First: Sandra Day O'Connor

Evan Thomas chronicles the life of the first female Supreme Court justice, tracing her path from a remote Arizona cattle ranch to the center of American judicial power. The narrative focuses on Sandra Day O'Connor’s pragmatism and her role as the deciding vote on a divided Court. Thomas documents her struggle to find legal employment after graduating near the top of her class at Stanford, her time in the Arizona State Senate, and her approach to landmark rulings on abortion rights, affirmative action, and voting integrity. The biography uses privileged access to O'Connor’s personal journals to detail her private battle with breast cancer and her husband’s decline from Alzheimer’s disease.

This biography serves students of American jurisprudence and readers interested in the internal dynamics of the federal government. It appeals to those seeking a historical account of how a single moderate jurist shaped national policy during the late twentieth century. Readers finish the book with a technical understanding of the "swing vote" phenomenon and an objective perspective on how O'Connor’s frontier background influenced her preference for incremental legal change over sweeping ideological shifts.