(2 of 2)
Douglas seems to have spent a great deal of his spare time struggling with deep-seated fears. At Yale in his late 20s he put in months with Coach Bob Kipmuth, overcoming a terror of the water gained in childhood when he almost drowned. After a horse fell on him during a trip and broke 23 of his 24 ribs, Douglas capped three months of convalescence by painfully mounting and remounting a horse for weeks.
While such anecdotes are moderately revealing, the book is essentially reticent. Douglas' four marriages and a full-scale psychoanalysis are only fleetingly alluded to. The second volume, which Douglas is still writing, will cover his court years and can hardly avoid being fascinating. Meanwhile, though, what the Justice believes and what he has done are all there. Douglas the man has slipped by. And that is precisely what Douglas the author seems to have intended.
José M. Ferrer III