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  • First

  • Sandra Day O'Connor
  • Written by: Evan Thomas
  • Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
  • Length: 16 hrs and 33 mins
  • 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 rating)

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First

Written by: Evan Thomas
Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
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Publisher's Summary

New York Times best seller • The intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of Sandra Day O’Connor, America’s first female Supreme Court justice, drawing on exclusive interviews and first-time access to Justice O’Connor’s archives.

"She’s a hero for our time, and this is the biography for our time." (Walter Isaacson)

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post

She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O’Connor’s story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings - doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.

She became the first ever female majority leader of a state senate. As a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law. When she arrived at the US Supreme Court, appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981, she began a quarter-century tenure on the Court, hearing cases that ultimately shaped American law. Diagnosed with cancer at 58 and caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s, O’Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise.

Women and men who want to be leaders and be first in their own lives - who want to learn when to walk away and when to stand their ground - will be inspired by O’Connor’s example. This is a remarkably vivid and personal portrait of a woman who loved her family, who believed in serving her country, and who, when she became the most powerful woman in America, built a bridge forward for all women.

Praise for First:

"Cinematic...poignant...illuminating and eminently readable...First gives us a real sense of Sandra Day O’Connor the human being.... Thomas gives O’Connor the credit she deserves." (The Washington Post

"[A] fascinating and revelatory biography...a richly detailed picture of [O’Connor’s] personal and professional life...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." (The New York Times Book Review)

©2019 Evan Thomas (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

“Before Ruth Bader Ginsburg, there was Sandra Day O’Connor, and O’Connor’s story has everything. In Evan Thomas’s brilliant and compelling book, we are given an intimate and gripping account of a pioneering American woman successfully seeking to thrive in an all-male world. Noble and flawed, selfless and ambitious, Justice O’Connor sought a more perfect union amid imperfect choices. Written with fluidity and grace, Thomas’s book is required reading for anyone interested in the role of women in America, the course of justice, and the nature of our politics. This is a landmark achievement about an American original that’s also, blessedly, a delight to read.” (Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Soul of America)

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