Reviewers ‘Missed the Lede’ in Justice Thomas’ Book, Prof Says

Most early reviewers of the memoir by Justice Clarence Thomas focused on his anger against sexual harassment accuser Anita Hill to the exclusion of more interesting material, a new book review says.

Thomas doesn’t reach the subject of Anita Hill until 80 percent of the way into the book, says Professor David Garrow of Homerton College in a review for Legal Times. And his account seems “terse and restrained,” he writes.

“Yet My Grandfather's Son is plenty newsworthy, even if initial reviews and commentaries have ‘missed the lede,’ as journalists say when stories fail to highlight what's most important,” Garrow writes. “In fact, those accounts have missed multiple ledes.”

The most dramatic missed lede, he writes, are accounts of Justice Thomas’ early drinking problem. It continued until the early 1980s, when he spent many nights drinking alone in a small apartment. Yet it is not the only part of the book in which Thomas undergoes an “intense, soul-baring self-examination.” Other sections reveal his guilt over leaving his first wife and his sorrow over his grandparents’ deaths. He also acknowledges participating in an anti-war march that turned into a riot.