Jun 14, 2010

Pick of the Week


by Bruce Chadwick
He signed the Declaration of Independence, represented Virginia at the Constitutional Convention, and became America's first professor of law. With his close friend and former pupil Thomas Jefferson, who once described him as a "second father," he wrote an entire new legal code for the State of Virginia. At the age of eighty in 1806, George Wythe was loved, admired, and respected by all who knew him—all but one, that is. In I Am Murdered, celebrated historian Bruce Chadwick tells the grisly, fascinating, and often astounding tale of Wythe's murder and America's very first "trial of the century." Brimming with fascinating details of early nineteenth-century medicine, forensic science, and legal issues, this fast-moving account features compelling portraits of all major players in the case and asks penetrating questions about the many controversies that swirled around the trial.

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