More than a century ago over 200 leading lawyers met in a schoolroom on Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Sixth Street to organize the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. They were hot with reform and with the sting of professional shame. Boss Tweed and his cronies were not only robbing the city's treasury, but, worse, were also corrupting the courts and judges.

Boss Tweed and his gang were routed but not without a long struggle and the help of many others in the city. Since that historical victory, the Association has taken up other "causes and conflicts," sometimes with wide success, sometimes failing, but continuing a wide variety of activities with unabated zeal.

George Martin tells of these struggles in this volume. It is the story of the Association through times of turbulence and times of trouble, including the famous March on Washington, the toppling of Mayor Jimmie Walker under the Judge Seabury investigation, and the Joseph McCarthy Era. George Martin has brought these great events and a number of no less interesting footnotes to history alive in Causes and Conflicts through these many vignettes about the Associations' leaders.