Michael Meltsner: 3 books

Growing up in a Depression battered family, one tangled by a mortal secret, 'With Passion' tells the improbable story of an unsung hero of the civil rights movement who thought of himself as a miscast lawyer but ended up defending peaceful protesters, representing Mohammad Ali, suing Robert Moses,...

Novel, first published by Random House, about a liberal lawyer's urban journeys in New York, facing the angst of seeing his work undone by institutional inertia and his relationships undone by indecision and the handcuffs of people's expected roles. “...engaging and extremely well written first...

True, gripping 1st-person account of how a small band of determined lawyers, in a 9-year campaign in courts and the public, abolished the death penalty in the U.S. Their plan was as bold as the attempt to land on the moon. And while the victory was as impermanent as man's presence on the moon, the...