O. J. Simpson was one of America's top college and professional football players in the late 1960s and 1970s, but by century's end he was being remembered not for his gridiron exploits but for his role as the defendant in one of the most celebrated murder trials of the 20th century. Accused of the 1994 slayings of his estranged wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and of her friend Ron Goldman, Simpson was brought to trial in Los Angeles in a case that attracted enormous media attention both because of his earlier sports celebrity status and because of his race. From his arrest until his eventual acquittal, the Simpson case divided Americans along racial lines, with most blacks believing in his innocence and most whites convinced that he was guilty. Yet prior to these sorry events, Orenthal James Simpson was one of America's most beloved...