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Biography & Autobiography. Nonfiction. HTML:The remarkable story of Sandra Day O??Connor??s family and early life, her journey to adulthood in the American Southwest that helped make her the woman she is today: the first female justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and one of the most powerful women in America. ??A charming memoir about growing up as sturdy cowboys and cowgirls in a time now past.???USA Today In this illuminating and unusual book, Sandra Day O??Connor tells, with her brother, Alan, the story of the Day family, and of growing up on the harsh yet beautiful land of the Lazy B ranch in Arizona. Laced throughout these stories about three generations of the Day family, and everyday life on the Lazy B, are the lessons Sandra and Alan learned about the world, self-reliance, and survival, and how the land, people, and values of the Lazy B shaped them. This fascinating glimpse of life in the Southwest in the last century recounts an important time in American history, and provides an enduring portrait of an independent young woman on the brink of becoming one of the most prominent f… (more)
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An informative account of the early life and family of Supreme Court Justice O'Connor, LAZY B gives a fairly detailed account of what a family ranch was all about from the 1930s (Day-O'Connor was born in 1930)up into the 1980s, when both her parents
While O'Connor's story was interesting enough, its telling remained rather flat and humorless and never really engaged me, and I found myself skimming over many of the short anecdotal sections which make up the book. Sandra was the oldest of three children and there was a nine-year gap between her and her two siblings, Ann and Alan. She was sent away to school in El Paso and so spent less time on the ranch than did her siblings, especially her brother, who took over the day to day operations of the ranch as her father became older. I suspect many of the memories laid down here came not from Sandra but from her brother Alan, who is credited as co-author, even though the book is presented in first person. So, while the book is well-written enough, it has a ghost-written feel to it, which made it less engagaging. I would recommend it mostly for its historical importance, i.e. this is how one of our Supreme Court Justices grew up, and this is what ranch life in the desert Southwest was lke from the Depression years through the end of the twentieth century.