These diaries present fragments from a remarkable life: the immigrant boy who became a counselor to presidents and a shaping force in the evolution of our Constitution into a twentieth-century instrument. As Henry L. Stimson noted, Felix Frankfurter had a talent “for keeping in touch with the center of things.” The life of his times at the level of decision and policy, the human tensions elicited by the possession of power pulse through the pages of his diaries. There are fascinating glimpses, from the inside, of the Taft administration, of Roosevelt’s Washington during World War II, and of the early years of the Truman presidency.