Diagnosed with cancer at fifty-eight, and caring for a husband with Alzheimer’s, O’Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise. When she arrived at the United States 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. As a judge on the Arizona Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law.

She became the first ever female majority leader of a state senate. 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. When she graduated near the top of her law school class in 1952, no firm would even interview her. At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. She was born in 1930 in El Paso and grew up on a cattle ranch in Arizona.

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR and The Washington Post.

“She’s a hero for our time, and this is the biography for our time.”-Walter Isaacsonįinalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize

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.

Sandra day o connor books