Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

by Irin Carmon, Shana Knizhnik

Overview

Irin Carmon: I heard you can do 20 pushups.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Yes, but we do ten at a time. And then I breathe for a bit and do the second set.

Nearly a half-century into being a feminist and legal pioneer, something funny happened to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: the octogenarian won the internet. Across America, people who weren’t even born when Ginsburg made her name are tattooing themselves with her face, setting her famously searing dissents to music, and making viral videos in tribute. In a class of its own, and much to Ginsburg’s own amusement, is the Notorious RBG Tumblr, which juxtaposes the diminutive but fierce Jewish grandmother with the 350-pound rapper featuring original artwork submitted from around the world.

Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers a visually rich, intimate, unprecedented look at the Justice and how she changed the world. From Ginsburg’s refusal to let the slammed doors of sexism stop her to her innovative legal work, from her before-its-time feminist marriage to her perch on the nation’s highest court—with the fierce dissents to match—get to know RBG as never before. As the country struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stands as a testament to how far we can come with a little chutzpah.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504645423
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	10/27/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 5.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Irin Carmon is a journalist covering gender, politics, and law. She’s a contributing writer for the Washington Post’s Outlook section and a distinguished fellow at the Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard. She has been a national reporter at MSNBC, Salon, and Jezebel.

Shana Knizhnik is a civil rights attorney. While a student at NYU law school, she created the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr, a feminist website dedicated to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her lifelong fight for equality and social justice.

Andi Arndt is a professional voice actor, the winner of a 2017 Audie Award for Best Romance, and winner of two Earphones Awards.

Editorial Reviews

Notorious RBG may be a playful project, but it asks to be read seriously. It's an artisanal hagiography, a frank and admiring piece of fan nonfiction…Early on, we learn that Justice Ginsburg was a fan of Nancy Drew as a child, and Notorious RBG, with its earnest superhero framing, reads like a Nancy Drew novel itself…It's an Honest Abe tale for the 20-something set…There is much about Justice Ginsburg that remains enigmatic. The achievement of Notorious RBG is that the authors make this unassuming, most studious woman come pulsing to life.

The New York Times - Jennifer Senior

The authors make this unassuming, most studious woman come pulsing to life....’Notorious RBG’ may be a playful project, but it asks to be read seriously...That I responded so personally to it is a testimony to [its] storytelling and panache.

Jennifer Senior

In her fierce honesty, resolute realness, and, yes, innate sense of style (those collars!), Ginsburg emerges as a cultural icon worthy of her own fanbase.

Boston Globe

[R]iddled with fascinating revelations about the beloved and, yes, notorious U.S. Supreme Court justice…the book eloquently and thoroughly demonstrates once and for all that RBG backs her whip smart, often snarky one-liners with a substantive feminist legacy.

Mic

You may never get to chat with RBG herself, but through the book, you can let her quotes inspire you and guide your way in all of life’s events.

Bustle

If you admired RBG before, Carmon and Knizhnik will make you fall in love with her, not only as a feminist hero but a human being.

Vogue

[F]ull of feminist fairy dust. Read it.

Elle.com

A deeply original mashup of pop culture and serious scholarship. I plan to give a copy to both of my daughters.

Gilbert King

"Brooklyn, New York, represents no fear, confidence, and speaking your truth, and my dad and Justice Ginsburg lived those words. I think he would be honored to share the 'Notorious' title with her, and it's up to us to honor their legacies by continuing to fight for equality and justice for all by voting and getting into good trouble." 

CJ Wallace

After this treatment, surely, Biggie would agree that RBG truly is notorious.

NPR.org

This rigorously reported book shines a new light on the groundbreaking cases Ginsburg litigated challenging gender stereotypes.

Louise Melling

Carmon and Knizhnik write powerfully about the progression of Ginsburg’s legal career. In particular, they make vivid the development of her trademark arguments ... In her fierce honesty, resolute realness, and, yes, innate sense of style (those collars!), Ginsburg emerges as a cultural icon worthy of her own fanbase

Kate Tuttle

What a wonderful book: The annotated dissents! The knockout photos! Why she likes to write through the night! The litany of big cases she won as a lawyer, and how she picked them! How she made Bill Clinton cry! Notorious RBG is a laugh-out-loud joy to read.

Rachel Maddow

[The Notorious RBG] book mixes cheeky fan art with a serious – and stirring – account of Ginsburg’s life and work, covering everything from her trailblazing legal career to her current exercise regimen.

Rolling Stone

Clark Kent had Superman. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has Notorious R.B.G…. Carmon and Knizhnik have turned R.B.G’s robe into a cape.

New York Times Book Review

[R]iddled with fascinating revelations about the beloved and, yes, notorious U.S. Supreme Court justice…the book eloquently and thoroughly demonstrates once and for all that RBG backs her whip smart, often snarky one-liners with a substantive feminist legacy.

Mic

This breezy, fun and thoughtful take on the life of the Justice explains exactly why a new generation created and embraced the Cult of Ginsburg.

Jeffrey Toobin

RBG fans, both old and new, will love the story of her life....For those advocating for women’s rights or ‘equal citizen stature under the law’ as RBG prefers to call it—this will be fuel to your fire.

Latinas Uprising

Reading [NOTORIOUS RBG] feels like reading a story told by a very smart friend, interspersed with photos of brilliant fan art....Altogether, the book accomplishes a tricky task: celebrating Ruth Bader Ginsburg as an icon, while also making us see and understand her as a real person.

Bitch Media

It’s the combination of Ginsburg’s woman-hear-me-roar history, her frail-little-old-lady appearance and her role as the leader of the Supreme Court’s dissident liberals that have rallied her new fan base.

Gail Collins

It’s the combination of Ginsburg’s woman-hear-me-roar history, her frail-little-old-lady appearance and her role as the leader of the Supreme Court’s dissident liberals that have rallied her new fan base.” –Gail Collins, New York Times

No Source

It’s the combination of Ginsburg’s woman-hear-me-roar history, her frail-little-old-lady appearance and her role as the leader of the Supreme Court’s dissident liberals that have rallied her new fan base.” –Gail Collins, ,New York Times

New York Times

★ 02/01/2016
Ruth Bader Ginsberg (b. 1933) was Columbia University's first female tenured professor; she published the first casebook on sex discrimination; she was the second woman to sit on the nation's highest court; and she was the first Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex wedding. Ginsberg is iconic: she's a Halloween costume for all ages; her Cartoon Network alter ego, Wrath Hover Ginsbot, has been "appointed for life to kick your butt"; she's a recurring character on Saturday Night Live. Her "jabot with scalloped glass beads"—aka her dissent collar—is a feared weapon for justice. Her inspirational success on and off the bench—the diminutive octogenarian still does push-ups—inspired the Tumblr site Notorious R.B.G. (notoriousrbg.tumblr.com), "a digital tribute" whose moniker nods admiringly to late rapper Notorious B.I.G., invoking both stark contrasts and surprising similarities between the two headliners. Knizhnik and Carmon have seamlessly transferred digital to paper (fact-checked with RBG!) and going aural proves equally successful—albeit definitively different. While Andi Arndt reads RBG in all her fabulous notoriety, frequent references to downloadable enhanced visual materials (including RBG's annotated doodles!) can be distracting. VERDICT That said, this work does justice to Notorious RBG. ["The authors successfully situate [Ginsberg's] work within a larger historical context, thereby illustrating her central role in advancing equal rights for all": LJ 11/15/15 starred review of the Dey Street: HarperCollins hc.]—Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC

Library Journal - Audio

★ 11/15/2015
Rejoice! This is the year to celebrate the remarkable accomplishments of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), affectionately known as the "Notorious RBG." This eponymous—and humorous—book is the third recent publication providing biographical information and paying tribute to Ginsburg's Supreme Court opinions, with special attention to her famous—and influential—dissents. Coauthors Carmon, an MSNBC journalist who has interviewed RBG, and Knizhnik, recent alumna of New York University School of Law and creator of the Notorious R.B.G. Tumblr blog, bring a fresh, appropriately irreverent perspective to scholarship about the justice. In fact, this book is not at all scholarly—and this is a major asset. Rather, taking its chapter headings from the lyrics of late rapper Notorious B.I.G., it provides bare-bones biographical narrative and excerpts from a selection of Ginsburg's seminal opinions, while inserting cartoons, photos, poetry, and even opera lyrics. The brief, cogent excerpts from her court opinions are annotated in plain language by prominent legal academics. Moreover, the authors successfully situate RBG's work within a larger historical context, thereby illustrating her central role in advancing equal rights for all. VERDICT Perfect for general readers and academics who are fans of Scott Dodson's The Legacy of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [See "Editors' Fall Picks," LJ 9/1/15, p. 32.]—Lynne Maxwell, West Virginia Univ. Coll. of Law Lib., Morgantown

Library Journal

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