Stanley Kutler
Robert Cottrell's well-documented account of Roger Baldwin is a thoughtful portrait of a fascinating, commanding, courageous, yet terribly complicated figure. Cottrell's "warts-and-all" portrayal leaves no doubt, however: Baldwin is the central figure in the history of twentieth-century civil liberties. What would we have done without him?
Ira Glasser
Roger Baldwin was, in a way, one of America's founders. The original founders invented the Bill of Rights in the eighteenth century; 130 years later, Baldwin invented a way to enforce it. This is his story and it is told in rich and fascinating detail. A must read for those interested in how rights are acquired and kept.
David M. Rabban
Cottrell has written a comprehensive and very readable biography of Roger Baldwin, who founded the ACLU in 1920 and remained active in its affairs until his death in 1981. Cottrell portrays Baldwin's complexities and contradictions--the most important civil libertarian in American history was an authoritarian at home and at work, a patrician elitist as well as a political radical, and an unconventional moralist. Baldwin's long and eventful life provides fascinating insights into the history of civil liberties and of the political left in twentieth-century America.
Stephen J. Whitfield
The ACLU is the lengthened shadow of Roger Baldwin, who believed in defending the rights of "S. O. B.'s"--he announced-- so that the freedom of everybody else would be more secure. How Baldwin did so is the subject of this absorbing biography. Deftly told, splendidly researched, and pervaded with critical sympathy, Robert C. Cottrell's portrait not only advances our appreciation of the oddities of human character, but deepens our understanding of the dramatic enlargement of the Bill of Rights in the twentieth century.