”— The Boston Globe Alan Dershowitz, the preeminent defense lawyer in America today, has been called the “winningest appellate criminal defense lawyer in history.” A professor at Harvard Law School since the age of twenty-five, he has led or been part of the defense team for such storied clients as Bill Clinton, Julian Assange, O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bülow, Mia Farrow, Jeffrey MacDonald, Patty Hearst, Mike Tyson, and countless others. In Taking the Stand, Dershowitz describes his evolution as a lawyer—from a C-minus student in Yeshiva High School to the youngest full professor in the history of Harvard Law School. In his #1 New York Times bestselling book Chutzpah, Alan described his Jewish life. In Taking the Stand, he looks at the people and events that have helped to shape his ideas about the law. He describes his formative years as a clerk for the United States Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. In the course of his career, he confronts the challenges of First Amendment law, the ongoing tension between individual freedom and national security, the questionable science often employed to prosecute accused murderers, the evolution of civil rights—and why the abortion rights debate in society hasn’t moved forward since Roe v. Wade . Filled with unforgettable cases and inside legal “baseball,” Taking the Stand is a deeply personal account of one of the legendary legal minds of our time.

This book is both a powerful personal memoir and the definitive history of an organization that helped change American society. Jack Greenberg was a key figure at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) for some thirty-five years. Most of the cases we associate from that period--school integration, equal employment, fair housing, voter registration--were LDF cases, either argued by Greenberg himself or litigated under his direction. Greenberg represented Martin Luther King, Jr., in Birmingham and won for him the right to march from Selma to Montgomery. Under Greenberg's leadership, the LDF forced the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith and integrated the University of Alabama when George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door. Greenberg won the cases in which the Supreme Court repudiated the "all deliberate speed" doctrine, which had made school desegregation intolerably slow. Through the 1970s and 1980s, LDF tackled most of the important cases that enforced the new civil rights legislation of the 1960s involving public accommodations, employment, education, and health care, and started the campaigns for prisoners' rights and against capital punishment. More than a history of the litigation that made the LDF so important, the book offers unique insights into its strategies, courtroom techniques, values, and personal relationships. Filled with stories only Greenberg could tell of his experiences with Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, Jr., Marian Wright Edelman, Lani Guinier, Roy Wilkins, Vernon Jordan, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Lyndon Johnson, and scores of others, Crusaders in the Courts is an epic saga of a critical period in American history as well as the poignant personal story of the evolution of a white Jewish lawyer into a major civil rights advocate.