"A fascinating account of the ascendancy of Williams & Connolly to the highest reaches of the American law firm universe. Eisler vividly portrays a driven meritocracy, red of claw and fang, mastering the legal jungle with detail-laced portraits of the firm's major players and the rivals they almost invariably obliterated. Not coincidentally, Masters of the Game is also a riveting reference guide to many of the nation's most dramatic public showdowns of the past fifty years."---Hodding Carter III, journalist, former assistant secretary of state to President Carter, and Professor of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill."This is a wise, authoritative, and highly readable book. Kim Eisler has spent a good many years studying how Washington and Washington law firms work. In Masters of the Game, he shares with us what he has learned and tells the dramatic story of one fabled firm."---Stanley Cloud, former Time Washington bureau chief and coauthor of The Murrow Boys and A Question of Honor."As he did in Shark Tank, Kim Eisler exposes the good, the bad, and the ugly about the world of corporate law through the fascinating lens of one of America's most unique, powerful, and controversial firms. A must-read for anyone contemplating a career as a lawyer."---Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union and Professor of Law at the New York Law School.Among the ultra competitive and often cutthroat world of law, one firm---Williams & Connolly---has emerged as the most powerful band of lawyers in American history. Going against the trend of law firms guided by public relations and marketing concerns, Williams & Connolly has created its own model while representing presidents, senators, and prime ministers, business leaders, major league sports teams, drug companies, and the world's most powerful newspapers and anchormen. Williams & Connolly has both helped elect a president and successfully defended would-be presidential assassins. Also, as in the case of Pfizer's Jeff Kindler or Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino, many of the firm's lawyers have gone on to become captains of industry. As firm founder Edward Bennett Williams often said in the last ten years of his life, he was building not just a law firm but a monument.In Masters of the Game, seasoned law journalist Kim Eisler focuses on five fascinating and important figures: Brendan Sullivan, the litigator who defended Oliver North and has rarely lost a case; Gregory Craig, who developed the defense that saved John Hinckley, brokered the deal that sent Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba, and was one of the most influential figures in the rise of Barack Obama; David Kendall, the Indiana intellectual who won acquittal for President Clinton in the impeachment saga; Bob Barnett, who built a cottage industry as a part-time book "lawyer" into the most influential media agent practice in Washington; and Lucchino, whose shrewd lawyer's mentality led the Boston Red Sox to their first World Championship in eighty-six years. The book weaves together the lives and careers of these five people into a dramatic, sometimes life-or-death narrative.Twenty years after the death of its founder, Williams & Connolly is now more powerful than ever, quietly and secretively controlling the strings of Washington's puppets. Eisler mines his unprecedented contacts and relationships with the firm's partners to spin a compelling insider's history of the firm that has helped shape the face of American society. Read Less