Jonathan Mahler

An inspiring legal thriller set against the backdrop of the war on terror, The Challenge tells the inside story of a historic Supreme Court showdown. At its center are a Navy JAG and a young constitutional law professor who, in the aftermath of 9/11, find themselves defending their nation in the unlikeliest of ways: by suing the president of the United States on behalf of an accused terrorist in order to prevent the American government from breaking the law and violating the Constitution.  

Jonathan Mahler traces the journey of their client, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from the Yemeni mosque where he was first recruited for jihad in 1998, through his years working as a driver for Osama bin Laden, to his capture in Afghanistan in November 2001 and his subsequent transfer to Guantanamo Bay. It was there that Hamdan was designated by President Bush to be tried before a special military tribunal and assigned a military lawyer to represent him, a 35-year-old graduate student of the Naval Academy, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift.                      

No one expected Swift to mount much of a defense. Not only were the rules of the tribunals, America’s first in more than 50 years, stacked against him, his superiors at the Pentagon were pressuring him to persuade Hamdan to plead guilty. But Swift didn’t believe that the tribunals were either legal or fair, so he enlisted a young Georgetown law professor named Neal Katyal to help him sue the Bush administration over their legality. In the spring of 2006, Katyal, who had almost no trial experience, took the case to the Supreme Court and won. The landmark ruling has been called the Court’s most important decision ever on presidential power and the rule of law. 

Written with the cooperation of Swift and Katyal, The Challenge follows the braided stories of Swift’s intense, precarious relationship with Hamdan and the unprecedented legal case itself. Combining rich character portraits and courtroom drama reminiscent of Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action with sophisticated yet accessible legal analysis, The Challenge is a riveting narrative that illuminates some of the most pressing constitutional questions of the post-9/11 era.

The Bronx is Burning
1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City
(paperback Picador, 2007)
(hardcover Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
 
Scheduled for release in July 2007 as an ESPN original miniseries, starring John Turturro as Billy Martin, Oliver Platt as George Steinbrenner, and Daniel Sunjata as Reggie Jackson.
 
A kaleidoscopic portrait of New York City in 1977, The Bronx Is Burning is the story of two epic battles: the fight between Yankee Reggie Jackson and team manager Billy Martin, and the battle between Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch for the city's mayorship. Buried beneath these parallel conflicts -- one for the soul of baseball, the other for the soul of the city -- was the subtext of race.
 
Deftly intertwined by journalist Jonathan Mahler, these braided Big Apple narratives reverberate to reveal a year that also saw the opening of Studio 54, the acquisition of the New York Post by Rupert Murdoch, a murderer dubbed the "Son of Sam," the infamous blackout, and the evolution of punk rock. As Koch defeated Cuomo, and as Reggie Jackson rescued a team racked with dissension, 1977 became a year of survival -- and also of hope.

The Lexus Story
The Behind the Scenes Story of the #1 Automotive Luxury Brand in America
(DK Melcher Media, 2004)

When Lexus launched, the idea of a Japanese luxury brand that would compete fender for fender with Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Cadillac seemed preposterous. But Lexus' first sedan shocked the world. The result of hundreds of prototypes, the work of more than 1,000 engineers, and some $1 billion, the Lexus LS 400 pioneered new ground. Within just a few years, Lexus had transformed itself from an unlikely outsider into one of the industry's leaders as it redefined the idea of the luxury vehicle while also building a dealer network that gave unprecedented attention to service. The Lexus Story describes the brand's rapid ascent -- and its travails along the way.

The Lexus Story is the first journalistic telling of the history of this extraordinary company. And it is the only account afforded full access to the designers, engineers, dealers, and company leaders who molded the cars and the brand. The Lexus Story takes readers deep inside the making of first-class automobiles, from the creative sparks kindled in Lexus' far-flung design studios to the engineering refinements that translate ideals of performance and luxury into steel, glass, and rubber. Designed to be both readable and visually welcoming and with more than 200 full-color photographs, The Lexus Story is a compelling history of a world-class brand.