| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 96.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Without Precedent: The Life of Susie Marshall Sharp. By Anna R. Hayes. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008. xvi, 559 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8078-3214-1.)
Susie Marshall Sharp became the first woman in the United States to serve as chief justice of a state supreme court when she was elected to head the high court of North Carolina in 1974. Earlier, Sharp had served as a special judge and an associate justice on the North Carolina Supreme Court. Her career achievements were admirable at a time and place in which women were still rarities in the legal profession. However, despite her successes, one might question whether she deserves a five-hundred-page biography.	1
Anna R. Hayes is a lawyer in North Carolina who clearly has a great interest in the state's political history, even the machinations of minor officials at the county level. Including such detail in a biography seems superfluous. The book is filled with digressions and tedious explanations of the background of every character, even if the person rates only a single mention. Readers do not need that level of detail to follow the career of Justice Sharp.	. . .

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