'The Story of Israel: From Theodor Herzl to the Roadmap for Peace'

Well, somewhere in between bourbons, bon bons, and blog posts, I'm finding time to read one of the books I received for Christmas, Martin Gilbert's, The Story of Israel. I'll read more today and I'll also try to make it out to the movies with my boys. More on all of this later...

A Perverse Sense of Humor?

Why else would I choose Christmas Eve to start reading a biography of Baruch Spinoza, progenitor of the Enlightenment and bete noir of Reformation religious establishments (both Jewish and Christian)? The book is Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (Cambridge 1999).

The Rise and Fall of Communism

I'm reading Archie Brown's book, which I enthusiastically recommend for your holiday gift giving. See the link at Amazon. And the Telegraph review is here: "Simon Heffer praises a book by Archie Brown that strips away the romance of communism."

And more: Shop Amazon's Holiday Book Deals.

Finding Diderot

Reading Jonathan Israel's intellectual histories of the Enlightenment (see here) has motivated me to start reading the French essayist Denis Diderot. But his writings, including his Pensees philosophiques and his Pensees sur l'interpretation de la nature do not seem to be available online in English translation in either Kindle, pdf, or html format. I find it very disappointing that important works by a major Enlightenment thinker, which are in the public domain, are not freely available. I guess I'll have to resort to the library. How old-fashioned.

"Property in Land and Other Resources" Is Now Available for Pre-Order

My new book, co-edited with Elinor Ostrom, Property in Land and Other Resources (Lincoln Institute 2011), is now available for pre-order at Amazon.com (here) for just $28.63. That's $6.37 (18%) off the cover price. According to the Amazon listing, the book will be published on November 28.

You can also purchase the book directly from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (here).

You can see the full Table of Contents, read Doug North's forward, and read Lin and my Introduction to the book here.

Justice Stevens on the Supreme Court

I just finished reading Justice Stevens highly readable, insightful, and surprisingly substantive book, Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (Little, Brown 2011). Always an engaging writer, Justice Stevens provides a highly personal account of his tenure on the Court, organized around the five Chief Justices with whom he served. Along the way, we learn about his personal history and path to the Court, how the Court functions on a day-to-day basis, the almost invariably warm personal relations among the justices (which doesn't prevent Stevens from taking issue with several of his colleagues or pointing out their endearing or not-so-endearing character traits), and Stevens's views about various landmark cases decided by the Court, while he was a member. This book is highly recommended for all readers with any interest in the US Supreme Court and constitutional, regardless of prior expertise. It should be required reading for all law professors and students.

Enlightened by Jonathan Israel

Oxford University Press has just published the latest book in Jonathan Israel's impressive series on the intellectual history of the Enlightenment, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights 1750-1790. Needless to say, I've bought it, but I won't be reading it for a while because I have to read his earlier installments first, Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity, 1650-1750 (Oxford 2001) (which I've only just started reading) and Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670-1750 (Oxford 2006).

Israel, who is Professor of Modern European  History at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, is an amazing scholar. His books are to intellectual history what William Cronon's books are to environmental history, though perhaps a bit more demanding of the reader. Ranging from 700-1000 pages each, Israel's tomes are monuments of erudition with references to so many major and minor scholars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it is hard work keeping track. The books are not dry or especially difficult to read, but it is easy to get lost in the detail. This is not a criticism; arguably, authors should demand more of readers than they typically do. Israel's books represent the kind of meticulous and comprehensive scholarship that all scholars, myself included, wish we could write.

New Books I'm Reading

Every year or two, UCLA legal historian Stuart Banner comes out with a great new book. The latest, American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own (Harvard 2011) is one of his best (though I seem to say that about every one of his books). This book may become a centerpiece of my Property Theory Seminar in the Spring.

My good friend Shi-Ling Hsu has just published The Case for a Carbon Tax: Getting Past Our Hang-ups to Effective Climate Policy (Island Press 2011). In it, he argues for a carbon tax as preferable to cap-and-trade, traditional regulation, or alternative energy subsidies for curbing greenhouse gas emissions because it is simpler to design, implement, and administer. His arguments are entirely persuasive. Although, I'm not sure it makes a carbon tax any easier to actually enact as a political matter. In fact, I'm not sure that policy makers (aside from the bureaucrats of the European Commission and, perhaps, the State of California) are ready to institute an effective climate policy of any kind.

What I'm Reading

1. Lots of stuff on the social cost of carbon, in preparation for a conference presentation next month. Particularly useful are the articles collected in a special issue of Economics-EJournal here.

2. One of the great things about Kindle is the ability to almost costlessly download classic works of literature and philosophy. I'm currently reading Montaigne's Essays, which are immensely enjoyable. I've recently downloaded other "free" ebooks, including War and Peace, Holmes's The Path of the Law, a couple of volumes in P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster series, as well as works by Hume, Mill, and Boethius.

3. John G. Donahue and Richard J. Zeckhauser, Collaborative Governance: Private Roles for Public Goals in Turbulent Times (Princeton 2011). An interesting and useful, if somewhat chatty and breezy, treatment of mechanisms for improved provision of public goods. My sense is that this book is written not so much for academics as for politicians and corporate types, who don't want to be bothered with too much depth or detail.

Coming This November...

Update on Cole and Grossman, Principles of Law and Economics (2d Ed.)

A 200-page Teacher's Manual and a disk containing PowerPoint slides for each chapter are now available for professors adopting the new edition of the book, published by Kluwer/Aspen.

The End of a Family Tradition (and a Movie Review)

My family has three traditions relating to Harry Potter: (1) I read each book aloud to the family upon publication; (2) we attended the midnight showing of each film upon its release; and (3) we bought each VHS/DVD as it went on sale. Obviously, the first tradition ended a few years ago. The second ended about a half hour ago. And, based on what I saw tonight, I'm hopeful that the third tradition will have ended with the purchase of the DVD for the second-to-last film in the series. The Deathly Hallows Part II is simply a terrible film; the worst in the series (with the possible exception of the fourth). It combined just about all of the worst features from all of the previous films, including stilted (or just plain bad) acting; unnecessary and inappropriate changes to the story line; absence of character development; and poor editing. Maggie Smith's performance was its only redeeming feature, and she was not in enough scenes to save the film. Instead of the  sense of loss I thought I would feel at the end of the film, I feel only relief that I will not have to sit through another Warner Brothers adulteration of Harry Potter.

The final installment in the Harry Potter film series confirms my oft-repeated assertion that the only way to do justice to the books is through a (possibly animated) mini-series on television, where the screenwriters, directors, and editors, have ample time and space to tell the story as J.K. Rowling originally and expansively told it in her wonderful books. I won't be holding my breath. Instead, I expect the next we'll see of Harry Potter is on Broadway in musical form. Perhaps an Andrew Lloyd Webber production?

The Rest of My Summer Reading (for This Year and Probably the Next)

I just received both volumes (all 1060 pages, not including appendices) of Derek Parfit's new book, On What Matters (Oxford 2011). My recollection, from reading Parfit's last book, Reasons and Persons (Oxford 1984), is that, although Parfit writes clearly, the sheer depth and complexity of his analysis makes for hard reading. I anticipate that the payoff to be high (otherwise, I wouldn't start reading the first page of the first volume). I cannot predict, however, how long it will take me to get to that payoff.

My New Kindle

I finally broke down and bought a Kindle DX (the big one). As part of my change of jobs, I'm trying to go more  paperless. The purpose of my Kindle is mainly for storing and reading the many pdf files I download each week. That should save a lot of paper, greatly reduce the clutter in my various offices, and hopefully, inspire me to actually read all the stuff I used to print out. I'll probably wind up putting some books on the Kindle as well, e.g., for trips. However, I will not cease all physical book buying. I still enjoy the feel and smell of real books. Holding the Kindle does not give the same satisfaction. Although, as compared with a heavy, 1000-page tome, I'd rather hold the Kindle.

One issue I have with the Kindle is that it is not the easiest device on which to organize papers into collections. I've tried and failed to do so using the Kindle folder that displays on my computer, after I've plugged the device into a USB port. Apparently, the only way to do it is manually, on the Kindle itself, which is a less than slick process, especially when you're trying to organize a dozen or more files at a go. I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's found a short-cut around this problem.

What I'm Reading These Days

Pauline Maier, Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787-1788 (Simon & Schuster 2010). I thought I already knew a good deal about the constitution's ratification. I was wrong. This book is a revelation.

David Lodge, Thinks... (Viking 2001). One of my summer projects (not planned, but simply occurring) is to reread many (if not all) of David Lodge's novels. They are all great: intelligent, witty, and humane. Of those I've reread so far this summer, my favorite is Nice Work. But Thinks... is giving it a good run for its money.

Krugman on the Cronon Affair

In today's New York Times (here). Paul Krugman addresses the despicable Republican witch hunt against University of Wisconsin Professor William Cronon, about which I previously blogged (here). More than anything else, I was pleased to find that Professor Krugman shares my extremely high opinion of Professor Cronon's book, Nature's Metropolis.

What I'm Reading Now

Ken Binmore, Rational Decisions (Princeton 2008). A wide-ranging exploration of standard theories of choice and belief under risk and uncertainty. Binmore argues, in a way accessible to readers who are not mathematically inclined, that the standard Bayesian approach to knowledge is inadequate; and he offers an extension to that theory based on what he calls "muddled strategies" in strategic interactions. Fascinating stuff.

Saul Bellow, Herzog (Viking 1964). I am re-reading this epistolary novel, one of the great achievements in 20th-century American literature. That I am re-reading Bellow, rather than reading something new, should not be taken as a commentary on the state of American literature today. I just had a hankering for Bellow. Enough said.

What I've Been Reading

Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Random House 2010).

A tremendous romp through the history of domestic life, full of interesting stories and surprising facts - at least in the first half of the book. By the second half, Bryson seems to have run out of original and insightful stories to tell. So, instead, he turns his focus to social historical tales that tend to sell lots of books. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the second half of the book is less a history of the domicile itself, and more a series of vignettes on the social history of sex, muck, stink, and disease. It is no less readable for that, just a bit less insightful and edifying.

Paschal Larkin, Property in the Eighteenth Century (H. Fertig 1969 [1930]).

To be honest, I read this book as background for the Property Theory Seminar I'm teaching this semester. In any case, it's a fine work, full of useful insights into Locke's theory of private property, and how his theory was received in the century following his death. Among Larkin's more surprising (though unfortunately unsupported) assertions, is that Locke eventually backed away from his own labor theory of property acquisition.

Howard Jacobson, The Finkler Question (Bloomsbury 2010).

This is the book that won the 2010 Man Booker Prize - a very rare occurrence for a comedy. Although he is virtually unknown in the US, Howard Jacobson has always been prized in the UK as a serious and wise writer of funny books. I am just starting in on this one, and my hopes are very high.






UPDATE:

I've also just started reading Melvin Urofsky's highly esteemed biography, Louis D. Brandeis: A Life (Pantheon 2009). It's engagingly written, and while Urofsky clearly likes his subject very much, the biography seems less hagiographic than many others I've read about Supreme Court justices.

On This Date

On January 10, 1776, Englishman Thomas Paine anonymously published Common Sense, a pamphlet that provided the American colonists with arguments for independence from English rule and promoted a system for representative democracy. Written like a religious sermon, rather than philosophical tract, common folk could understand it easily, which enhanced its popularity and circulation.

What I'm Reading Now

Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt (Random House 2010). I found this third and final volume of Morris's magisterial biography of one of our greatest presidents, and one of the most interesting personalities of the twentieth century, under the Christmas tree (or, as I call it, the Hannukah bush). Morris writes with a literary flair that other biographers must envy.

Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus (Vintage 1999 [1947]). It is a special pleasure of the winter break period to re-read great masterworks. Nearly all of Mann's works would qualify in that category. He is my favorite novelist of any time and place, even though I cannot (I am sorry to say) read him in the original German. This book, which he wrote while in exile (in the US) during World War II, displays Mann's remarkable ability to become truly expert in, and write fluently about, highly technical fields - in this case, musical composition - far removed from his own training and experiences. My version of the book is not that pictured on the left. I have an old, dog-eared edition of the original English translation by H.T. Lowe-Porter.