Abraham: the World's First (But Certainly Not Last) Jewish Lawyer / Alan M. Dershowitz 188 pp.

I was surprised by the readability and fresh tone of this somewhat unfocused overview.  Dershowitz looks at the faceted nature of the Abraham of scripture and how these different Abrahams can all be found throughout Jewish legal history.  Specifically, there is the Abraham who smashes his father's idols, the Abraham willing to obey God's demand to sacrifice his son, Isaac, or Dershowitz' preferred Abraham, the one who argued with God about the fate of the residents of Sodom.  Specific profiles of Jewish lawyers throughout history were interesting; Felix Frankfurter, for example, refused to use his power in the FDR administration to apply pressure to raise the numbers of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism.