James Rosen has written a magnificent biography on the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia. The book, Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936 to 1986, recounts Scalia’s life story. It’s a perfect example of the right author meeting the perfect subject. Rosen is a veteran reporter who does meticulous research, writes beautifully, and has respect and understanding for conservative ideas. Scalia, of course, was arguably one of the greatest conservative minds of the last century. The result is a work that engages the mind and soul even as it illuminates its subject.

Rise to Greatness explores Scalia’s philosophy as an opponent of “ judicial activism ” — when a judge imposes a personal political preference in a case rather than rely on what is plainly in the written text of the Constitution or governing statute. While this is a book about important dates, history, and judicial philosophy, it’s also a story about faith and destiny. Scalia is like an action hero (the Spartan King Leonidas in 300 comes to mind) who has prepared his entire life to battle an invading, rampaging horde. In this case, the enemies are sloppy, convoluted thinking and secular liberalism.

Scalia was formed by his Italian family and also by Xavier, the Catholic high school in New York he attended in the 1950s. Young Nino’s father, a Sicilian immigrant, was a tough and critical bookworm who taught romance languages at Brooklyn College. His mother taught elementary school. Xavier “was the most formative institution of my life,” Scalia once said in an interview. The school was run by Jesuits, who, before becoming liberal in the 1960s, were known as “the pope’s Marines.” Scalia was shaped by the discipline, faith formation, and friendships he found within the school, as well as the three hours of homework a night dispensed by the priests.

Rosen uncovers new information that is revelatory. While Scalia never said he felt any great destiny calling him to the Supreme Court, Rosen interviewed Father Robert Connor, one of Scalia’s oldest friends. Connor and Scalia attended Xavier together, and when Connor left medical school to join the priesthood, Scalia was called to make sure his friend knew what he was doing. It was 1959, and Connor won Scalia over with his argument for Opus Dei. Connor then asked his fellow 23-year-old what his plans were. “Oh,” Scalia replied. “I am going to the Supreme Court.” He would go to the right law firm, he said, then to Washington, and “from there, I will rise.”

That’s exactly what happened. Scalia graduated at the top of his class from Georgetown University in Washington . He attended Harvard Law School, where he edited the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and graduated in 1960. Then he spent time on the D.C. Court of Appeals before he rose to the Supreme Court in 1986. He was confirmed 98-0.

Scalia died of a heart attack on Feb. 13, 2016. His death seemed a serious blow to conservative jurisprudence, but within a few years, the Trump administration would seat Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh , and Amy Coney Barrett. Roe v. Wade, which Scalia harshly criticized, was overturned last summer. Affirmative action, which Scalia got in trouble for criticizing, is also on the docket this term.

Scalia’s greatest rhetorical hits are all there: “The Court’s next bit of interpretive jiggery-pokery involves other parts of the Act that purportedly presuppose the availability of tax credits on both federal and state Exchanges,” he once wrote. On Obamacare, Scalia said: “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.” The Constitution is “not a living document,” he told a Southern Methodist University audience in 2013. “It’s dead, dead, dead.”

Scalia was probably our funniest Supreme Court member, although Justice Elena Kagan has some zingers. He referred to himself as “a two-time kindergarten loser” because he had to repeat that preschool grade. When his son got in trouble for lighting firecrackers, Scalia made sure the child knew it was serious and then, seconds later, recalled how, growing up in Chicago, his friends preferred the louder M-80s to firecrackers. Scalia, the father of nine, once said a first child was “like a pancake — if it’s not perfect, that’s OK — there are a lot more coming along.”

Scalia’s most revealing quote, however, involved his faith, which guided his entire life: “If I have brought any message today, it is this: Have the courage to have your wisdom regarded as stupidity. Be fools for Christ. And have the courage to suffer the contempt of the sophisticated world.”

Scalia: Rise to Greatness is a first-rate biography of a great man.

Mark Judge is an award-winning journalist and the author of  The Devil' s Triangle: Mark Judge vs. the New American Stasi . He is also the author of God and Man at Georgetown Prep, Damn Senators, and A Tremor of Bliss.