First published 2011
Justice Antonin Scalia opens his analysis with a bold claim: without his wartime memoir, Dwight Eisenhower would never have reached the presidency twice. The general who achieved the greatest success from World War II faced an unlikely political future given his foreign-sounding name. Scalia traces how "Crusade in Europe" transformed not only Eisenhower's career but American copyright law itself. The book centers on two pivotal court cases: Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. and the subsequent Ninth Circuit decision in Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. v. Entertainment Distributing. Scalia shows how these legal battles over Eisenhower's work created new precedents that publishers and reprinters navigate today. The tension builds as Scalia reveals how a single memoir became the catalyst for fundamental changes in intellectual property rights. At its core, this work explores how one book's legal journey reflects the complex relationship between fame, literature, and law in America.
Genres: history, 20th-century, non-fiction, biography-memoir, military-history, law, academic, american-history
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-non-fiction, legal-drama
Setting: United States
Period: 20th Century
662 pages · Paperback · Ishi Press