SUGGESTED FICTION

Charles Baxter, There's Something I Want You to Do: Stories (New York: Pantheon Books, 2015) (See Michelle Uneven, "They Mean to Impose," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/8/2015.).

Will Chancellor, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2014) ("When the word art gives you a sinking feeling, what's left for you in the real world?" Id. at 299.).

Carolyn Chutes, Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Becomes Wolves (New York: Grove Press, 2014) (See Bill Roorbach, "The Not So Simple Life," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/23/2014.).

Mark Costello, Big If: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2002).

Michel Faber, The Book of Strange Things: A Novel (London & New York: Hogarth, 2014) (Marcel Theroux, "Outer Limits," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/2/2014).

Neil Gaiman, Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances (New York: William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2015) (See Andrew O'Heir, "The Alchemist," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 3/8/2015.).

John Green, The Fault In Our Stars (New York: Dutton Books, 2012).

Samantha Harvey, Dear Thief: A Novel (New York: Atavist Books, 2014).

Thomas Keneally, The Daughters of Mars: A Novel (New York: Atria Books, 2012).

Thomas Keneally, Shame and the Captives: A Novel (New York: Atria Books, 2015) (See Gary Krist, "No Escape," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/19/2015)..

David Kirk, Child of Vengeance: A Novel (New York: Doubleday, 2013).

Jonathan Lethem, Lucky Alan and Other Stories (New York: Doubleday, 2015) (See Michael Greenberg, "Under the Surface," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/22/2015.).

Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena: A Novel (London & New York: Hogarth, 2013).

Tom McCarthy, Satin Island (New York: Knopf, 2015) (From the bookjacket: "Satin Island, an unnerving novel that promises to give us the first and last word on the world--modern, postmodern, whatever world you think your are living in." "U., a 'corporate anthropologist,' is tasked with writing the Great Report, an all-encompassing ethnographic document that would sum up our era. Yet at every turn, he feels himself overwhelmed by the ubiquity of data, lost in buffer zones, wandering through crowds of apparitions, willing them to coalesce into symbols that can be translated into some kind of account that makes sense. As he begins to wonder if the Great Report might remain shapeless, oozing plasma, his senses are startled awake by a dream of an apocalyptic cityscape."  Also see Jeff Turpentine, "Culture-Jamming Provocateur," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/22/2015.).

Ben Metcalf, Against the Country: A Novel  (New York: Random House, 2015) (See Thad Ziolkowski, "Southern Grotesque," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/25/2015.).

Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz (New York: EOS/HarperCollins, 2006).

David Mitchell, The Bone Clock: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2014) (See Alexandra Alter, "A Master of Many Universes," Books of the Time, NYT, Monday, 8/25/2014; and Pico Iyer, "Juggling Worlds," New York Times Book Review, Sunday, 8/31/2014.).

Neel Mukherjee, The Lives of Others: A Novel (New York: Norton, 2014).

Joyce Carol Oates, Lovely, Dark, Deep: Stories (New York: Ecco, 2014).

Joyce Carol Oates, The Sacrifice: A Novel (New York: Ecco, 2015) (See Roxane Gay, 'Warning Signs," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/1/2015.).

Richard Price (aka Harry Brandt), The Whites: A Novel (New York: Henry Holt, 2015) (See Michael Connelly, "Murder and the City," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/15/2015.).

Francine Prose, Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932 (New York: Harper, 2014) (See Edmund White, "Divine Decadence," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/20/2014.).

Norman Rush, Subtle Bodies: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2013).

Anne Tyler, A Spool of Blue Thread: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Rebecca Pepper Spinkler," You Can Go Home Again," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 2/15/2015.).

Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests (New York: Riverhead Books, 2014) (See Carol Anshaw, "Behind Closed Doors," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/21/2014.).

ASIAN AMERICANS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA

Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (The Good Immigrant contributes to discussions concerning the relationship among foreign policy, the naturalization of neoliberal principles, American immigration laws, and domestic ideologies of racial difference and inequality. Celebratory narratives emphasizing the successes of Asian 'model minorities' have obscure how selection processes serve economic purposes by screening immigrants for educational attainment and economic potential, thereby eliding domestic limits on access to opportunities and systems enabling upward mobility and success for those without such advantages. Cold War policies laid the groundwork for transformations associated with the Civil Right era in repositioning Asians, here particularly Chinese, as capable of, and even ideally suited to, participating in American democracy and capitalism. Attributed with exemplary economic, social, and political traits, educated and readily employable Chinese, and other Asians, gained preferential access to 'front-gate' immigration as permanent residents eligible for citizenship, in the framing of Aristide Zolberg. In contrast, 'back-door' immigrants such as refuges and unsanctioned migrant laborers, face greater, sometimes insurmountable, barriers to naturalization. To these I would add the 'side-door' through which migrants such as students, paroled refugees, and now H-IB workers legally enter through less scrutinized temporary status yet routinely gain permanent status  leading to citizenship. Between 1948 and 1965, such side doors enabled thousands of Chinese screened for educational and employment credentials to resettle in numbers far exceeding quota allocations as part of campaigns for general immigration reform. The H-IB visa side-door system, which primarily admits Asian workers in the high-tech sector, exemplifies twenty-first-century priorities in immigration selection that demonstrates how this metamorphosis has become naturalized, thereby rendering invisible how our system of border controls continues to designate certain racial and ethnic groups for success while severely penalizing others." Id. at 4-5.).

Richard Reeves, Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II (New York: Henry Holt, 2015) ("The story of the 'Japanese Internment,' as it is usually called, is a tale of the best and worst of America. I learned, I think, that what pushes America forward and expands our liberty is not the old Anglo-Saxon Protestant values of the Founders, but the almost blind faith of each wave of immigrants--including the ones we put behind barbed wire: The Germans. The Irish. The Italians. The Jews. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Latinos. The South Asians. The African Americans. We are not only a nation of immigrants. We are a nation made by immigrants, foreigners who were needed for their labor and skills and faith--but were often hated because they were not like us until they were us." Id. at xix-xx. "I finally decided to write this book when I saw that my country, not for the first time, began turning on immigrants, blaming them for the American troubles of the day. Seventy years ago, it was American Japanese, most of them loyal to their new country; not it is Muslims and Hispanics. The story is not about Japanese Americans, it is about Americans, on both sides of the barbed wire surrounding the relocation centers, the Americans crammed into tar-paper barracks and the Americans with machine guns and searchlights in watchtowers." Id. at xiv. Also, see Evan Thomas, "Involuntary Relocation," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/26/2015.).

Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2014) (From the bookjacket: "The Color of Success tells the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the 'yellow peril' to 'model minorities'--people distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplar of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership." "Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contest for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suits leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asian as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders." "By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood.").

SUGGESTED READINGS FOR LAW STUDENTS

"THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE, BUT FIRST IT WILL PISS YOU OFF." Gloria Steinem

Akhil Reed Amar, The Law of the Land: A Grand Tour of Our Constitutional Republic (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

Anthony B. Atkinson, Inequality: What Can Be Done? (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Inequality is one of our most urgent social problems. Curbed in the decades after World War II, it has recently returned with a vengeance. We all know the scale of the problem--talk about the 99% and the 1% is entrenched in public debate--but there has been little discussion of what we can do but despair. According to the distinguished economist Anthony Atkinson, however, we can do much more than skeptics imagine." "Atkinson has long been in the forefront of research on inequality, and he brings his theoretical and practical experience to bear on its diverse problems. He presents a comprehensive set of policies that could bring about a genuine shift in the distribution of income in developed countries. The problem, Atkinson show, is not simply that the rich are getting richer. We are also failing to tackle poverty, and the economy is rapidly changing to leave the majority of people behind. To reduce inequality, we have to go beyond placing new taxes on the wealthy to fund existing programs. We need fresh ideas. Atkinson thus recommends ambitious new policies in five ears: technology, employment, social security, the sharing of capital, and taxation. He defends these against the common arguments and excuses for inaction: that intervention will shrink the economy, that globalization makes action impossible, tad that new policies cannot be afforded.").

Ian Bremmer, Superpower: Three Choices for America's Role in the World (New York: Portfolio/ Penguin, 2015) ("Over the next generation, the global economy will depend more for its dynamism on the strength and resilience of emerging-market countries. That should worry us [that is, Americans], because these countries are inherently less stable than the rich-world powers that have driven growth over the past several decades. These are places where, as in India in 2012, a government's failure to address infrastructure problems can trigger a blackout across an area that's home to 670 million people. Or, as in Brazil in 2013, a nine-cent increase in bus fare in Sao Paulo can spark protests that drive a million people into the streets of major cities, and a lack of rainfall can generate an electricity shortage severe enough to push a country of 200 million people into recession. Or, as in Turkey in 2013, an aggressive police response to protests over a plan to replace a grove of sycamore trees with a shopping mall can push 2 million angry people into demonstrations across the country. It's entirely possible tat during the next U.S. president's term in office, China will become the world's largest economy. What will it mean for global economic stability when the world economy is led by a still-poor, potentially unstable, authoritarian power?" Id. at 15-16. "Let's be clear: America is not an exceptional nation. Americans the most powerful, but that doesn't mean it's always right. We are not all-knowing, and the universal benefit is never our main concern. America has done much good in the world, and it will do more. But it has done a lot of damage, particularly by trying to force our values on others without careful consideration of the consequences. Those who make American foreign policy and those who implement it must be guided by both discretion and humility. And they must remember that freedom is in the eye of the beholder." Id. at 119. "Yet those who insist that we can afford to invest at home only if we renounce out international leadership miss the essential point: Fulfilling our responsibilities abroad is crucial for our own prosperity, because in a globalized world we can't succeed unless others succeed too. We need confident commercial partners with whom to trade. We need others to help finance our success by investing in our debt. We must ensure that U.S. companies that create jobs at home by building market share abroad can operate with a safe and stable international environment. We must help ensure the free flow of trade and vital commodities like oil, gas, metals, and minerals, not just through the Strait of Hormuz but everywhere our economic interests are at stake. And not just too protect our own economic interests but those of the entire global economy on which our interests will increasingly depend." Id. at 131.).

Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future (New York: Basic Books, 2015) (From the book flap: "What are the jobs of the future? How many will there be? And who will have them? We might imagine--and hope--that today's industrial revolution will unfold like the last: even as some jobs are eliminated, more will be created to deal with the new innovations of a new era. In Rise of the Robots, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Ford argues that this is absolutely not the case. As technology continues to accelerate and machine begin taking care of themselves, fewer people will be necessary. Artificial intelligence is already well on its way to making 'good jobs' obsolete: many paralegals, journalists, office workers, and even computer programmers are poised to be replaced by robots and smart software. As progress continues, blue and white collar jobs alike will evaporate, squeezing working- and middle-class families ever further. At the same time, households are under assault from exploding costs, especially from the two major industries--education and health care--that, so far, have not been transformed by information technology. The result could well be massive unemployment and inequality as well as the implosion of the consumer economy itself." "In Rise of the Robots, Ford details what machine intelligence and robotics can accomplish, and implores employers, scholars, and policy makers alike to face the implications. The past solutions to technological disruption, especially more training and education, aren't going to work, and we must decide, now, whether the future will see broad-based prosperity or catastrophic levels of inequality and economic insecurity. Rise of the Robots is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what accelerating technology means for their own economic prospects--not to mention those of their children--as well as for society as a whole." Also, see Barbara Ehrenreich, "Welcome to Your Obsolescence," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/17/2015.).

Marc Goodman, Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It (New York: Doubleday, 2015) ("By 2013, Americans were spending more than five hours a day online with their digital devices. We read the news on Web sites run by CNN, the New York Times, and ESPN. We check our bank balance at Citibank and Wells Fargo. We shop at Amazon and Macy's. We pay our ConEd and Comcast bills, make appointments with our doctors, and check our health insurance with Blue Cross. [Note: Not to mention checking our grades on WebAdvisor.] We watch House of Cards on Netflix and Downton Abbey on Hulu. And that's just the beginning. Take a moment to think about how you used your smart phone today. Eighty percent of us check our mobile phones for messages within fifteen minutes of waking up. Did you provide a quick status update today to your friends on Facebook? You'll probably get a 'Like' or two or maybe a funny comment from a friend. And what about those selfies you sent your boyfriend? The Internet has become a vast and free treasure trove of information and entertainment, and so we dutifully gorge ourselves at the trough. And at every step of the way, we are collectively leaving behind a daily digital exhaust trail big enough to fill the Library of Congress many times over. How all these data are created, stored, analyzed, and sold are details that most of us readily gloss over, but do so at our on peril." Id. at 46-47. Also, see Jenna Wortham, "You've Been Hacked," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/17/2015.).).

Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt (New York: Nation Press, 2015) ("There is nothing rational about rebellion. To rebel against insurmountable odds is an act of faith, without which the rebel is doomed. This faith is intrinsic to the rebel the way caution and prudence are intrinsic to those who seek to fit into existing power structures. The rebel, possessed by inner demons and angels, is driven by a vision. I do not know if the new revolutionary wave and the rebels produced by it will succeed. But I do know that without these rebels, we are doomed." Id. at 20.)

Jon Krakauer, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town (New York: Doubleday, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Missoula, Montana, is a typical college town, with a highly regarded state university, bucolic surroundings, a lively social scene, and an excellent football team--the Grizzlies--with a rabid fan base." "The Department of Justice investigated 350 sexual assaults reported to the Missoula police between January 2008 and May 2012. Few of these assaults were properly handled by either the university or local authorities. In this, Missoula is also typical." "A DOJ report released in December 2014 estimates 110,000 women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four are raped each year. Krakauer's devastating narrative of what happened in Missoula makes clear why rape is so prevalent on American campuses, and why rape victims are so reluctant to report assault." "Acquaintance rape is a crime like no other. Unlike burglary or embezzlement or any other felony, the victim often comes under more suspicion than the alleged perpetrator. This is especially true if the victim is sexually active, if she had been drinking prior to the assault--and if the man she accuses plays on a popular sports team. For a woman in this situation, the pain of being forced into sex against her will is only the beginning of her ordeal. If she decides to go to the police, undertrained officers sometimes ask if she has a boyfriend, implying that she is covering up infidelity. She is told rape is extremely difficult to prove and repeatedly asked if she really wants to press charges. If she does want to charge her assailant, district attorneys frequently refuse to prosecute. If the assailant is indicted, even though a victim's name is supposed to be kept confidential, rumors start in the community and on social media, labeling her a slut, unbalanced, an attention-seeker. The vanishing small but highly publicized incidents of false accusations are used to dismiss her claims in the press. If the case goes to trial, the woman's entire personal life often becomes fair game for the defense attorneys." "The brutal reality goes a long way toward explaining why acquaintance rape is the most underreported crime in America. In addition to physical trauma that leads to trauma, its victims often suffer devastating psychological damage that leads to feelings of shame, emotional paralysis, and stigmatization. PTSD rates for rape victims are estimated to be t0 percent higher than for soldiers returning from war." "In Missoula, Krakauer chronicles the searing experiences of several women in Missoula--the nights when they were raped; their fear and self-doubt in the aftermath; the way they were treated by the police, prosecutors, defense attorneys; the public vilification and private anguish; their bravery in pushing forward and what it cost them." "Some of them went to the police. Some declined to go to the police or to press charges but sought redress from the university, which has its own, noncriminal judicial process when a student is accused of rape. In two cases the police agreed to press charges and the district attorney agreed to prosecute. One case led to a conviction; one to an acquittal. Those women courageous enough to press charges or to speak publicly about their experiences were attacked in the media, on Grizzly football fan sites, and/or to their faces. The university expelled three of the accused rapists, but one was reinstated by state officials in a secret proceeding. One district attorney testified for an alleged rapist at his university hearing. She later left the prosecutor's office and successfully defended the Grizzlies' star quarterback in his rape trial. The horror of being raped, in each woman's case, was magnified by the mechanics of the justice system and the reaction of the community." "Krakauer's dispassionate, carefully documented account of what these women endured cuts through the abstract ideological debate about campus rape. College-age women are not raped because they are promiscuous, or drunk, or send mixed signals, or feel guilty about casual sex, or seek attention. They are the victims of a terrible crime and deserving of compassion from society and fairness from a justice system that is clearly broken." Also, see Emily Bazelon, "No, She Said,"  NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/3/2015.).

Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (New York: Basic Books, 2015) ("At heart, this book seeks to challenge Americans' assumptions about the basic relationship between religion and politics in their nation's history. For decades now, liberals and conservatives have been locked in an intractable struggle over an ostensibly simple question: Is the United States a Christian nation? This debate, largely focused on endless parsing of the intent of the founding fathers, has ultimately generated more heat than light. Like most scholars, I believe the historical record is fairly clear about the founding generation's preference for what Thomas Jefferson memorably described as a wall of separation between church and state, a belief the founders spelled out repeatedly in public statements and private correspondence. This scholarly consensus, though, has done little to shift popular opinion. If anything, the country has more tightly embraced religion in the public sphere and in political culture in recent decades. And so this book begins with a different premise. It sets aside the question of whether the founders intended America to be a Christian notion and instead asks why so many contemporary Americans came to believe that this country has been and always should be a Christian nation." Id. at xiii. From the book jacket: "As Kruse argues, the belief that America is fundamentally and formally a Christian nation originated in the 1930s when businessmen enlisted religious activists in their fight against FDR's New Deal. Corporations from General Motors to Hilton Hotels bankrolled conservative clergymen, encouraging them to attack the New Deal as a program of 'pagan statism' that perverted the central principles of Christianity: the sanctity and salvation of the individual. Their campaign for 'freedom under God' culminated in the election of their close ally Dwight Eisenhower in 1952." "But his apparent triumph had an ironic twist. In Eisenhower's hands, a religious movement born in opposition to the government was transformed into one that fused faith and the federal government as never before. During the 1950s, Eisenhower revolutionized the role of religion American political culture, investing new traditions form inaugural prayers to the National Prayer breakfast. Meanwhile, Congress added the phrase 'under For' to the Pledge of Allegiance and made 'In God We Trust' the country's first official motto. [Note: In today's speak we would not talk of "motto," rather we would talk of "brand' and "branding." "In God We Trust" is just another, but certainly not the first, in the country's long line of official (and unofficial) brands. Others include "Uncle Sam," "Nation of Immigrants," "Land of Liberty," and that whole "American Exceptionalism" thing.] With private groups joining in, church membership soared to an all-time high of 69 present of Americans." "During this moment, virtually all Americans--across the religious and political spectrum--believed that their country was 'one nation under God.' But as Americans moved from broad generalities to details of issues such as school prayer, cracks began to appear. Religious leaders rejected this 'lowest common denomination' public religion, leaving conservative political activists to champion it alone. In Richard Nixon's hands, a politics that conflated piety and patriotism became the sole property of the right." "Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the unholy alliance  of money, regions, and politics created a false story that continues to define and divide American politics to this day." Also, see Also, see Michael Kazin, "Pious in Public," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/17/2015.).).

Craig Lambert, Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs that Fill Your Day (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2015) ("Politicians and pundits who shake their heads a the stubbornness of high unemployment rates are either overlooking or ignoring the obvious. Our economic and political system is stacked to reward businesses for discarding employees, not hiring them."  "There are three main strategies for cutting payrolls . . .  Downsizing . . . automation . . .  shadow work." Id. at 34-35. Also, see Barbara Ehrenreich, "Welcome to Your Obsolescence," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/17/2015.).).

Jill Leovy, Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015) ("This is a book about a very simple idea: where the criminal justice system fails to respond vigorously to violent injury and death, homicide becomes an endemic." "African Americans have suffered from just such a lack of effective criminal justice, and this, more than anything, is the reason for the nation's long-standing plague of black homicides. Specifically, black Americas has not benefited form what Max Weber called a state monopoly on violence--the government;s exclusive right to exercise legitimate force. A monopoly provides citizens with legal autonomy, the liberating knowledge that the government will pursue anyone who violates their personal safety. But slavery, Jim Crow, and conditions across much of black America for generations after worked against the formation of such a monopoly. Since personal violence inevitably flares where the state's monopoly is absent, this situation results in the death of thousands of Americans each year." Id. at 8. Though not stated in these terms, this is essentially a law and economic argument for investing more resources into shoring up the state's violence monopoly in black communities to significantly reduce the social costs of the alternative, the use of personal violence in black communities. Also, see Jennifer Gonnerman, "Brutal Territory," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/25/2015).

Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of capitalism run amok whose unintentional collision has been catastrophic. The unfettered prescribing of pain medications during the 1990s reach its peak in Purdue Pharma's campaign to market OxyContin, its new, expensive--extremely addictive--miracle painkiller. Meanwhile, a massive influx of black tar heroin--cheap, potent, and originating from one small county on Mexico's west coast, independent of any drug cartel--assaulted small towns and mid-size cities across the country, driven by a brilliant, almost unbeatable marketing and distribution system. Together these phenomena continue to lay waste to communities from Tennessee to Oregon, Indiana to New Mexico.").

Lauren A. Rivera, Pedigree: How Elite Students Get Elite Jobs (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("I argue that at each stage of the hiring process--from the decision about where to post job advertisements and hold recruitment events to the final selections made by hiring committees--employers use an array of sorting criteria ("screens") and ways of measuring candidates' potential ("evaluative metrics") that are highly correlated with parental income and education. Taken together, those seemingly economically neutral decisions result in a hiring process that filters students based on their parents' socioeconomic status." Id. at 2.).

Richard H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavior Economics (New York & London: Norton, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. More importantly, our misbehavior has serious consequences. Dismissed at first by economists as an amusing sideshow, the study of human miscalculations and there effects on market now drives efforts to make better decisions in our lives, our businesses and our government.").

Benjamin C. Waterhouse, Lobbying America: The Politics of Business from Nixon to NAFTA (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2014).

Nancy Woloch, A Class by Herself: Protective Laws for Women Workers, 1890s-1990s (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015).

"IF THE SO-CALLED OPTIMIST SEES THE GLASS AS HALF-FULL. AND IF THE SO-CALLED PESSIMIST SEES THE GLASS AS HALF-EMPTY. WHAT DO WE CALL THOSE WHO SEE THE CRACK FORMING AT THE BOTTOM OF THE GLASS?" Anon.

YASUSHI INOUE

Yasusho Inoue, Bullfight translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich (London: Pushkin Press, 2013).

Yasusho Inoue, The Hunting Gun, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich (London: Pushkin Press, 2014) (See Janice P. Nimura, "Dear Betrayer," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/5/2015.).

Yasusho Inoue, Life of a Counterfeiter and Other Stories, translated from the Japanese by Michael Emmerich (London: Pushkin Press, 2014).

Yasushi Inoue, Tun-huang, translated from the Japanese by Jean Oda May, prefaced by Damion Searls (New York: New York Review Books, 1978, 2010) (From the backcover: "More than a thousand years ago, an extraordinary trove of early Buddhist sutras and other scriptures was secreted away in caves near the Silk Road city of Tun-huang. But who hid this magnificent treasure and why? In Tun-huang, the great modern Japanese novelist Yasushi Inoue tells the story of Chao Tsing-te, a young Chinese man whose accidental failure to take the all-important exam that will qualify him as a high government official leads to a chance encounter that draws him farther and farther into the wild and contested lands west of the Chinese Empire. Here he finds love, distinguishes himself in battle, and ultimately devotes himself to the strange task of depositing the scrolls in the caves where, many centuries later, they will be rediscovered. A book of magically vivid scenes, fierce passions, and astonishing adventures, Tun-huang is also a profound and stirring meditation on the mystery of history and the hidden presence of the past.).

TWO BY THICH NHAT HANH

Thich Nhat Hanh, Awakening of the Heart: Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 2012). 

Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path White Cloud: Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991). 

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Adrian Wooldridge, The Great Disruption: How Business is Coping with Turbulent Times (New York: The Economist/PublicAffairs, 2015) (This is a collection of essays from Wooldridge's Schumpter column for The Economist.).

"Individuals need to change their expectations: the age of dependence on employers is going the way of deference to social superiors. People have to come to terms with a world in which the only people they can really rely on are themselves. Reid Hoffman points out a billboard that appeared on the side of Highway 101 in the San Francisco Bay Area proclaiming bluntly: '1,000,000 people overseas can do your job. What makes you so special?' Today's worker need to repeat those words every night before they go to bed and then in the morning when they get up." Id. at 25.

"Inward-bound courses would do wonders for 'thought leadership'. There are good reasons why the business world is so preoccupied by that notion at the moment: the only way to prevent your products from being commodities or your markets from being disrupted is to think further ahead than your competitors. But companies that pose as thought leaders are often 'thought laggards': risk analysts who recycle yesterday's newspapers, and management consultants who champion yesterday's successes just as they are about to go out of business." "The only way to become a real thought leader is to ignore all this noise and listen to a few great thinkers. You will learn far more about leadership from reading Thucydides's hymn to Pericles than you will from a thousand leadership experts. You will learn far more about doing business in China from reading Confucius than by listening to 'culture consultants'. Peter Drucker remained top dog among management gurus for 50 years not because he attended more conferences but because he marinated his mind in great books: for example, he wrote about business alliances with reference to marriage alliances in Jane Austen." Id. at 277.

BEYOND PRACTICE READY: SUGGESTED SUMMER READING FOR LAW STUDENTS

Many of these reading have, I think, a sub-theme: That the battle over the Enlightenment is still unfinished. And, those who would embrace the Enlightenment are engaged in a dire struggle with two foes: The counter-Enlightenment right and the post-Modern left.

Jesse Ball, Silence Once Begun: A Novel (New York: Pantheon Books, 2014).

Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (New York: Knopf, 2014) (See blogpost, 4/24/2015.).

Steven Brill, America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System (New York: Random House, 2015) (See Marcia Angel, "Health: The Right Diagnosis and the Wrong Treatment," NYRB, 4/23/2015; Zephyr Teachout, "What Ails Us," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/11/2015.).

David Bromwich, Moral Imagination: Essays (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("This is a book about works of the mind of various sorts, and the people who wrote or spoke them. The common subject of the essays is the relationship between power and conscience. A politician like Lincoln or a political writer like Burke, as much as the author of a novel or a poem, is engaged in acts of imagination for good or ill. At the same time, he is answerable to the canons of accuracy that prevail in the world of judgment between person and person. These writers and several others whom I deal with recognize that the will of the powerful can induce a blindness to the nature of their actions which is one of the mysteries of human life. All of the essays in this book are concerned with that mystery, too." Id. at xi.).

Bartow J. Elmore, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism (New York & London: Norton, 2014) (See blogpost for 5/2/2015.).

Vincenzo Ferrone, The Enlightenment: History of an Idea, with a new afterword by the author, and translated from the Italian by Elisabetta Tarantino (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015).

Francis Fukuyama, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization to Democracy (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014) (See Sheri Berman, "As the World Turns," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 9/14/2014.).

Lily Geismer, Don't Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (See blogpost for 5/6/2015.).

Thomas Geoghegan, Only One Thing Can Save Us: Why America Needs a New Kind of Labor Movement (New York & London: The New Press, 2014) (This book argues that the right to join a union should be a civil right. "Of course, there has to be an effective right to join a union in the first place, freely and fairly, without being fired. It is even more urgent as right-to-work laws spread. It's a matter of fairness to labor. It is the only thing that can save us." Id. at 188.).

Doris Kearns Goodwin, The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and The Golden Age of Journalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013).

Marie Gottschalk, Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (From the bookjacket: "The huge prison buildup of the past four decades has few defenders today, yet reforms to reduce the number of people in U.S. jails and prisons have been remarkably modest. Meanwhile, a carceral state has sprouted in the shadows of mass imprisonment, extending its reach far beyond the prison gate. It includes not only the country's vast archipelago of jails and prisons but also the growing range of penal punishments and controls that lie in the never-never land between prison and full citizenship, from probation and parole to immigrant detention, felon disenfranchisement, and extensive lifetime restrictions on sex offenders. As it sunders families and communities and reworks conceptions of democracy, rights, and citizenship, this ever-widening carceral state poses a formidable political and social challenge." "In this book, Marie Gottschalk examines why the carceral state, with its growing number of outcasts, remains so tenacious in the United States. She analyzes the shortcomings of the two dominant penal reform strategies--one focused on addressing racial disparities, the other on seeking bipartisan, race-neutral solutions centered on reentry, justice reinvestment, and reducing recidivism." "In this bracing appraisal of the politics of penal reform, Gottschalk exposes the broader pathologies in American politics that are preventing the country from solving its most pressing problems, including the stranglehold that neoliberalism exerts on public policy. She concludes by sketching out a promising alternative path to begin dismantling the carceral state.").

Ramachandra Guha, ed., Makers of Modern India (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap/Harvard U. Press, 2011) (From the bookjacket: "Modern India is the world's largest democracy, a sprawling polyglot nation containing one-sixth of all humankind. The existence of such a complex and distinctive democratic regime qualifies as one of the world's bona fide political miracles. Furthermore, [note: in marked contrast to the United States's political players] India's leading political thinkers have often served as it most influential political actor--think Gandhi, whose collected works run more than ninety volumes, or Ambedkar, or Nehru. All recorded their most eloquent theoretical reflections at the same time as they strove to set the delicate machinery of Indian democracy on a coherent and just path." "Out of the speeches and writings of these thinker-activist, Ramachandra Guha has built the first major anthology of Indian social and political thought. Makers of Modern India collects the work of nineteen of India's foremost generators of political sentiment, from those whose names command instant global recognition to pioneering thinkers whose works have until now remained obscure and inaccessible. Ranging across manifold languages and cultures, and addressing every crucial theme of modern Indian history--race, religion, language, caste, gender, colonialism, nationalism, economic development, violence, nonviolence--Makers of Modern India provides an invaluable roadmap to Indian political debate." "An extensive introduction, biographical sketches of each figure,and guides to further reading make this work a rich resource for anyone interested in India and the ways its leading political minds have grappled with the problems that have increasingly come to define the modern world.").

Friedrich A. von Hayek, The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek: Volume 15, The Market and Other Orders), edited by Bruce Caldwell (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014) (see blogpost 5/8/2015.)

Dilip Hiro, The Longest August: The Unflinching Rivalry Between India and Pakistan (New York: Nation Books, 2015) (From the book jacket: "Since partition, there have been several acute cries between the neighbors, including the secession or East Pakistan to form an independent Bangladesh in 1971, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by both sides resulting in one narrowly avoided confrontation in 1999 and another in 2002. Hiro amply demonstrates the geopolitical importance of the India-Pakistan conflict by chronicling their respective ties not only with America and the Soviet Union, but also with China, Israel, and Afghanistan.").

Tony Judt, When the Facts Change: Essays 1995-2010, edited and introduced by Jennifer Homans (New York: Penguin Press, 2015) (See Samuel Moyn, "Unfinished Arguments," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/18/2015.).

Adam Seth Levine, American Insecurity: Why Our Economic Fears Lead to Political Inaction (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (From the bookjacket: "Americans today face no shortage of threats to their financial well-being, such as job and retirement insecurity, health care costs, and spiraling college tuition. While one might expect that these concerns would motivate people to become more politically engaged on the issues, this often doesn't happen, and the resulting inaction carries consequences for political debates and public policy. Moving beyond previously studied barriers to political organization, American Insecurity sheds light on the public's inaction over economic insecurities by showing that the rhetoric surrounding these issues is actually self-undermining. By their nature, the very arguments intended to mobilize individuals--asking them to devote money or time to politics--remind citizens of their economic fears and personal constraints, leading to undermobilization and nonparticipation." "Adam Seth Levine explains why the set of people who become politically active on financial insecurity issues is therefore quite narrow. When money is needed, only those who care about the issues but are not personally affected become involved. When time is needed, participation is limited to those not personally affected or those who are personally affected but outside of the labor force with time to spare. The latter explains why it is relatively easy to mobilize retirees on topics that reflect personal financial concerns, such as Social Security and Medicare. In general, however, when political representation requires a large group to make their case, economic insecurity threats are uniquely disadvantaged.").

Richard H. McAdams, The Expressive Powers of the Law: Theories and Limits (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) (From the bookjacket: "When asked why people obey the law, legal scholars usually give two answers. Law deters illicit activities by specifying sanctions, and it possesses legitimate authority in the eyes of society. Richard McAdams shifts the prism on this familiar question to offer another compelling explanation of how the law creates compliance: through its expressive power to coordinate our behavior and inform our beliefs." "People seek order, and they sometimes obtain a mutually shared benefit when each expects the other to behave in accordance with law. Traffic regulations, for example, coordinate behavior by expressing an orderly means of driving. A traffic sign that tells one driver to yield to another creates expectations in the minds of both drivers and so allows each to avoid collision. McAdams generalizes from the traffic to constitutional and international law and many other domains. In addition to its coordination function, law expresses information. Legislation reveals something important about the risks of the behavior being regulated, and social attitudes toward it. Anti-smoking laws, for example, signal both the lawmakers' recognition of the health risks associated with smoking and the public's general disapproval. This information causes individuals to update their beliefs and alter their behavior." "McAdams shows how an expressive theory explains the law's sometimes puzzling efficacy, as when tribunals are able to resolve disputes even though they lack coercive power or legitimacy. The Expressive Powers of Law contributes to our understanding of the mechanisms by which law--simply by what it says rather than want it sanctions--generates compliance.").

Darrin M. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford & New York: Oxford U. Press, 2001) (From the bookjacket: "Critics have long treated the most important intellectual movement of modern history--the Enlightenment--as if  it took shape in the absence of opposition. This groundbreaking study demonstrates that contemporary resistance to the Enlightenment was a major cultural force, shaping and defining the Enlightenment itself from the moment of it inception and giving rise to an entirely new ideological phenomenon--what we have come to think of the 'Right.' Born in France, but spread throughout Europe and the New World in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Counter-Enlightenment was neither a rarefied current in the history of ideas nor an atavistic relic of the past, but an extensive international, and thoroughly modern affair." "Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Darrin M, McMahon shows that well before the French Revolution, enemies of the Enlightenment were warning that the secular thrust of modern philosophy would give way to horrors of an unprecedented kind. Greeting 1789, in turn, as the realization of their worst fears, they fought the Revolution from its onset, profoundly affecting its subsequent course. The radicalization--and violence--of the Revolution was as much the product of militant resistance as any inherent logic." "In the wake of the Revolutionary upheaval, enemies of the Enlightenment assumed positions of immense cultural authority, consolidating their political vision of the Right into the first third of the nineteenth century and spreading their construction of the Enlightenment throughout the world.  In doing so, they developed a critique of modernity that remains with us to the present day." "The most original and in-depth study available on this important topic, this volume is required reading for historians and political theorists, as well as for anyone interested in the history of religion and the development of modernity.").

Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Works of Montaigne: Essays, Travel Journal, Letters, translated by Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1958) ("I never tire of reading Montaigne's Essays. I spend hours and hours at night in bed. They have a calming, sedative effect and usher in a delightful rest. Montaigne's wit lost never runs dry; he is endlessly full of surprises. One source of surprise derives, I think, from Montaigne's precise estimation of the insignificant position man occupies on earth." Josep Pla, The Gray Notebook, translated from the Catalan by Peter Bush, Introduction by Valenti Puig (New York: New York Review Books, 2013), at 50.).

Robyn Muncy, Relentless Reformer: Josephine Roche and Progressivism in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton & Oxford: 2014).

Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Is The American Century Over? (Malden, MA: Polity, 2015) (Regardless of whether one thinks the answer to the question posed in the title is yes or is no, what is certain is that the United States's relationship(s) with the rest of the world will be very different than it is today, or has ever been in the past. And a central question Americans need to answer is this: Does the United States want be a leader? There is a strong argument that it is not acting as though it does. "Another debate is over how to build and bolster institutions, create networks, and establish policies for dealing with the new transnational issues . . .  Leadership by the largest country is important for the production of global public goods. When the United States does less, others do less as well. Unfortunately, domestic political gridlock often blocks such leadership. For example, the US Senate has failed to ratify the Law of the Seas Treaty despite its being in the national interest and the fact that the United States needs it to bolster its diplomatic position in the South China Sea. Similarly, Congress failed to fulfill an American commitment to support the reallocation of International Monetary Fund quotas from Europe to emerging market countries, even though it would cost the United States almost nothing. And in terms of leading on responses to climate change, there is strong domestic resistance to putting a price on carbon emissions. Similarly, there is domestic resistance to international trade agreements. Such attitudes weaken the ability of the United States to take the lead in dealing with global public goods, and that in turn can weaken the legitimacy and soft power that are critical to the continuation of the American century."' Id. at 122-123.).

Frederick Schauer, The Force of Law (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 2015) ("Understanding for its own sake is valuable. Much of the enterprise of jurisprudence seeks simply to enrich our understanding of the phenomenon of law, without purporting to prescribe to those who make law, follow law, or adjudicate with it. And that is as it should be, at least as long as we take the academic enterprise itself, of which jurisprudence is a part, as a worthwhile enterprise." "That said, however, a potential but often neglected practical side effect of jurisprudential inquiry is at the level of institutional design. Law is not the entirety of political or social organization. It does some things and leaves other things to others. Law is good at some tasks and deficient in others. And thus an important job for law-informed institutional design is in determining which social roles should be filled by legal institutions and which should not." Id. at 167. From the bookjacket: "Reinvigorating ideas from Jeremy Bentham and John Austin, and drawing on empirical research as well as philosophical analysis, Schauer presents an account of legal compliance based on sanction and compulsion, showing that law's effectiveness depends fundamentally on its coercive potential. Law, in short, is about telling people what to do and threatening them with bad consequences if they fail to comply. Although people may sometimes obey the law out of deference to legal authority rather than fear of sanctions, Schauer challenges the assumption that legal coercion is marginal in society. Force is more pervasive than the state's efforts to control a minority of disobedient citizens. When people believe that what they should do differs from what the law commands, compliance is less common than assumed, and the necessity of coercion becomes apparent.").

Jason Sokol, All Eyes Are Upon Us: Race and Politics from Boston to Brooklyn (New York: Basic Books, 2014) ("Here were the two sides to race in the Northeast, embodied in [Edward] Brooke's political success and in [James] Baldwin's cautionary tale. The cities of the Northeast were simultaneously beacons of interracial democracy and strongholds of racial segregation." Id. at x. "A willing and active owner was the third necessary ingredient for the integration of a baseball team, and Boston did not have it. In 1946, [Tom] Yawkey would passionately oppose integration form his seat on baseball's steering committee. He soon made the Red Sox synonymous with racism. [] The Red Sox would ultimately be the last team to sign an African American, in 1959. The great breakthrough happened not in Boston but in Brooklyn." Id. at 30. From the bookcover: "The Conflicted Soul of the Northeast." Also see David Levering Lewis, "The Segregated North," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 1/11/2015).).

Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014).

Adam Tooze. The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order, 1916-1931 (New York: Viking, 2014) ("But if there was one common denominator in all these frustrations it was the overshadowing of the European power states -- a model originating in seventeenth-century Europe and imported to Asia by Japan -- by the challenges of a new era and the rise in the form of the United States of a different focus of economic, political and military authority. As a memo compiled by the British Foreign Office put it in November 1928: 'Great Britain is faced in the United States of American with a phenomenon for which there is no parallel in our modern history -- a state twenty-five times as large, five times as wealthy, three times as populous, twice as ambitious, almost invulnerable, and at least our equal in prosperity, vital energy, technical equipment, and industrial science. This state has risen to its present sate of development at a time when Great Britain is still staggering form the effects of the superhuman effort made during the war, is loaded with a great burden of debt, and is crippled by the evil of unemployment.' However frustrating it might be to search for cooperation with the United States, the conclusion could not be avoided' 'in almost every field, the advantages to be derived from mutual co-operation are greater for us than for them'. If this was true for Britain and its empire, it was all the more so for all the other, one great powers. The question it posed for all of them was the same. If confrontation was not an option, what would be the terms of 'mutual cooperation' under this new dispensation?" Id. at 463-464. Might China be, for the twenty-first century, what the United States was for the twentieth century? And, if confrontation is not a real option, what might the terms of cooperation be? Also see Gary J. Bass, "Last Country Standing," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 11/16/2014.).

Dernot Wagner & Martin L. Weitzman, Climate Shock: The Economic Consequences of a Hotter Planet (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("What precisely are the costs of unabated climate change? What's known, what's unknown, what's unknowable? And where does what we don't know lead us?" "That last question is the key one: Most everything we know tells us climate change is bad. Most everything we don't know tells us it's probably much worse." Id. at xi. Also, seeWilliam D. Nordhaus, "A New Solution: The Climate Club," NYRB, 6/4/2015.).

Benjamin Wittes & Gabriella Blum, The Future of Violence: Robots and Germs, Hackers and Drones--Confronting a New Age of Threat (New York: Basic Books, 2015) (see blog posting, 4/26/2015).

Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian and Reflections on the Composition of Memoirs of Hadrian, translated from the French by Grace Frick in collaboration with the author (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1951) (see blogpost of 5/11/2015.)

Adam Zamoyski, Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789-1848 (New York: Basic Books, 2015) (From the bookjacket: "For the ruling and propertied classes of the late eighteenth century, the years following the French Revolution were characterized by intense anxiety. Monarchs and their courtiers lived in constant fear of rebellion, convinced that their power--and their heads--were at risk. Driven by paranoia, they chose to fight back against every threat and insurgency, whether real or merely perceived, repressing their populaces through surveillance networks and violent, secretive police action. Europe, and the world, had entered a new era." "Zamoyski argues that the stringent measures designed to prevent unrest had disastrous and far-reaching consequences, inciting the very rebellions they had hoped to quash. The newly established culture of state control halted economic development in Austria and birthed a rebellious youth culture in Russia that would require even harsher methods to suppress. By the end of the era, the first stirrings of terrorist movements had become evident across the continent, making the previously unfounded fears of European monarchs a reality." "The turbulent political situation that coalesced during this era would lead directly to the revolutions of 1848 and to the collapse of order in World War I. We still live with the legacy of this era of paranoia, which prefigures not only the modern totalitarian state but also the now pre-eminent contest between society's haves and have nots.").

Julian E. Zelizer, The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for The Great Society (New York: Penguin Press, 2015) ("We as citizens and as politicians must study not only the great personalities who have inhabited the White House but also the full history of the political landscapes in which they operated and which made their achievements possible. Only if we understand how political landscapes change and can be changed will we ever have a chance of breaking the current gridlock in Washington." Id. at 324.).

Sapere aude--dare to know.