Fight of the Century

Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases

Viet Thanh Nguyen author Jacqueline Woodson author Ann Patchett author Brit Bennett author Steven Okazaki author Michael Chabon editor Ayelet Waldman editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Simon & Schuster

Published:18th Mar '21

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Fight of the Century cover

The American Civil Liberties Union partners with award-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman in this “forceful, beautifully written” (Associated Press) collection that brings together many of our greatest living writers, each contributing an original piece inspired by a historic ACLU case.

On January 19, 1920, a small group of idealists and visionaries, including Helen Keller, Jane Addams, Roger Baldwin, and Crystal Eastman, founded the American Civil Liberties Union. A century after its creation, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.

In collaboration with the ACLU, authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays “full of struggle, emotion, fear, resilience, hope, and triumph” (Los Angeles Review of Books) about landmark cases in the organization’s one-hundred-year history. Fight of the Century takes you inside the trials and the stories that have shaped modern life. Some of the most prominent cases that the ACLU has been involved in—Brown v. Board of Education, Roe v. Wade, Miranda v. Arizona—need little introduction. Others you may never even have heard of, yet their outcomes quietly defined the world we live in now. Familiar or little-known, each case springs to vivid life in the hands of the acclaimed writers who dive into the history, narrate their personal experiences, and debate the questions at the heart of each issue.

Hector Tobar introduces us to Ernesto Miranda, the felon whose wrongful conviction inspired the now-iconic Miranda rights—which the police would later read to the man suspected of killing him. Yaa Gyasi confronts the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, in which the ACLU submitted a friend of- the-court brief questioning why a nation that has sent men to the moon still has public schools so unequal that they may as well be on different planets. True to the ACLU’s spirit of principled dissent, Scott Turow offers a blistering critique of the ACLU’s stance on campaign finance.

These powerful stories, along with essays from Neil Gaiman, Meg Wolitzer, Salman Rushdie, Ann Patchett, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, George Saunders, and many more, remind us that the issues the ACLU has engaged over the past one hundred years remain as vital as ever...

“Moving . . . Entertaining . . . It’s enlightening to watch some of our most masterly literary portraitists restore the warts and wardrobes, the motivations and machinations to those whose stories have been stripped down to surnames or pseudonyms.”
—Monica Youn, New York Times Book Review

"Vigorous, informative, and well-organized, this outstanding collection befits the ACLU’s substantial impact on American law and society." 
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A stunning collection of original and topical essays . . . [that] vividly brings consequential court cases to life." 
Booklist (starred review)
"A finely edited almanac of lively, contextually grounded stories that read like the greatest hits of freedom . . . Provides insights that are both riveting and refreshingly diverse." 
Kirkus Reviews

ISBN: 9781501190414

Dimensions: 213mm x 140mm x 20mm

Weight: 259g

336 pages