END OF THE YEAR 2013 BOOK CLUB

Richard Aldous, Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship (New York: Norton, 2012).

Sunil S. Amrith, Crossing the Bay of Bengal: The Furies of Nature and the Fortunes of Migrants (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013).

Michael Anteby, Manufacturing Morals: The Values of Silence in Business School Education (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2013) (From the bookjacket: "In an era when many organizations are focused in principles f responsibility, Harvard Business School has log tried to promote better business standards. Anteby's rich account reveals the surprising role of silence and ambiguity in HBS's process of codifying morals and business values. As Anteby describes, at HBS specifics are often left unspoken; for example, teaching notes given to faculty provide much guidance on how to teach but are largely silent on what to teach. Manufacturing Morals demonstrates how faculty and students are exposed to a system that operates on open-ended directives that requires significant decision-making on the part of those involved, with little overt guidance from the hierarchy. Anteby suggests that this model--which tolerates moral complexity--is perhaps one of the few that can adapt and endure over time.").

Vivek Bald, Bengali Harem and the Lost Histories of South Asian America (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2013).

Julian Barnes, Levels of Life (New York; Knopf, 2013) (See Sarah Manguso, "Latitudes of Grief," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/22/2013).

Roberto Bolano, The Unknown University, translated from the Spanish by Laura Healy (New York: New Directions, Books 2007, 2013).

Joseph J. Ellis, Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence (New York: Knopf, 2013).

Jeffrey Hopkins, Maps of the Profound: Jam-yang-shay-ba's Great Exposition of Buddhist and Non-Buddhist Views on the Nature of Realty (Ithaca, NY, & Boulder, Co: Snow Lion Publications 2003).

Leszek Kolakowki, Is God Happy?: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 2013).

Kwasi Kwarteng, Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World (New York: PublicAffairs, 2011).

D. T. Max, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (New York: Viking, 2012).

John Man, Ninja: 1,000 years of the Shadow Warrior (New York: William Morrow, 2012, 2113).

Ray Monk, Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center (New York: Doubleday, 2012).

Mary Nyquist, Arbitrary Rule: Slavery, Tyranny, and the Power of Life and Death (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2012).

Tom Reiss, The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo (New York: Crown, 2012).

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume One: The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1978, 1998).

Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought: Volume Two: The Age Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1978, 1998).

William T. Vollmann, Thee Book of Dolores (Brooklyn, NY: Powerhouse  Books, 2013).

SUGGESTED FICTION

Tan Twan Eng, The Gift of Rain (New York: Weinstein Books, 2008).

William H. Gass, Omensetter's Luck: A Novel (Penguin Books, 1966, 1997).

Denis Johnson, Angel: A Novel  (New York: Harper Perennial, 2002) ("[H]e looked at his lawyer for the first time. It was the same lawyer Bill Houston had always been saddled with--about five-six, round glasses and mustache, western string tie, a public defender looking twelve or thirteen and clutching a plastic briefcase with probably nothing inside of it. Bill Houston sat down across the table from him and said, 'I can't get up no confidence in you.' 'If you could afford fancy counsel, you wouldn't be here, the lawyer said. 'I'm assuming that.'..." Id. at 139.).

Charlie Lovett, The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession (New York: Viking, 2013).

David Markson, Wittgenstein's Mistress, with an Afterword by David Foster Wallace (Champaign, Il: Dalkey Archive Press, 1988, 2012) ("In spite of frequently underlining sentences in books that had not been assigned, I did well in college, actually." Id. at 43.).

Dalton Trumbo, Johnny Got His Gun, with a New Foreword by Cindy Sheehan (New York: Citadel Press, 1939, 2007) ("He wondered how he could have come through it alive. You heard about somebody scratching his thumb and the next thing you knew he was dead. The mountain climber fell off the front stoop and fractured his skull and died by Thursday. Your best friend went to the hospital to have his appendix taken out and four or five days later you were standing beside his grave. A little germ like influenza carried off five maybe ten million people in a single winter. Then how could a guy lose his arms and legs and ears and eyes and nose and mouth and still be alive! How did you make sense out of it?" Id. at 84-85. "Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead. If a man says death before dishonor he is either a fool or a liar because he doesn't know what death is. He isn't able to judge. He only knows about living. He doesn't know anything about dying. If he is a fool and believes in death before dishonor let him go ahead and die. But all the little guys who are too busy to fight should be left alone. And all the guys who say death before dishonor is pure bull the important thing is life before death they should be left alone too. Because the guys who say life isn't worth living without some principle so important you're willing to die for it they are all nuts...." Id. at 179-180.).

EASTERN THOUGHT INFLUENCE ON WESTERN THOUGHT

Hilda Gutierrez Baldoquin, ed., Dharma, Color, and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism (Berkeley, CA; Parallax Press, 2004) (Thich Nahat Hanh: "If you like to eat oranges, go ahead and eat oranges, but don't say that oranges are the best fruit. Besides oranges there are other fruits that are very good. You have the capacity to enjoy mangos, jackfruit, kiwis, and cherries. If in your whole life you only eat oranges, that would be a pity. If your whole life you can only be an American, and wherever you go you have to have a Hilton Hotel, it's a pity. You have to be free from this prison so you can live with others and  explore other ways, other arts, cultures, and traditions. That is civilization. Civilization is an open mind. Civilization is a view that is open, an attitude that is free. Civilization is opening your two arms to embrace all races, all people, and all species." Id. at 70. Michele Benzamin-Miko: "My mother was Japanese and her roots religion was Shinto an Buddhist, later to be Catholic. Her family was made up of farmers on her mother's side and Samurai on her father's side. My father was born and raised in America of mixed parentage, Czechoslovakian and German Catholic on his mother's side, and on his father's side Moroccan Sephardic Jew and Egyptian, and English Jewish. He is Catholic." Id. at 81. "Biracial marriage is complex and brave. Racism was my playground battlefield as a child...." Id. at 81. "As I walk the path of the warrior, love and tolerance are my great teachers. I call myself a warrior because I am a woman who comes from a long line of female warriors and I am discovering my strengths on a path traditionally walked by men. I feel my role as a woman in Buddhism is to pay homage to, honor, and love deeply my own mother, grandmother, and the ancestral mothers and sisters within the Buddhist tradition. This earth is fertile ground for a woman warrior to walk upon." "To be able to love unconditionally is freedom. My loving myself and others, beginning each day with gratitude, and committing not to harm myself or others, I can let go of the clinging and craving that is at the root of may suffering. Each day, I can face the future without fear." Id. at 83.).

J. J. Clarke, Jung and Eastern Thought: A Dialogue with the Orient (London & New York: Routledge, 1994) ("[A] global understanding is a necessary condition for self-understanding, for just as it is the mark of a mature person to be open to, and able to integrate, new and strange experiences, so too is a mature community one that is able to assimilate a variety of perspectives." Id. at 51. "[I]t is hardly surprising that the West has shown a great interest in the theory and practice of yoga. As Jung saw it, yoga represented first and foremost a discipline of self-discovery and self-development, a path of spiritual growth which involves the disciplining of the instinctual forces of the psyche and a penetration into the unconscious mind. As such it offers a necessary counter-balance to the extraverted tendencies of the West, a way of exploring and activating regions of the psyche which, in the West, have been ignored or even suppressed. Jung emphasized this point in drawing attention to what he saw as a sharp antithesis between the psychological attitudes of the East and the West. While the West tends to think of the spiritual world as involving an upward movement, as appropriately symbolised om the heaven-aspiring steeples of Gothic churches, the Indian, on the other hand, thinks in terms of downward movement, of self-immersion or sinking in meditation, as symbolized by the location of altars beneath ground level....What the European needs most urgently is to achieve a greater balance between these two movements, not by negating the upward tendency, but by developing the capacity to move downwards, to explore the unconscious, and thereby to rediscover our lost psychological roots  For all the great Western achievements in controlling nature, we have by some peculiar irony lost contact with it--in particular, with that aspect of nature which lies within the collective unconscious." Id at 109. "Herbert Guenther asserts that 'the point of meditation is not to develop trance-like states; rather it is to sharpen perceptions, to see things as they are'." Id. at 172.).

J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter Between Asian and Western Thought (London & New York: Routledge, 1997) ("None of this is to deny that orientalism may in some instances have proved to be a haven for the world-weary and the life-denying. It may also have offered to some a way of retreat from all things modern, from ideas such as those embodied in science, democracy, and progress. But it is important to counterbalance this with the recognition that orientalism endeavours have from the eighteenth century onwards often been directed towards goals which overlap with and support in certain respects the Enlightenment/modernist project, goals such as the eradication of narrow feudal attitudes and barriers, and the critique of indigenous religious and cultural traditions, and at the same time have defined and propagated the virtues of compassion, tolerance, non-violence, and humility. Orientalism has certainly opened the way for many who wish to tread the path to personal growth and spiritual fulfilment, a path which often conflicts with the extraverted demands and values of the modern world. But this is only a part of the picture which is extraordinarily rich and varied, and which has stimulate the mind and conscience of the West in so many different and fruitful ways." Id. at 204-205.).

J. J. Clarke, The Tao of the West: Western Transformations of Taoist Thought (London & New York: Routledge, 2000) ("Daoism in particular and the Orient in general have often taken on the counter-hegemonic role of critic and even subverter of Western beliefs and values. By virtue of its very cultural remoteness and difference, the traditional East has often been seen to stand as an especially sharp contrast with indigenous Western traditions, in particular those that we have come to call 'modern', and as such it has constituted a mirror in which the West has been able to scrutinise itself in a revealing and critical light. Its role as external commentator, reminding us of the historical contingency of our own world-views, philosophical assumptions and social practices, is one which...has a long history on orientalist discourse." Id. at 7. "Perhaps because of its perceived contrast with traditional European modes of thinking, the yin/yang theory has proved very attractive to Western minds and has been pressed into various kinds of polemical service. Most notoriously, the theory has been seen as offering some kind of solution to the gender imbalance believed to be endemic in the West, the Daoist cultivation of certain feminine qualities being seen to counterbalance the West's excessive masculinity." Id. at 72-73. "The admonition to live in accordance with the ways of nature certainly has great appeal in an age when we have not only cocooned ourselves in all kinds of prosthetic contrivances, but where these very contrivances, so promising of happiness and liberation, have begun to be a cause of harm and subjugation to their makers. Arguably, one of the great myths of modernity is that we can and should use all means in our power to control nature for the sake of human welfare, but we are now beginning to question whether the benefits of this new power outweigh the disadvantages." Id. at 85-86.).

C. G. Jung, The Psychology of Kundalini Yoga: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1932 by C G. Jung (Bollingen XCIX), edited by Sonu Shamsasani (Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1996).

Nancy Wilson Ross, The World of Zen: An East-West Anthology, compiled, edited, and with an introduction by Nancy Wilson Ross (New York: Vintage Books, 1960).

SUGGESTED FICTION, MOSTLY

Kate Atkinson, Started Early, Took My Dog: A Novel (New York & Boston: A Reagan Arthur Book/Little, Brown, 2011) ("Tracey cut the toast into triangles and arranged them on the plate. If it had just been for her she would have slapped a doorstep onto a piece of kitchen roll and been done with it. It was different having someone to do things for. Made you more careful. 'Mindful,' a Buddhist would have said. She only knew that because a long time ago she had dated a Buddhist for a few weeks. He was a wimpy bloke form Wrexham who ran a secondhand bookshop. She was hoping for enlightenment, ended up with glandular fever. Put her off spirituality for life." Id. at 117.).

Hilary Reyl, Lessons in French: A Novel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).

Susan Choi, My Education: a Novel ((New York: Viking, 2013).

Kate Christensen, The Astral: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2011).

Kate Christensen, Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites (New York: Doubleday, 2013).

Kate Christensen, The Epicure's Lament: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2004) ("'I wish I had become an artist. I didn't have the courage; I took the road most traveled. Law school? Any half-intelligent monkey can be a lawyer.'" Id. at 61.).

Kate Christensen, The Great Man: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2007) ("The unmarried old owner, Homer Meehan, the last surviving descendant of the family who'd bought it when it was built in the 1870s, had become too crippled to live alone and so was headed for an old-age home and was selling his family house. He left behind odd touches, like the Chinese-cardboard cartoon faces in the lav, ballpoint pen-scrawled maunderings upstairs on the wall of the smaller of the two bedrooms (her favorite: 'It's useless to give up and useless to persevere, so take the path of least resistance with your eyes and mouth shut'), and photos of wild animals mating or about to mate, cut from National Geographics and pasted in a free-form collage on the wall of the tiny boot room leading out to the backyard. Teddy had left all this handiwork untouched, partly out of her heartbroken reluctance to start over in a new place, partly out of an appreciation for weirdo eccentrics." Id. at 27-28.).

Kate Christensen, In the Drink: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 1999).

Kate Christensen, Trouble: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2009).

Kathryn Davis, Duplex: A Novel  (Minneapolis, Mn: Graywolf Press, 2013).

Kathryn Davis, The Girl Who Trod on a Loaf: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 1993) ("After the Great War, civilized people played bridge. Or more precisely, indoors they played bridge. Outdoors they played tennis. After the Great War civilized people thought they could substitute manners for morality. So it happened that by the time the monster had arisen, slavering, from its pit, it was too late; the habit had been formed. By that time, didn't everyone know that it was bad manners to interfere." Id. at 303-304.).

Kathryn Davis, Hell: A Novel (Boston: Back Bay Books/ Little, Brown, 1998, 2003).

Kathryn Davis, Labrador: A Novel (Boston & New York: A Mariner Book/Houghton Mifflin, 1988).

Kathryn Davis, The Thin Place: A Novel (New York & Boston: Little, Brown, 2006) ("It was hard being married to a romantic." Id. at 11. "Richard removed his reading glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose; then he put them back on and returned his attention to what what he'd written. The problem isn't animals, the problem is people, he read. Of course animals routinely ate other animals, it was in their nature. A wolf ate a lamb and thought nothing of it. When a wolf ate a lamb, it wasn't treating the lamb like something it wasn't. For a wolf to dwell with a lamb was merely the opposite side of the same coin: the key difference being that the wolf's appetite hadn't been activated. Whereas human beings since the dawn of time had continually used all of the resources at their disposal to treat other human beings like something they weren't, that is, not human. Human beings turned their young into walking bombs and sent them forth to destroy places of human habitation. Human beings wrapped other human beings in pitch and set them alight and mounted them like torches in gardens; they sewed them in the skins of wild animals and set hunting dogs in them. They scraped them with pincers, they tore out their eyes, they cut off parts of their bodies and roasted them. They gassed them, they starved them, they turned their bones to radium. There was no other side to that coin." Id. at 239 (paragraph breaks omitted).").

Kathryn Davis, Versailles: A Novel (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002) ("Of course death is never a coordinate, not for humans at least. Which is why it's wrong to say that a life gets cut short." Id. at 69.).

Kathryn Davis, The Walking Tour: A Novel (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999) ("'Business has to break the law to grow,' he told her, grazing. 'If it doesn't it'll die'" Id. at 17.).

Sarah Dunant, Blood and Beauty: The Borgias: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2013) (See  Liesl Schillinger, "Poison, Incest, Intrigue," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/7/2013.).

Jenni Fagan, The Panopticon: A Novel (New York: Hogarth, 2012) ("'You know what they don't tell you in this life, Anais, it's this, those...' She points at a wall of penis paintings. 'The phallus, the prick, the cock, whatever you want to call it, it's not the most powerful thing in the world.'... 'No. Like they think it is, they build skyscrapers and mosques and big weapons in the shape of penises, to make you think that it is.' 'Why?' 'Gender wars. Absolute domination, over that they fear. What men fear is a cunt, so they try and make the cock scarier. It's why they cut off girls' clitorises, and use rape as a war tactic. It's why the sentencing for rape is so offensively pathetic.' ... 'Men are scary, sometimes, Pat.' ''Aye, but it's all up here.' She taps her head. 'They want us to think rape's the worst thing that can happen.' 'It's not?' 'Look--I've been raped six ways from Sunday, and it wasn't the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was not as bad as losing my firstborn, it was not as bad as watching my mother die from cancer. I mean it was bad. I am not saying it wasn't bad; it was horrific, it made me stab one guy and I won't even tell you what I did to another. The point is: society's conditioned us, men and women, to live in fear.'" Id. at 198-199." Also, see Tom Shone, "Surveillance State," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/21/2013).

Karen Joy Fowler, Sarah Canary: A Novel (New York: Henry Holt, 1991).

Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn't See and Other Stories (Easthampton, MA: Small Beer Press, 2000). 
                 
Karen Joy Fowler, Wit's End: A Novel (New York: A Marian Wood Book/ C. P. Putnam's Sons, 2008).
 
Erica Jong, Fear of Flying: A Novel (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1973).

Anouk Markovits, I Am Forbidden: A Novel (London & New York: Hogarth, 2012).

Alice McDermott, Someone: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) (See Leah Hager Cohen, "The Drift of Years," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/8/2013.).

Gabrielle Roy, The Road Past Altamont, translated from the French by Joyce Marshall (Lincoln, NE: The Bison Press/U. of Nebraska Press, 1966, 1993) ("I always thought that the human heart is a little like the ocean, subject to tides, that joy rises in it in a steady flow, singing of waves, good fortune, and bliss; but afterward, when the high sea withdraws, it leaves an utter desolation on our sight. So it was with me that day." Id. at 102.).

Cathleen Schiene, Fin & Lady: A Novel (New York: Sarah Crichton Books/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) (See Christopher Benfey, "It Takes the Village," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/28/2013.).

May Swenson, Collected Poems, edited by Langdon Hammer (New York: Library of America, 2013) (From 'Poet's Choice': "Because of the dead grass we were fed in school--some of it was fine, but nevertheless dry from storage in the educational barn--when I began to write I was impatient with any form that smacked of the past. I hated symmetry, I hated the expected." Id. at 676, 676. I like those phrases, "dead grass," "dry from storage," and "educational barn." So much of it reminds me of the state of education in America, though the rise of 'corporate educators' is bringing about change, but not not improvement.).

BUILDING OR DESTROYING ESCAPE ROUTES FROM DEPRIVATION

Angus Deaton, The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2013) ("The Great Escape of this book is the story of mankind's escaping from deprivation and early death, of how people have managed their lives better, and led the way for others to follow." Id. at ix. "This book is about the endless dance between progress and inequality, about how progress creates inequality, and how inequality can sometimes be helpful--showing others the way, or providing incentives for catching up--and sometime unhelpful--when those who have escaped protect their positions by destroying the escape routes behind them. This is a story that has been told many time, but I want to tell it in a new way. [] Many books tell the story of wealth, and many others are about inequality. There are also many books that tell the story of health, and of how health and wealth go hand in hand, with inequalities in health mirroring inequalities in wealth. Here I tell both stories at once, taking the chance that professional demographers and historians will allow an economist to trespass into their lands, But the story of human wellbeing, of what makes life worth living, is not well served by looking at only one part of what is important. The great escape  does not respect the boundaries of academic disciplines." Id. at xiii-xiv. In thinking about the law, in preparing to teach my law classes, I often wonder whether the core legal issue or battle is between those who advocate rules, regulations, laws, and interpretation of such, that would built the escape routes and those that would destroy the escape routes for others. Often times Americans seem so much to possess a 'I've-got-mine,-you-get yours" character. We call it individualism, when in fact it is simply selfishness and greed.).

ASPECTS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Richard Breitman & Allan J. Lichtman, FDR and the Jews (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2013) ("Unlike other authors, we examine FDR's decision-making as president from the perspective of his life experiences and full political career." "Roosevelt's handling of the crisis of European Jewry may offer the best opportunity to understand the political dynamics of American responses to persecution and genocide in foreign lands. FDR was a man of faith. He recognized both moral issues across the globe and the practical concerns of governing a great nation. He served in office more than four years longer than any other president and was the only leader to confront both an economic depression and a major war on his watch. Not just Americans, but suffering peoples across the world looked to FDR for inspiration and relief from their hardships. How he responded, and why, reveal much about the strengths and limitations of the American presidency." "The story of FDR and the Jews is ultimately a tragic one that transcends the achievements and failures of any one leader. Even if FDR had been more willing to override domestic opposition and twist arms abroad, he could not have stopped the Nazis' mass murder of some six million Jews. For Hitler and his followers, the annihilation of Jews was not a diversion from the war effort, but integral to its purpose. For America and Britain, the rescue of Jews, even if piratical, was ultimately subordinate to the overriding priorities of total war and unconditional surrender of the enemy. 'Action expresses priorities,' Mahatma Gandhi said while engaged in a freedom struggle of his own." Id. at 6-7. Also, see David Oshinsky, "... Congress Disposes," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/7/2013.).

Wendy Lower, Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013) ("Hundreds of thousands of German women went to the Nazi East--that is, to Poland and the western territories of what was for many years the USSR, including today's Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia--and were indeed integral parts of Hitler's machinery of destruction." "One of these women was Erna Petri. [] Among the records were the interrogations and courtroom proceedings in a case against Erna and her husband, Horst Petri, who were both convicted of shooting Jews on their private estate in Nazi-occupied Poland. In credible detail Erna Petri described the half-naked Jewish boys who whimpered as she drew her pistol. When pressed by the interrogator as to how she, a mother, could murder these children, Petri referred to the anti-Semitism of the regime and her own desire to prove herself to the men. Her misdeeds were not those of a social renegade. To me, she looked like the embodiment of the Nazi regime." Id. at 3-4.).

Lynne Olson, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over WorldWar II, 1939-1941 (New York: Random House, 2013) (See Jacob Heilbrunn, "War Torn," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/28/2013.).

ETTY HILLESUM DIED IN AUSCHWITZ ON 30 NOVEMBER 1943

Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork, Translated from the Dutch by Arnold J. Pomerans, Foreword by Eva Hoffman, and Introduction and notes by Jan G. Gaarlandt (New York: Henry Holt, 1996) ("We know little about Etty's life before the war. Esther--her official first name--was born on 15 January 1914 in Middelburg...." Id. at xv. From a diary entry, from Amsterdam, dated 18 December 1942: "I know that those who hate have a good reason to do so. But why should we always have to choose the cheapest and easiest way? It has been brought home forcibly to me here how every atom of hatred added to the world makes it an even more inhospitable place. And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thirteen chapter of his first letter." Id. at 256. From a letter dated 10 July 1943: "This is something people refuse to admit to themselves: at a given point you can no longer do, but can only be and accept. And although that is something I learned a long time ago, I also know that one can only accept for oneself and not for others, And that's what is so desperately difficult for me here. Mother and Mischa still want to 'do,' to turn the whole world upside down, but I know we can't do anything about it. I have never been able to 'do' anything; I can only let things take their course and if need be, suffer. This is where my strength lies, and it is a great strength indeed. But for myself, not for others." Id. at 314. "Etty Hillesum died in Auschwitz on 30 November 1943." Id. at 365.).

SUGGESTED FICTION, or what to read to balance the brain when teaching Corporate Finance, Secured Transactions and Mergers & Acquisitions

Andre Aciman, Harvard Square: A Novel (New York & London: Norton, 2013) (See Clancy Martin, "Taxi Driver," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/5/2013).

Benjamin Black (aka John Banville), Holy Orders (A Quirke Novel) (New York: Henry Holt, 2013).

J. M. Coetzee, The Childhood of Jesus (New York: Viking, 2013) (See Joyce Carol Oates, "Saving Grace," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/1/2013).

Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at The End of The Lane: A Novel (New York: William Morrow, 2013) (See Benjamin Percy, "It All Floods Back," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/30/2013.).

David Gilbert, & Sons: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2013) (See Blake Bailey, "The Descendants," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/28/2013.)

Andrew Sean Greer, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (New York: Ecco, 2013) (See David Leavitt, "Second and Third Chances," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 7/14/2013.).

Pico Iyer, Abandon: A Romance (New York: Knopf, 2003) (From the bookjacket: "Abandon is a mystical romance in the classic Persian tradition brought into the bleached sunlight of Southern California today. But it is also an unexpected and distinctive look at the clash between Islam and the West, at a time when Los Angeles is partly run by Iranian exiles and the long-closed cities of Iran are slowly opening up to Westerners.").

Kevin Kwan, Crazy Rich Asians: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2013).

Alexander Maksik, A Marker to Measure Drift: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2013) (See Norman Rush, "Escaping the Past," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 8/25/2013).

Philipp Meyer, American Rust: A Novel (New York: Spiegal & Grau, 2010).

Philipp Meyer, The Son: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2013) ("A man, a life--it was barely worth mentioning. The Visigoths had destroyed the Romans, and had themselves been destroyed by the Muslims. Who were destroyed by the Spanish and Portuguese. You did not need Hitler to see that it was not a pleasant story. And yet here she was. Breathing, having these thoughts. The blood that ran through history would fill every river and ocean, but despite all that butchery, here you were." Id. at 415. Also see Will Blythe, "Lone Star" NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/16/2013.).

Benjamin Percy, Red Moon: A Novel (New York & Boston: Grand Central Publishing, 2013) (See Justin Cronin, "Cry Wolf," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/16/2013.).

J. K. Rowling (aka Robert Galbraith), The Cuckoo's Calling (New York: Mulholland Books/Little, Brown, 2013).

Carlos Ruiz Zafron, The Watcher in the Shadows, translated from the Spanish by Lucia Graves (New York & Boston: Little, Brown, 1995, 2013).

Colm Toibin, The Testament of Mary (New York: Scribner, 2012).

DANCE THE DANCE THAT IS BEING DANCED

"I remember what my grandmother used to tell me: 'It don't make no difference how well you fox-trot if everybody else is dancin' the two-step.'' James Alan McPherson, 'The Story of the Scar,' reprinted in Elbow Room: Stories (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1993), at 116, 124. Often times, especially in my professional life, I sense I am not dancing the dance being danced by everyone else.

James Alan McPherson, Crabcakes: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998).

James Alan McPherson, A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000) (I know how it feels to be an exile in one's country, in one's own home.).

THE RACE IS LONG

Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2008) ("'No race has ever been won in the first corner,' he said. 'But plenty of races have been lost there.' I looked at him. He reached out, settled his hand on the crown of my head, and scratched my ear like he has always done. 'That's right.' he said to me. 'If we're going to be a cliche, let's be a positive cliche.' Yes: the race is long--to finish first, first you must finish." Id. at 206.).

IN THE EVENT OF A CATASTROPHE

"PRACTICAL RECOMMENDATIONS IN THE EVENT OF A CATASTROPHE

    It usually begins innocently enough with an acceleration, unnoticeable at first, of the turning of the earth. Leave home at once and do not bring along any of your family. Take a few indispensable things. Place yourself as far as possible from the centre, near the forests the seas or the mountains, before the whirling motion as it gets stronger from minute to minute begins to pour in towards the middle, suffocating in ghettoes, closets, basements. Hang on forcefully to the outer circumference. Keep your head down. Have your two hands constantly free,.Take good care of the muscles of your legs."

Reprinted in Zbigniew Herbert, The Collected Poems: 1956-1998, translated from the Polish and edited by Alissa Valles, with additional translations by Czeslaw Milosz and Peter Dale Scott, & an introduction by Adam Zagajewski (New York: Ecco, 2007), at 262.

THE PROBLEM OF FULL EMPLOYMENT

Robert Pollin, Back to Full Employment (Book Review Books) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England, 2012) ("[W]e have to pose the question of full employment more precisely. It is not simply a matter of everyone spending their days trying to scratch out a living somehow. A workable definition of full employment should refer to an abundance of decent jobs." Id. at 12. "The real problem with U.S. employment conditions has never been globalization broadly defined, nor is it immigration or the trade deficit. [] The real problem is ... the absence of a full employment agenda tat takes account of the challenges presented by globalization, along with other major challenges." Id. at 62-63.).

BEYOND MERE COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF THE VALUE OF NATURE

David Keith, A Case For Climate Change Engineering (Boston Review Books) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London. England, 2013) ("The language of environmental advocacy has become increasingly technocratic. Calls for action rely almost exclusively on (seemingly) objective quantitative measures of cost and benefit that amount to a crude appeal to self-interest. We are urged to protect natural landscapes not because walking through them brings pleasure, but because of the ecosystem services they yield, services like oxygen and clean water. These arguments have merit, but I think they obscure much of what actually drives people's choices. If we are protecting a rainforest because it stores carbon or yields wonder drugs, then we should be happy to cut down the forest if some carbon storage machine or molecular biotech lab can better provide these services. If we are protecting a wetland for its ability to hold and purify water then we should be happy to replace it with a housing project development if that development includes technologies for water storage and filtration that does these jobs better than the wetland. For me the utilitarian benefits of nature are a grossly insufficient measure of its value. Id. at xv-xvi,).

BURYING ONE'S HEAD IN THE SAND REGARDING CLIMATE CHANGE

Kerry Emanuel, What We Know About Climate Change, 2d. ed. ( Boston Review Book) (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: MIT Press, 2013) (But even while science has reached a strong consensus that climate is indeed changing, that the change is caused mostly by us, and that it poses important risks, public recognition of and concern about these risks has diminished, particularly in the United States." Id. at ix-x. "There are other obstacles to taking a sensible approach to the climate problem. We have precious few representatives in Congress with a background or interest in science, and some of the others display an active contempt for the subject. As long as we continue to elect scientific illiterates such as James Inhofe, who believes global warming to be a hoax, we will be discouraged from engaging in intelligent debate at the policy level." Id. at 92-93.).

AND THE NATIONS WERE ANGRY, AND THY WRATH IS COME . . . ---REVELATIONS, XI:18

A. Scott Berg, Wilson (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2013) Yet, see Kevin Baker, "Professor in Chief," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/22/2013, at 14: "Nowhere does [Berg] address Margaret MacMillan's argument in 'Paris 1919' that the whole idea of a tragic peace is overstated--that deconstructing the ancient empires leveled by World War I was too complicated a task to have ever gone well, and that there was no conceivable peace the Germans would not have resented." "Yes, we should have joined Wilson's League. But how much would a deeply isolationist and distracted America have wanted to intervent in the Europe of the 1930s? How much would England and France have allowed us to do so? In short, did Woodrow Wilson's martydom really matter so much in the end . . . or is it more a story we like to tell ourselves?").

Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (New York: Harper, 2013) ("It is the central argument of this book that the events of July 1914 make sense only when we illuminate the journeys travelled by the key decision-makers. To do this, we need to do more than simply revisit the sequence of international 'crises' that preceded the outbreak of war--we need to understand how those events were experienced and woven into narratives that structured perceptions and motivated behaviour. Why did the men whose decisions took Europe to war behave and see things as they did? How did the sense of fearfulness and foreboding that one finds in so many of the sources connect with the arrogance and swaggering we encounter--often in the very same individuals? Why did such exotic features of the pre-war scene as the Albanian Question and the 'Bulgarian loan' matter so much, and how were they joined up in the heads of those who had political power? When decision-makers discoursed on the international situation or on external threats, were they seeing something real, or projecting their own fears and desires on to their opponents, or both? The aim has been to reconstruct as vividly as possible the highly dynamic 'decision posiition' occupied by the key actors before and during the summer of 1913." Id. at xxx-xxxi. "In [a] sense, the protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world." Id. at 562. "The last section of the book was written at the height of the Eurozone financial crisis or 2011-2012-- present-day event of baffling complexity. It was notable that the actors in the Eurozone crisis, like those of 1914, were aware that there was a possible outcome that would be generally catastrophic (the failure of the euro). All the key protagonists hoped that this would not happen, but in addition to this shared interest, they also had special--and conflicting--interests of their own. Given the inter-relationships across the system, the consequences of any one action depended on the responsive actions of others, which were hard to calculate in advance, because of the opacity of decision-making processes. And all the while, political actors in the Eurozone crisis exploited the possibility of the general catastrophe as leverage in securing their own specific advantages." Id. at 555. Also, see Harold Evans, "On The Brink," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/12/2013.).

Charles Emmerson, In Search of the World Before the Great War (New York: PublicAffairs, 2013) ("While enticing domestic migrants, California nonetheless had long feared foreign immigration, particularly from Asia, and had periodically sought to limit it. While the Chinese preferred San Francisco, Japanese migrant preferred the ear around Los Angeles, The numbers involved were small--8,000 Japanese in the whole LA county by 1910--but fear and prejudice were amplified by local politics, and a push-button issue was constructed out of little more than worked-up imaginings of the 'Yellow Peril'. 'Mu neighbor is a Jap', one farmer told a journalist: 'He has an eighty acre place next to mine and he is a smart fellow. He has a white woman living in his house and upon that white woman's knee is a baby. Now what is that baby? It isn't white. I isn't Japanese. I'll tell you what it is, It is the beginning of a problem--the biggest race problem the world has ever known.'" "In 1913 the California legislature in Sacramento prepared to pass legislation which would disbar Japanese farmers for owning land in the state. Washington advised California against it, on the basis that it would offend Asian sensibilities and might, as Japanese diplomats insisted, run counter to the United States' treaty commitments. The Los Angeles Times appealed to the legislators' common sense, leaving 'the Japanese in our midst to cultivate their vegetable gardens, and clean cloths, and make and sell kimonos without molestation'. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan was dispatched on a five-day trek to Sacramento to try and negotiate a for of word s which would allow all sides to claim a measure of victory. But the law Bryan lobbied against was passed in spite of him." Id. at 197.).

Max Hastings, Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes to War (New Knopf, 2013) (See Max Boot, "If One Knew," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/27/2013.).

Margaret MacMillian, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (New York: Random House, 2013) ("The future Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War, Ferdinand Foch, then an instructor at the French Staff College, worked out an elaborate proof in 1903 to show that two battalions of attackers would fire 10,000 more bullets than one battalion of defenders and so gain the upper hand. Technology and the power of defense would be overcome by making sure that the attackers outnumbered the defense by a large margin. Far more important than numbers, though, was the psychological factor: soldiers must be motivated through their training and by appeals to their patriotism both to attack and to die. They, and their generals, must accept large losses without losing heart. So, for example, bayonet drill was seen as important because it imbued the soldiers with the desire to attack. And so were dashing uniforms: 'Le pantalon rouge, c'est la France!' exclaimed a formerWar Minister when his successor proposed to take away the traditional red trousers and put the French soldiers into camouflage dress." Id. at 330. Also see Richard Aldous,"How Did It All Happen?," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 10/27/2013.).

David Stevenson, Cataclysm: The First World War as Political Tragedy (New York: Basic Books, 2004) (In America the Committee on Public Information was even more ambitious: 75,000 lectures by 'four-minute men', 6,000 press releases, exhibitions visited by over ten million people, and 75 million copies distributed in several languages over thirty pamphlets on the United States and the war. Its director, George Creel, and the publicists he co-opted had an evangelistic fervour for communicating the justice of America's cause, but American ideological mobilization had a darker side. The Sedition Act, passed in May 1918, prohibited abusive or disloyal language about the constitution, flag, government, and army or navy uniform, Wilson endorsing it to head off something even more extreme. The American Protection League, a private organization with federal government funding, enrolled 250,000 citizens to spy on neighbors and work colleagues. It opened mail, intercepted telegrams, and carried our raids against suspected draft evaders, preparing the ground for the post-war 'red scare'. The war became a disaster for the American progressive and pacifist movements, and by encouraging the growth of nationalist xenophobia (for example, in speeches condemning disloyal ethnic minorities) the president played sorcerer's apprentice, weakening the supporters of his diplomatic objectives. His home and foreign policies were poorly matched, and although he foresaw the danger his own actions magnified it. At the end of the war, when his ideals seemed to triumph abroad, he was politically humiliated at home." Id. at 374.).

David Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall: Victory and Defeat in 1918 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2011).

Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August; The Proud Tower, edited by Margaret MacMillian (New York: Library of America, 2012).

"LIFE IS A STINKING DOOMED CELL."

Jeanette Winterson, The Daylight Gate (New York: Grove, 2012) ("She thinks about Hell, and is it like this? She thinks that punishments of the Fiend are made out of human imaginings. Only humans can know what it means to strip a human being of being human. She thinks the Fiend has a kind of purity that humans never have. She thinks that godliness is ridiculous because it exists to hide this; this stinking airless doomed cell. Life is a stinking airless doomed cell. Why do we pretend?" Id. at 94-95.).

"THE DIVERGENCE OF TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS FROM MORAL AND SPIRITUAL PROGRESS"

Jonathan Franzen, The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus (A Bilingual Edition), translated and Annotated by Jonathan Franzen with assistance and additional notes from Paul Reitter and Daniel Kehlmann (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013) ("Culture can't catch its breath: to me the most impressive thing about Kraus as a thinker may be how early an clearly he recognized the divergence of technological progress from moral and spiritual progress. A succeeding century of the former, involving scientific advances that would have seemed miraculous not long ago, has resulted in high-resolution smartphone videos of dudes dropping Mentos into liter bottles of Diet Pepsi and shouting 'Whoa!' while they geyser. Technovisionaries of the 1990s promised that the Internet would usher in a new word of peace, love, and understanding, and Twitter executives are still banging the utopianist drum, claiming foundational credit for the Arab Spring. To listen to them, you'd think it was inconceivable that Eastern Europe could liberate itself from the Soviets without the benefit of cell phones, or that a butch of Americans revolted against the British and produced the U.S. Constitution without 4G capability." Id. at 140.).

THE DICTATORSHIP OF SELF-CHERISHING

Lama Thubten Zopa Rinpoche, The Door to Satisfaction: The Heart Advice of a Tibetan Buddhist Master, foreword by Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche, edited by Ailsa Cameron & Robina Courtin (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2001) ("The best way to train our mind is to expect the four undesirable objects rather than the four desirable ones. Expect to be criticized and disrespected. This practice of renunciation, which cuts off desire, is the best psychology. Having trained our mind to expect undesirable things, when something undesirable actually happens, it doesn't come as a shock to us; it doesn't hurt, because we are expecting it." "Before knowing about Dharma, before practicing meditation, you regarded discomfort, uninteresting sounds, criticism, and not acquiring things as undesirable problems. Now, if you examine well the nature of the mind that clings to material things, comfort, interesting sounds, praise, you won't find that it is happy; you will see that it too is suffering. It is not the happiness you thought it was before knowing about Dharma. It is not peaceful--it is painful." 'The mind that clings get stuck to the object of desire. When you receive praise--'You are so intelligent,' 'You speak so well,' 'You understand Dharma so well'--your mind get stuck to the praise and is no longer free. Like a body fastened with chains, the mind is fastened with attachment. The mind is tied, controlled, chained by attachment. The mind is stuck like glue to the object. Or like a moth flying into melted candle wax: its whole body, wings, and limbs become completely soaked in candle wax. Its body and libs are so fragile that it is extremely difficult to separate them from the wax. Or like a fly that gets stuck in a spider's web: its limbs get completely wrapped in the web, and it difficult to separate the form it Or like ants in honey. Attachment is the mind stuck to an object." Id. at 61-62. "Self-cherishing is a dictatorship. It is a dictatorship meant to benefit the self but one that results in only problems and failure.  It is not logical. Check, 'Why do I cherish myself? Why do I think that I'm more important than all the numberless other sentient beings? Who do I think I'm so precious? There is not one valid reason for self-cherishing. Though we can give many reasons why we should cherish others, we cannot find one reason why we should cherish our self." Id. at 118-119.).

"FASHION STARS OUT OF DOG DUNG"

Alexandra David-Neel, Magic and Mystery in Tibet, with an Introduction by A. D'Arsonval (first published in 1929 in French as Mystiques et magicien du Thibet; first English translation, 1932) (Escondido, CA: The Book Tree, 2000) (" 'Tell him I have come to ask why he mocked at the crowd seeking the benediction of the Dalai Lama.' 'Puffed up with a sense of their own importance and the importance of what they are doing, Insects fluttering in the dung,' muttered the naljorpa between his teeth. This was vague, but the kind of language one expects from such men. 'And you,' I replied, 'are you free from all defilement?' He laughed noisily. 'He who tries to get out only sinks in deeper. I roll in it like a pig. I digest it and turn it into golden dust, into a brook of pure water. To fashion stars out of dog dung, that is the Great Work!' " Id. at 7. "Sorcery loses much of its prestige when seen by broad daylight and in a crowd." Id. at 49. "I had vaguely imagined that beyond the Himalayas the country would become wild, but now I began to realize that on the contrary I was coming into touch with a truly civilized people." Id. at 83. "Learned monks belonging to poor families may earn their livelihood as teachers, as artists if they are gifted at painting religious pictures, as resident chaplains at the houses of rich lamas or laymen, or by occasionally performing religious ceremonies at householders' homes. Besides these various professions, divination, astrology, drawing horoscopes may be reckoned amongst their sources of income." The lama doctors create very favourable situations for themselves if they show their skills by curing a sufficient number of distinguished people. But even with a smaller amount of success, the medical profession is a lucrative one." "However, the profession which looks the most attractive to many is trade. The great majority of those lamaist monks who are not especially religious minded, become traders. If they lack the money needed to undertake a business of their own, they engage themselves as secretaries, accountants, or even as mere servants of a trader." Transacting business, in a more or less unostentatious way, is to a certain extent allowed in the monasteries. As for those of their members who have a really big business they obtain leave form the authorities of the monastery to ravel with their caravan and open shops or branches wherever they like." "One may think that trade does not fit in very well with religious pursuits, but we must also remember a monk has very seldom chosen his own profession. Most of them are led to the monastery as little boys, and it would be unjust to reproach them for not following a mystic avocation which has never been their own choice." Id. at 107-108. "The followers of the Zen sect in Japan, who meditate together in a common hall, appoint a kind of superintendent who is skilled in detecting when a monk is overcome by fatigue. He refreshes the fainting and revives their energy by striking them on one shoulder with a heavy stick. Those who have experienced it agree that the ensuring sensation is a most pleasant relation of the nerves." Id. at 196. Right!).

ARE WESTERNERS PRISONERS OF THEIR MYTHS CONCERNING TIBET AND TIBETAN BUDDHISM AS SHANGRI-LA?

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 1998) ("The creation myth of this book began when I attended a conference on Tibet some years ago. The keynote speaker gave a public lecture that romanticized Tibetan history and demonized the Chinese. At the conclusion of the speech the audience rose as one in a standing ovation. It seemed clear that several hundred people had been converted to the cause of Tibetan independence. The question that the lecture raised for me was whether it was possible to make the case for Tibetan independence, which, one assumes, all people of good will (when presented with the facts) would support, without invoking the romantic view of Tibet as Shangri-La. Invoking the myth seems at times almost irresistible; without it the Chinese occupation and colonization of Tibet seems just one of many human rights violations that demand our attention. What sets the plight of Tibet apart from that of Palestine, Rwanda, Burma, Northern Ireland, East Timor, or Bosnia is the picture of Tibetans as a happy, peaceful people devoted to the practice of Buddhism, whose remote and ecologically enlightened land, ruled by a god-king, was invaded by the forces of evil. This is a compelling story, an enticing blends of the exotic, the spiritual, and the political. But I have become convinced that the continued idealization of Tibet--its history and its religion--may ultimately harm the cause of Tibetan independence. I set out to investigate some of the factors that have contributed to the formation and persistence of the romance of Tibet. This book is the result of those investigations." Id. at 11.).

ROMANCING THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

Donald S. Lopez, Jr., The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography (Lives of Great Religious Books) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2011) ("This book tells the strange story of The Tibetan Book of the Dead. It argues that the persistence of its popularity drives from three factors.... The first is the human obsession with death. The second is the Western romance with Tibet. The third is Evans-Wentz's way of making the Tibetan text into something that is somehow American." "T]he work by Walter Evans-Wentz entitled The Tibetan Book of the Dead is not really Tibetan, it is not really a book, and it is not really about death. It is about rebirth: the rebirth of souls and the resurrection of texts. Evan-Wentz's classic is not so much Tibetan as it is American, a product of American Spiritualism. Indeed, it might be counted among its classics.... The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a remarkable case of what can happen when American Spiritualism goes abroad." Id. at 11. "It seems, then, that Evans-Wentz knew what he would find in the Tibetan text before a single word was translated for him. it almost seems that Evans-Wentz's spiritual vacation could have taken him to any Asian country and that he would have produced some version of the book published in 1927. But he chose Tibet, and so the book is The Tibetan Book of the Dead." Id. at 118.).

COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF GOING TO LAW SCHOOL

The most recent number of the Journal of Legal Education (November 2013) contains several articles from a “SYMPOSIUM: IS LAW SCHOOL WORTH IT?”  Good question. No doubt. However, it reminds me of the question “Are children worth it?  For the overwhelming majority of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century prospective parents the answer is resounding no? A few decades ago. Yale Law School’s John Langbein wrote an article convincingly demonstrating that parents who lose a child (in a wrongful death situation) are, from a strictly economic perspective, better off. It is very, very expensive to raise a child. Children constitute a huge opportunity cost. There are tremendous savings in not needing to spend on a child. But the point, for most who think about it, is that it is not economic loss that the parents’ suffer, it is something else that cannot be measured in dollars and cents, something that defies cost-benefit  economic analysis. I will leave it  to you to define what that something else is. Not to compare a foregone legal education to the loss of a child, but perhaps, just perhaps, the important value of a legal education is something more than a job and earning capacity. It is a sad state of affairs when men and women are reduced to being simply economic man and economic woman. It is a sad state of legal education when what were students are no longer free to explore different intellectual paths because it is all about get a job, get a salary. Sad, pathetic and boring. But worse yet, not in the best interest of the legal profession. Not in the best interest of society. Shakespeare scribbled, “First we kill all the lawyers.” Well, the lawyers are not being killed off. But they are being made into intellectual zombies. The living, but intellectual dead.

ELITE WOMAN ARE DIFFERENT FFROM OTHER WOMEN

Alison Wolf, THE XX Factor: How the Rise of Working Women Has Created a Far Less Equal World (New York: Crown Publishing, 2013) (What is unfortunate about the book's subtitle is that many people will read into it an implied "causal" or "blame" link between women and inequality. Wolf is not arguing or suggesting that woman are the cause of, or to be blame for, the inequality. Rather, the book is about the unintended consequences of the quite reasonable decisions that elite women and men have made. From the book jacket: The gender gap is closing. Today, for the first time in history, tens of millions of women are spending more time at the boardroom table than at the kitchen table. These professional women are highly ambitious and highly educated, enjoying the same lifestyle prerogatives as their male counterparts. They are working longer and marrying later--if they marry at all. They are heading Fortune 500 companies and appearing on the covers of Forbes and Businessweek. They represent a special type of working woman--the kind who don't just punch a clock for a paycheck, but derives self-worth and pleasure from wielding professional power." "At the same time that the gender gap is narrowing, the gulf is widening among women themselves. While blockbuster books such as Lean In focus on women in high-pressure jobs, in reality there are four women in traditionally female roles for every Sheryl Sandberg. In this revealing and deeply intelligent book, Alison Wolf examines why more educated women work longer hours, why having children early is a good idea, and how feminism created a less equal world. Her idea are sure to provoke and surprise as she challenges much of what the liberal and conservative media consider to be women's best interest.").

BETTING ON CLIMATE CHANGE: A BET WE BETTER NOT LOSE

Paul Sabin, The Bet: Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth's Future (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("Climate change, to the best of our scientific knowledge, is happening, and much of the recent global warming that we have seen appears caused by human actions. And climate change is a significant problem that threatens heavy economic and social costs. The world that humans are creating--with an increased likelihood of more intense storms, prolonged droughts, and profound changes to ecological systems--is not likely to being changes that people will want These are some of the vital insights of environmental scientists like Paul Ehrlich. At the same time, predictions that 'billions of us will die' by the end of the century as a result of climate change or that civilization will collapse reenact the least helpful elements of Ehrlich-style environmentalism." "What often gets lost in the climate debate are the lessons of the clash between Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon. There is a serious and significant discussion to be had over what policy actions to take, and when. How much will the impacts of climate change cost, and how urgent is the need for immediate action? There are two dramatically different versions of the future. Should we count on technological innovation and economic growth to help societies meet this new challenge and adapt to change? Or must we cut emissions immediately and transform our societies in a dramatic way? The competing viewpoints echo positions held by Ehrlich and Simon. Both tend to exaggerate the consequences of their oppoents' position: how expensive and disruptive it would be to shift away from fossil fuels, on the one hand, and whether it would be possible for humanity to adapt to a warmer world."  Id. at 225-226. YET! "Neither biology nor economics can substitute for the deeper ethical question: What kind of world do we desire?" Id. at 227.).

READING LITERATURE MAKES US HUMAN

John Sutherland, A Little History of Literature (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 2013) ("For most thoughtful people, literature will play a big part in their lives. We learn a lot of things at home, at school, from friends, and from the mouths of people wiser and cleverer than ourselves. But many of the most valuable things we know come from the  literature we have read. If we read well, we find ourselves in a conversational relationship with the most creative minds of our own time and of the past. Time spent reading literature is always time well spent. Let no one tell you otherwise." Id. at 2. "Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human. And the better we learn to read it, the better it will do that." Id. at 6.).

ARCHITECTUAL DESIGN IN SUPPORT OF THINKING

Jay Pridmore, Tom Rossiter (Photography), & Robert J. Zimmer (Foreword), Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago (Chicago & London: U. of Chicago Press, 2013) ("From the book's jacket: "When William Rainey Harper, the university's first president, decided to build a set of Gothic quadrangles at the heart of campus, he created a visual link to European precursors and made a bold statement about the future of higher education in the United States. Since then the university has regularly commissioned forward-thinking architects to design buildings that expand--or explode--traditional ideals while redefining the contemporary campus." "Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago explores the environment that has supported more than a century of exceptional thinkers." From the "Foreword": 'The architecture of the University of Chicago inspires, encourages, and supports the pursuit of knowledge in all its forms, sustaining an innovative, creative,and fearless scholarly community whose impact reaches well beyond the university's." Id. at xx. When one walks onto a university campus, one should be taken, if not overwhelmed, with a sense that important work is being done there. That the university is a special place. One gets that sense on entering the campus of the University of Chicago.  One might not like particular buildings, yet one senses that great things are being thought and done within those buildings.).

REFLECTING ON PROPOSED CHANGES IN LEGAL EDUCATION

THREE CHEERS FOR THE CONNECTICUT LAW TRIBUNE!!!

Editorial: The Law School Crisis And The Rush To Judgment

The Connecticut Law Tribune

October 9, 2013

 

Are we then being prudent when we conclude that the third year of law school is a boring waste of time? Or is it just as reasonable to argue that the third year provides an opportunity a law student will never again have to hone her skills.

It was probably inevitable. As more and more students graduated from law school with crippling debt and meager job prospects following the Great Recession, the drumbeat for reform grew louder and louder. Soon the examination and scrutiny of contemporary legal education turned from mere criticism into a wholesale assault and then into ugly charges of unwarranted over-pricing and even fraud.

The expected return on investment could not possibly justify the cost of a three-year J.D. program — now $75,000 per year at some schools — the critics argued. Would-be law school applicants apparently agreed, because the past few years have seen a startling decrease in applications, with 2013 showing a 13 percent drop nationally over the preceding year and second- and third-tier law schools experiencing an even steeper decline.

So the experts have come forward and opened the floodgates of restructuring with proposals to cure the systemic problems allegedly corrupting our legal education system, including:

• Reducing the traditional three-year curriculum to two years; a proposal supported even by President Barack Obama in a recent speech.

• If not eliminating the third year of law school, then at least replacing it with internships or clerkships.

• And if neither of those approaches can be embraced, then devoting the third year to clinical courses only, so that new graduates would have some idea of what really happens in a law practice as opposed to a law library.

But those ideas were hardly new and profound. Indeed, a study of legal education funded by the Ford Foundation in 1970 concluded that the third year of legal study was an unnecessary expenditure of time and money, and law firm managing partners have long been loudly complaining that rookie associates come to them filled with legal theory and devoid of practical legal knowledge.

So the legal pundits, and the law school deans, and the other experts started promulgating new and different solutions to the perceived general unhappiness with the current state of legal education. "Three and Three" programs began to spring up at universities with law schools, wherein participants fulfill their core requirements of their selected undergraduate major in three years — instead of the usual four — and then use their first-year law school courses as the electives necessary to complete their undergraduate degree requirements. At the end of six years — instead of seven — they have a bachelor's and J.D. degree. Of course, those proceeding in this manner have virtually no room for electives, or year abroad studies or, perhaps, most importantly, some time off to work and gain real-life experience before undertaking the rigors of law school. Nonetheless, some two dozen law schools now offer such a program.

Others have advocated for the greater use of "reading the law" approach, which is still permitted in several states but which is utilized in only insignificant numbers. The corollary of that argument, of course, is the adoption of that process by more states.

Perhaps the most dramatic proposals for change have come from — of all places — the American Bar Association's Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar. At its meeting this past August, that accreditation group focused on ways to reduce the cost of law school tuition. They recommended, among other things, eliminating the tenure requirements for faculty and deans; permitting students to take up to 15 credit hours online; and reducing the full-time faculty-to-student ratio.

Not to be outdone, the ABA's Task Force on the Future of Legal Education recently issued its "Working Paper," in which it comprehensively addressed all the aspects of the controversy surrounding law schools and made recommendations, which, if adopted, would result in a sea change in legal education, including:

• Continuous reassessment of our system of legal education by a standing commission "with appropriate expertise . . . regarding law school pricing and financing."

• Revision of accreditation requirements that are not "contributing commensurately . . . to the goal of ensuring that law schools deliver a quality education, . . ." including those relating to "distance education," student-faculty ratios, full-time faculty, tenure, etc.

• Revision (or elimination) of law school accreditation requirements that "directly or indirectly impede law school innovation in delivering a J.D. education, . . ." This includes requiring a dean to be a tenured faculty member; requiring a fixed minimum number of hours of attendance in regularly scheduled class seminars; and requiring minimum standards for library directors.

• The development of educational programs at the university level to prepare persons other than prospective lawyers to provide limited legal services.

In the face of this unprecedented turmoil in what was heretofore a largely unchanging industry, we call for a time out, a deep breath, and a step back. Structural changes — especially in an institution so important to our societal good — should never be made in an atmosphere of frustration, anger, defensiveness and chaos, which is clearly what now prevails with respect to legal education. Worse yet, it is a panic driven by what may very well be faulty assumptions.

A recent study by Professors Michael Simkovic and Frank McIntyre examines the statistics claiming to support the argument that a law degree makes no economic sense and completely debunks them, demonstrating instead that a law degree does, in fact, result in the holder realizing very significant increases in income over her working life, which makes legal education a very worthwhile investment.

While law school tuition has increased in the past decade at a rate far greater than inflation or even tuition increases at other professional graduate schools, and although efforts must continue and intensify to find ways to control that disturbing and intolerable phenomenon, the increases, until the recession took its toll on Big Law, were largely matched by starting salary increases. Perhaps an adjustment period is required to put that back in balance, so that tuition increases are again aligned with jumps in starting salary levels.

Moreover, the current attack on law schools is predicated in large part on the very painful disconnect between cost and reward caused by the dismal job market now prevailing. The critics assume that this is the "new normal," so law schools must change to accommodate it. This may be a permanent change in the demand for new lawyers, or it may not be. Five years is simply not enough time to determine that. We have seen economic downturns adversely affect our profession before this one hit, and we have bounced back from those.

The ABA Working Paper speaks of the "private good" inherent in legal education and the "public good." The latter is important to the well-being of any society predicated on the rule of law, because the legal education system produces the lawyers, judges, prosecutors, public defenders, academicians, and legal thinkers who have made our civil and criminal justice systems the envy of most civilized nations. We undertake its dismantling and re-building, therefore, at great risk.

In addition, law schools put forth, for the most part, brilliant faculty members with outstanding pedagogical skills, who provide a unique and high quality learning experience and turn out well educated lawyers. Can we be sure that will remain so if we eliminate tenure and full-time faculty minimum levels?

Finally, we simply cannot ignore what has not been, for some reason, part of the discussion. Since the "reading law" system was largely abandoned a century ago, our system of legal education has produced hundreds of thousands of outstanding lawyers, who have well served both the private and public sectors. In short, for the most part, it works.

Are we then being prudent when we conclude — with absolutely no supporting empirical evidence — that the third year is a boring waste of time? Or is it just as reasonable to argue that the third year provides an opportunity a law student will never again have to hone her skills; take courses in areas where he has a special interest — even a passion; participate in clinical programs; or just take another year to mature into a lawyer with the skills and ethics our profession needs?

Are we really advancing the "public good" interest in legal education when we replace with "distance learning" the invaluable and intellectually challenging give and take with the professor and fellow students in a seminar class? Are we moving in the right direction when we completely replace the hard core, traditional third year courses with "practical experience," so as to placate the law firms that have concluded they are entitled to "ready to work" associates?

Let us look hard, very hard, at the precious societal asset that is our legal education system before we start tearing it apart.

Read more: http://www.ctlawtribune.com/PubArticleCT.jsp?id=1202622884976&thepage=3#ixzz2hPvGNSeJ

CAN AMERICANS THINK OF THEMSELVES AS PART OF A CIVILIZATION

Drew Maciag, Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2013) ("Today ignorance of history is one of society's chief maladies. Another is the increasing unwillingness of individual Americans to think in terms of belonging to a civilization, not just to an interest group, a religious or sexual persuasion, a regional identity, a racial or ethnic hyphenate, and ideological camp, a lifestyle category, a generational cohort, an economic class, a vocational specialty, or a cultural profile--all of which are consciously intended to divide persons into incompatible subsets. A great nation's goal should be the preservation and advancement of a civilization that is pluralistically dynamic yet cohesive enough to instill a common sense of purpose. Instead, America's current impulse toward fragmentation seems to be yielding not civilization, but a polycentric society that is incapable of finding common ground or agreeing on common goals." Id. at 239. "Even before the terms themselves came into general use, their generic profiles were evident. In ideal (almost impressionistic) forms: Conservatism houses a general preference for order, stability, hierarchy, religious orthodoxy, institutional authority, social conformity, property rights, discipline, and established cultural standards. Liberalism houses a general preference for innovation, progress, fairness, reform, democracy, equality, equity, humanitarianism, flexibility, tolerance, personal fulfillment, and experimentation. Each of these constituent values is itself open to interpretation, and not every value applies (or applies with equal weight) to all conservatives or to all liberals; moreover, conservative-liberal distinctions are usually drawn by de-emphasizing opposing values, rather than by rejecting them outright. Still, these two alternative value systems--whether functioning as clear ideologies or as diffuse sensibilities--have driven the core disputes of American political thinking for over two centuries." Id. at xii.).