In 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the second-ever female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court (joining Sandra Day O’Connor). Two decades later, in her 80s, Ginsburg became a meme—the “Notorious RBG,” subject of Tumblrs, hashtags, signature cocktails (the “Ruth Bader Ginger”), nail art, and infant Halloween costumes. Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an equally stirring and highly entertaining new book by MSNBC journalist Irin Carmon and Notorious RBG Tumblr creator Shana Knizhnik, documents how, exactly, that happened.

The book explains how Ginsburg, who went by the nickname Kiki as a baton-twirling teen in Brooklyn, edged into the boys’ clubs at Cornell and Harvard Law School in the ’50s (she later became the first female tenured law professor at Columbia Law), also cofounded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU (while a young wife and mother of two), battled against sex discrimination, fought for equal pay, and ascended to the high court. Along the way, Ginsburg became, as one supporter put it, the “architect of the legal strategy for the women’s movement.”

If you admired RBG before, Carmon and Knizhnik will make you fall in love with her, not only as a feminist hero but a human being. The book offers fuzzy details about her marriage to fellow attorney Marty Ginsburg (one of the great, OG egalitarian partnerships), and her BFF-ship with O’Connor (and Antonin Scalia!). For good measure, Carmon and Knizhnik throw in a very special RBG version of fellow wordsmith Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Juicy.” (“Yeah—this song is dedicated to all the judges that told me I’d never amount to nothin’ because of my gender . . .”) Finishing Notorious RBG imbues you with the feeling, however pie-in-the-sky, that—with a great debt to RBG—you can do pretty much anything in the world that you set your mind to.

Here, the most intriguing, moving, and surprising things I learned about the iconic justice.

1. Ginsburg grew up reading Nancy Drew books, saying, “This was a girl who was an adventurer, who could think for herself, who was the dominant person in her relationship with her young boyfriend.” (Note to self: Buy a stack for daughter.)