Mr. Justice and Mrs. Black: The Memoirs of Hugo L. Black and Elizabeth Black

At his death, Hugo Black (18861971), a liberal, often controversial Supreme Court justice for some 30 years, had completed only part of his memoirs. That fragment, covering his rural Alabama childhood and early years as a Birmingham attorney, represents perhaps a quarter of this volume, the rest of which comprises a diary kept by his one-time secretary and second wife, Elizabeth, during the last 14 years of his life. The result is an odd, unsatisfying book, which offers glimpses of the justice's first experiences in the law of use mainly to specialists and (from his wife's diary) his working methods and thoughts regarding cases before the Court in the 1960s. Elizabeth Black's diary reveals mainly the close, loving nature of the couple's late-life marriage. (February 27)