My Grandfather's Son.

• Author: Shapiro, Ilya
• Position: Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas - Book review

My Grandfather's Son Clarence Thomas New York: HarperCollins, 2007, 289 pp.

Supreme Discomfort: The Divided Soul of Clarence Thomas Kevin Merida and Michael A. Fletcher New York: Doubleday, 2008, 422 pp.

Whatever you think of his politics or jurisprudence, Clarence Thomas is a remarkable man. Bona into desperate poverty in the Jim Crow South and raised by his illiterate grandfather, he would graduate from (and be completely disillusioned by) Yale Law School while battling personal and political demons that would have felled lesser mortals many times over. Now on the Supreme Court bench for over 15 years, Justice Thomas has established himself as a force to be reckoned with, a strong voice who has accepted and transcended his unfortunate notoriety.

In a life that was never easy, he is now settled (if not quite at ease). Though he did not seek fame, he accepted it when it found him-and uses his newfound influence judiciously. Tellingly, Thomas is now comfortable enough in his own skin and on the national stage to write a unique memoir.

My Grandfather's Son tells the story of a man who grew from an unsure Geechee-accented boy to a mature figure whose strongly formed opinions ring out from the highest court in the land. It starts with Thomas's departure from Pinpoint, Georgia, to live with Iris grandparents in Savannah and ends with his joining the Supreme Court. The interim journey takes him through religious schooling, radical black activism, and a string of positions in state and federal government--as well as near-bankruptcy, alcoholism, and a Failed marriage.

This account differs from any of the late Chief Justice Rehnquist's histories or former Justice O'Connor's recollections of her girlhood on an Arizona ranch. And Justice Thomas tells it in his own indomitable voice: sometimes angry, often bemused, 'always determined to show the strength and maturity he has acquired in becoming an embattled leader--the kind of man of whom his grandfather (whom he called Daddy) would be proud.

The first few chapters detail Thomas's family and how he came to alternately survive and thrive in a youth built upon Daddy's tough love. "Our first task was to get a good education," Thomas recalls, "so that we could hold down a 'coat-and-tie job.'" That education, that discipline, would get the future justice through Savannah's black Catholic schools (then as now considered to be better than public schools) and all the way to an all-white seminary in Missouri.

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