SUGGESTED FICTION

Isaac Asimov, Foundation (The Foundation Trilogy, Book I), introduction by Paul Krugman, illustrations by Alex Wells (London:  The Folio Society, 2012).

Isaac Asimov, Foundation and Empire (The Foundation Trilogy, Book III), illustrations by Alex Wells (London:  The Folio Society, 2012).

Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation (The Foundation Trilogy, Book II), illustrations by Alex Wells (London:  The Folio Society, 2012).

Kate Atkinson, A God in Ruins: A Novel (New York: Little, Brown, 2015) (See Tom Perrotta, "Fall From Grace," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/10/2015.).

Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, introduced by Chris Hadfield, illustrated by Mick Brownfeld (London: The Folio Society, 2015).

Amit Chaudhuri, Odysseus Abroad: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Michael Gorra, "Walking Tours," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/17/2015.).

Philip K. Dick, Five Novels of the 1960s and 70s, edited by Jonathan Lethem (New York: Library of America, 2008).

Isak Dinesen, Seven Gothic Tales, introduced by Margaret Atwood, illustrated by Kate Baylay (London: The Folio Society, 2013).

Jonathan Franzen, Purity: A Novel (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015).

Jonathan Galassi, Muse: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2015).

Graham Greene, The Comedians, introduced by Francis Wheen, illustrations by Sara Ogilvie (London: The Folio Society, 2015).

Frank Herbert, Dune, illustrated b Sam Weber, introduced by Michael Dirda, & afterword by Brian Herbert (London: The Folio Society, 2015).

Mat Johnson, Loving Day: A Novel  (New York: Spiegal & Grau, 2015) (See Baz Dreisinger, "Blackish in America," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 6/7/2015.).

Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman: A Novel ((New York: Harper, 2015).

Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, introduced by Meg Rosoff, illustrated by Sam Richwood (London: The Folio Society, 2015).

Toni Morrison, Beloved, introduction by Russell Banks, illustrated by Joe Morse (London: The Folio Society, 2004, 2015).

Sara Novic, Girl at War: A Novel (New York: Random House, 2015).

Matthew Pearl, The Last Bookaneer: A Novel (New York: Penguin Press, 2015) (See John Vernon, "A Pirate's Life," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/31/2015.).

Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram: A Novel (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2003).

Owen Sheers, I Saw a Man: A Novel (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2015).

Jim Shepard, The Book of Aron: A Novel (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Geraldine Brooks, "From Shtetl to Ghetto,' NYT Book Review, Sunday 5/24/2015.).

Graham Swift, England and Other Stories (New York: Knopf, 2015) (See Valerie Martin, "Not Their Finest Hour," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 5/24/2015.).

Elizabeth Taylor, A View of the Harbour, introduction by Roxana Robinson (New York: New York Review Books, 1947, 2015).

Thrity Umrigar, The Story Hour: A Novel (New York: Harper, 2014).

ALBERT O. HIRSCHMAN. April 7, 1915-December 10, 2012

I did a quick and dirty search for references to Albert O. Hirschman's work in law journals. There were over 1,000 hits on WestLaw, which, to my mind, indicates this economist may be someone whose work is worth law students getting familiar.

Jeremy Adelman, Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2013).

Albert O. Hirschman, The Essential Hirschman, edited and with an introduction by Jeremy Edelman, and and afterword by Emma Rothschild & Amartya Sen (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2013).

Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph (Princeton Classics), with a foreword by Amartya Sen, and an afterword by Jeremy Adelman (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2013) ("The opposite kind of forgetfulness is also in evidence: it consists of trotting out the identical ideas that had been put forward at an earlier period, without any references to the encounter they had already had with reality, an encounter that is seldom wholly satisfactory." Id. at 133.).

Albert O. Hischman, A Propensity to Self-Subversion (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Harvard U. Press, 1995) (From "The Case against 'One Thing at a Time'": "[L]eisurely, sequential problem-solving is not necessarily a pure blessing, as has been so plausibly argued in the literature on political development. Sequential problem-solving brings with it the risk of getting stuck. This risk may apply not only to the sequence form the production of consumer goods to that of machinery and intermediate goods, but, in a different form, to the complex progression sketched in a famous 1949 lecture by the English sociologist T. H. Marshall [T. H. Marshall, "Citizenship and Social Class," in T. H. Marshall, Class, Citizenship, and Social Development (New York: Doubleday, 1965)]: from individual liberties to universal suffrage and on to the welfare state. A society which has pioneered in securing individual liberties is likely to experience special difficulties in subsequently establishing comprehensive social welfare policies. The very values that served such a society well in one phrase--the belief in the supreme value of individuality, the insistence on individual achievement and individual responsibility--may be something of an embarrassment later on, when a communitarian ethos of solidarity needs to be stressed." Id. at 69, 74 (citations omitted).

Albert O. Hirschman, The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap Press/Harvard U. Press, 1991) (Do they even teach rhetoric to undergraduates in college? Or, have it been eliminated as part of the cutback in liberal arts education? Regardless, serous law students should study rhetoric. "The unsettling experience of being shut off, not just from the opinions, but from the entire life experience of large numbers of one's contemporaries is actually typical of modern democratic societies. In these days of universal celebration of the democrat model, it may seem churlish to dwell on deficiencies in the functioning of Western democracies. [] Among them there is one that can frequently be found in the more advanced democracies: the systematic lack of communication between groups of citizens, such as liberals and conservative, progressives and reactionaries. The resulting separateness of these large groups from one another seems more worrisome to me than the isolation of anomic individuals in 'mass society' of which sociologists have made so much." Id at ix-x. "[T]he perversity thesis asserts that 'the attempt to push society in a certain direction will result in its moving all right, but in the opposite direction'." Id. at 43. "The futility thesis" asserts "that the attempt to change is abortive, that in one way or another any alleged change is, was, or will be largely surface, facade, cosmetic, hence illusory, as the 'deep' structures of society remain whole untouched." Id. at 42. "The Jeopardy thesis": "if it can be shown that two reforms are in some sense mutual exclusive so that the older will be endangered by the newer, then an element of comparability enters into the argument and the evaluation can proceed in vaguely common 'coin of progress': does it make sense to sacrifice the old progress for the new.?" Id. at 84. "'Reactionaries' have no monopoly on simplistic, peremptory, and intransigent rhetoric. Their 'progressive' counterparts are likely to do just as well in this regard, and a book similar to the present one could probably be written about the principal arguments and rhetorical positions these folks have taken up over the last two centuries or so in making their case." Id. at 140.).

In addition, I suggest the following readings:

Jeremy Adelman, Republic of Capital: Buenos Aires and the Legal Transformation of the Atlantic World (Stanford: Stanford U. Press, 1999) ("This book describes the collapse, beginning in the late eighteenth century, of the Spanish Empire in the River Plate region of South America, followed by the pendular swings between state-building and civil war, and a culminating triumph of liberal constitutionalism in the 1860's; it traces the transition from colonial Natural Law to instrumental liberal understandings of property. As such, the developments of constitutionalism and property law were more than coincidences: the agony of the polity shaped the rituals and practices arbitrating economic justice, while the crisis of property animated the support for a centralized and executive-dominated state. In dialectical fashion, politics shaped private law while the effort to formulate the domain of property directed the course of political struggles." Id. at 2. My favorite passage: "One exasperated asesor gently upbraided the magistrate for mishandling a suit over the delivery of stale beer. What should have been a simple affair, noted the adviser, became a long, drawn out, and cumbersome process because the judge unwittingly admitted false testimonies and doctored books from both sides. Sorting out the mess was nearly impossible. (To be fair to the judge, the litigants hired a couple of long-winded obfuscating lawyers to bamboozle the court.) In his prelude to a long and thoughtful disentangling, the court adviser urged 'that no prominent deed must be omitted, especially those generally used and consecrated in commerce and sanctioned as necessities to lend a certain character of legality to all transactions, which, like all human acts, should be based on good faith and rectitude of procedures.'" Id. at 241.).

Jeremy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2006).

FOOD FOR THOUGHT: IS NEO-PERONISM IN AMERICA'S FUTURE?

Jacob Timerman, Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number, translated from the Spanish by Toby Talbot (New York: Knopf, 1981) ("Another of [Juan Domingo] Peron's statements in his infinite semantic creativity was 'Reality is the only truth.' This might be construed as an incitement to careful, meticulous scrutiny of data culled form reality in order to discover peaceful, moderate paths toward a political solution. In practice, however, it formed the basis for Peronist intolerance of any solution outside the ken of its own followers, schemes, or totalitarian rigidity, and the justification of utterly irrational acts in the economics, cultural, and political spheres. In fact, the only admissible reality was Peronism, since that was the majority, and the only truth was the Peronist way of life" Id. at 25. Might this remind one of at least two individuals in the field of candidates contesting for 2016 Republican nomination for president? And, No! Hillary is definitely not Evita.).

EDMUND BURKE

Richard Bourke, Empire and Revolution: The Political Life of Edmund Burke (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) ("Improvement could only proceed on the basis of consensus. For this reason, toleration was a basic constituent of enlightenment. The necessary connection between enlightenment and toleration meant that moral and religious improvement were matters of persuasion. People could only be enlightened on the basis of consent, which was generated by a mixture of rational agreement and customary attachment. As Burke had come to realize by the middle of the 1750s, opinions were sustained by a blend of conviction and veneration. Veneration need not amount to blind attachment or superstition. It arose out of an 'implicit domination' for long-held beliefs that had the practicality of usage in their favour. The 'stable prejudice of time' disposed the mind to maintain its assent in support of habitual assumptions. . . Certainly, Burke concluded, public authority could not supply the place of voluntary agreement. "The coercive authority of the State is limited to what is necessary for its existence.' Force was never sufficient to convince the human mind. For this reason, influence rather than power was the principal means of reforming opinion. But even then, presumption was always 'on the side of possession.' Only encouragement, armed with favours and the prospect of benefit, could hope to shape the world of human judgment and allegiance." Id. at 221-222 (citations omitted).).

AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES & ARISTOPHANES

Mortimer J. Adler, Editor in Chief, Great Books of the Western World, Volume 4: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, edited by David Grene &Richmond Lattimore; David Grene &Richmond Lattimore; David Grene & Richmond Lattimore; and David Barrett & Alan H. Sommerstein, respectively (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952, 1990).

FOOD /QUESTIONS FOR THOUGHT

How could an supposedly educated person, Ben Carson, hold such a view? Do our politicians (Democrats, Republican, U.S.-version of Democratic Socialists, or whatever) believe wecannot, or will not, engage in critical analysis of their statements? Or, is the problem that we have many well-schooled politicians and citizens, but relatively few well-educated ones? Democracy does not work if citizens are not pro-active in educating themselves and being informed. Get an education, and not simply a degree! Ben Caraon is a well-schooled, and ostensibly successful, man; but he is obviously poorly educated if he truly holds the position he asserts.

OPINION  | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR 

Ben Carson Is Wrong on Guns and the Holocaust

By ALAN E. STEINWEIS 

The Republican presidential candidate's statements about weapons and Germany trivialize history.

END TIMES: THE INFLUENCE OF MODERN EVANGELICALISM ON AMERICAN POLITICS AND CULTURE

Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London, England: Belknap Press/Harvard U. Press, 2014) ("This book draws on a lively cast of characters and extensive archival research to document the ways an initially obscure group of charismatic preachers and their followers have reshaped American religion, at home and abroad, for over a century. Perceiving the United States as besieged by satanic forces--communism and secularism, family breakdown and government encroachment--Billy Sunday, Charles Fuller, Billy Graham, and many others took to the pulpit and airwaves to explain how biblical end-times prophecy made sense of a world ravaged by global wars, genocide, and the threat of nuclear extinction. Rather than withdraw from their communities to wait for Armageddon, they used what little time was left to warn of the coming Antichrist, save souls, and prepare the United States for God's final judgment. Their work helped define the major issues and controversies of the twentieth century, and they continue to exert a tremendous influence over the American mainstream today." Id. at ix-x. "Unlike race, however, social class and region of birth continued to have little influence on who would and would not embrace the radical apocalypticism of modern evangelicalism. Millions of men and women, from the depressed factories of the urban rust belt to the rural oil fields of west Texas to the upper-middle-class tech-boom suburbs of southern California longed for the second coming, There were (and are) no easy ways to predict along class or regional lines who would and would not embrace a theology of doom. Apocalypticism has provided millions of Americans with a powerful lens through which to make sense of difficult and challenging eras." Id. at 351.).

Joel A. Carpenter, Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York & Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1997).