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What Are We Reading?(2013 edition)

In what has become an annual tradition, we asked the Law School’s distinguished facultyto tell us about the last good book they read. The results covered a wide range of genresand topics, from law to history, from non-fiction to fiction. The complete list ofrecommendations is below, and you can click on a faculty member’s name to learn moreabout his or her research and teaching interests. Enjoy!

Just want a list of the books? Print this page (or save it as a PDF) and you'll get thefaculty recommendations without the images.

Saul LevmoreWilliam B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of LawI have just finished listening to Scott Anderson’s Lawrence in Arabia, a fun read thatgives a very different perspective on Word War I and various accidents of Middle Easthistory.

Richard EpsteinJames Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Law and Senior LecturerRick Atkinson, Guns at Last Light. The history of the last year of the war shows what agrind that was, even with an overwhelming advantage in firepower. War is indeed hell.

Nicholas StephanopoulosAssistant Professor of LawI recently finished Jack Balkin's Living Originalism, which is his effort to fuseoriginalism and living constitutionalism and to show that they're actually opposite sidesof the same coin. Balkin is a wonderful writer, and I find his argument that we are beingtrue to the Constitution's original meaning when we construe abstract phrases like "dueprocess" and "equal protection" in accordance with our own times and values to be utterlyconvincing. As he says, the Framers deliberately chose to use specific language in someplaces and highly abstract language in others, and the latter choice delegates theinterpretive project to future generations. My biggest complaint about the book isBalkin's tendency to deify the Constitution. Even given the greater interpretive flexibilitythat his method implies, there are still many aspects of the Constitution that we can'tchange and that we would never choose today (e.g., the Electoral College, the twosenators-per-state rule, etc.). Balkin's method is also fairly indeterminate; it just tells usthat pretty much any constitutional construction that can be reconciled with the text ispermissible. Despite these caveats, Living Originalism is a classic that everyoneinterested in constitutional law should read.

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Michael SchillDean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of LawDerek Bok, Higher Education in America. The two-time former President of Harvard(and former Dean of its law school) has written the most comprehensive analysis of theproblems facing higher education in years. The book and its copious annotations isdestined to become the authoritative text for higher ed researchers for decades to come.

Michael SchillDean and Harry N. Wyatt Professor of LawWilliam G. Bowen, Higher Education in the Digital Age. My President at Princeton, BillBowen, shows up for the second year in a row on my list of the books I learned the mostfrom over the past year. Bowen’s book, based upon his 2012 Tanner Lectures at Stanford,demonstrates once again that he is the most astute observer of higher education in thenation. His analysis of the potential of on-line education and MOOCs to bend the costcurve and help solve the “cost disease” facing colleges and universities is balanced,intelligent and prescient.

Joan NealClass of 1949 Lecturer in LawThe Boys in the Boat is the story of the University of Washington men’s rowing team thatwent to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. It’s a great story about really admirable young men,and told very well. These kids were the sons of loggers, farmers and fishermen strugglingthrough the Great Depression (not third-generation rowers like some of their Ivy Leaguecompetition), but with the right coach (and a Zen-like boat builder who was a man of fewwords) they were able to come together to create a truly great crew. Although the bookhighlights both the physical demands of the sport as well as its elegance and beauty, thisis a really enjoyable read even if you know nothing about the sport.

Douglas BairdHarry A. Bigelow Distinguished Service Professor of LawI'm reading Bill Bryson's One Summer: America 1927. The book provides a snap shot oflife in the United States just before the Great Depression by looking at a particularlymemorable summer, in which the headlines covered everything from the GreatMississippi Floods to Charles Lindbergh's flight from New York to Paris to Babe Ruth's60 home-run season to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.

Eduardo PeñalverJohn P. Wilson Professor of LawDavid Byrne, How Music Works. Written by the legendary lead-singer of the TalkingHeads, it's an interesting discussion of the interaction between individual invention andsocial circumstance in the creation of music (and, by implication, in the creative processmore broadly).

Mary Anne CaseArnold I. Shure Professor of LawRed Families v. Blue Families: Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture by NaomiCahn and June Carbone and Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas: How a

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Bedroom Arrest Decriminalized Gay Americans by Dale Carpenter. It's nice to see whatbecame of work I first encountered in drafts presented at my Law School Workshop onRegulation of Family, Sex and Gender.

Richard H. McAdamsBernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research ScholarBrian Christian, The Most Human Human, recounts Christian’s preparation for an annualcompetition, inspired by Alan Turing, in which humans attempt to discern whether theyare communicating with another human or a computer program written for the purpose offooling them. The software writers seek to win for their program the award of “mosthuman machine” by being the most frequently confused for a human, while the humanconversationalist most frequently identified as such is the “most human human.” In apleasantly meandering book, Christian investigates the nature of human conversation.

M. Todd HendersonProfessor of LawIt is obvious, but How China Became Capitalist is worth reading not only because it wasRonald Coase's last major work, but also because it is an intriguing and unconventionalaccount of recent Chinese history. The move toward capitalism in China is perhaps thebiggest global story of the past four decades, and Coase tells it in an approachable andinsightful way. The punch line -- that the revolution was not top down but rather bottomup, or, as Coase tells it, the product of many "marginal revolutions" -- is sure to make usappreciate China in new and surprising ways.

David WeisbachWalter J. Blum Professor of LawAngus Deaton, The Great Escape. A history of how western countries escaped povertyand how other countries might too.

Eric PosnerKirkland & Ellis Distinguished Service Professor of LawThe Coming of the Third Reich, The Third Reich in Power, and The Third Reich at Warby Richard J. Evans are an impressively concise and vivid account of the Nazi era.

Jonathan MasurDeputy Dean an Professor of Law aThe best pleasure reading I did this year was Gone Girl, a mystery by Gillian Flynn. Atthe most basic level, the book is a compelling whodunit with real narrative momentum.At the same time, it’s a fascinating portrait of a psychopath and an exploration ofstorytelling with an unreliable narrator. The characters Flynn has created are engagingand three-dimensional, and the story is propulsive. But Flynn leaves the reader without areliable foothold. Every deductive step is filled with uncertainty and doubt. The overalleffect is disquieting and unsettling, as a really good mystery should be.

Joan NealClass of 1949 Lecturer in LawThe Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code. This is the story ofhow a series of people were able to “crack” the code to decipher a language found on

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archeological remains in Crete (from 1,000 years before Classical Greek). The challengehere was that no one knew either what spoken language the writing recorded, or what thealphabet was that was used for recording the unknown language – making thedecipherment doubly difficult. It tells the story through three individuals – thearcheologist who found the tablets, a woman who spent years/decades doing incrediblydetailed work to discover important clues about the alphabet (doing manually on indexcards what we would use supercomputers to do today), and then the amateur who wasable to take this important legwork and achieve the final decipherment. If you areinterested in history or linguistics or even just gripping mysteries, this book is a greatread.

William HubbardAssistant Professor of LawI have just started reading The Forum and the Tower by Mary Ann Glendon. This bookexplores the efforts of a diverse group of historical figures to bridge the space betweenthe public forum and the ivory tower—i.e., to inform political debate with academicstudy or vice versa. Each chapter of the book is devoted to the experience of a singlefigure. The book begins with Plato, whose work is almost synonymous with idealisticrather than practical political ideas, and yet who—I was quite surprised to discover—latein life undertook at great personal effort and risk to serve as an advisor to the governmentof Syracuse. The account of this episode gives insight into the folly of both thephilosopher and the king. I am looking forward to the rest of this book.

Dennis HutchinsonSr. Lect. in Law and William Rainey Harper Professor in the CollegeI am reading Poems 1962-2012 by Louise Glück. This is a doorstop, more than 600pages, but it reveals the startling development of a poetic sensibility over a half-century,from severe and dark to deep and gently optimistic, but always with an eerie precision forword and phrase. She is tough to read in great gobs, but richly rewarding.

Joan NealClass of 1949 Lecturer in LawLike Dreamers: The Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, and theDivided Israel They Created. This book (by an Israeli journalist) tells the history ofmodern Israel through the lens of a handful of members of a particular paratrooperbrigade. This diverse group of Israelis–including both kibbutzniks and religious scholars–came together with a shared goal in the Six-Day War. Afterwards, however, these menhad entirely different visions of what Israel should become and took very different paths– one helping to move Israel toward capitalism, some struggling to maintain the socialistkibbutzim, some founding religious settlements, some becoming artists, and onebecoming a terrorist who spent time in an Israeli prison. All of them were interesting menwho helped to shape modern Israel and its complex problems.

David ZarfesClinical Professor of Law; Director, Lecturer Recruitment; Director, Corporate LabProgramsThe Inheritor’s Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science.Arsenic poisoning was the means of choice for ridding oneself of an unwanted spouse, in

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early nineteenth-century England. By the mid-century, arsenic poisoning was mostcommonly the default option for unhappy wives seeking refuge from bad marriages. (In1851, the House of Lords tried to pass a law forbidding women to buy arsenic.) It wasalso employed by those awaiting an inheritance, most frequently young males eager toclimb the social ladder. These problems and their contribution to the role of medicine inthe law are the subject of Sandra Hempel’s new book.

Geoffrey StoneEdward H. Levi Distinguished Service ProfessorI recently read Linda Hirshman's Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution. Linda, analum of our Law School (Class of 1969), has written a wonderfully readable andinsightful account of how American attitudes towards homosexuals changed. It is a storyfilled with fascinating characters, interesting anecdotes, and important lessons about thenature of political movements in America.

Craig FuttermanClinial Professor of LawI thoroughly enjoyed Khaled Hosseini’s newest novel, And the Mountains Echoed.Among the things that continue to stick with me in the months since I read the book isHosseini’s resistance to making his main characters heroes. Their human flaws andfrailties, along with their sometimes disappointing moral decisions, shed far more light onthe complexities of our life choices than the presentation of characters who make thechoices that we hope that we would make in similar situations. I also love Hosseini’sartistry in shifting voices and perspectives across characters from different generations,times, and countries to share a complex story of family.

Martha NussbaumErnst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and EthicsFor a Greenberg Seminar I'm teaching with Richard Posner on "Southern Literature andthe Law," I recently read for the first time Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes WereWatching God. This amazing novel, neglected in its day because it did not fit the agendaof the "racial uplift" movement, and rediscovered and championed by Henry Louis Gates,tells the story of an African-American woman searching for real love and joy. After alifeless marriage to a respectable and successful man who becomes the first black mayorof a town in Florida, she lets down her hair (literally) and runs off with Tea Cake, adrifter and gambler who plays the guitar. The two move to the Everglades and work inthe fields, have fun, and love each other passionately. The novel is sensuous, powerful,and just sheer fun, partly because it is about fun, although there is a tragic ending that Iwon't divulge. The racial uplift people didn't like the fact that the novel showed African-Americans loving sex, loving gambling and drinking, and simply not being normative.But that is exactly what is great about it: it's about release from the straitjacket ofnormativity. Before I read it, I listened to an audio version read by the wonderful actressRuby Dee, which I think one of the best performances ever given by an American actress.All the characters, all the dialects and voices, even to the way Tea Cake (looking at Janie)says "Mmm, mmm."

Jennifer NouNeubauer Family Assistant Professor of Law

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I’d highly recommend Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow—about how and whywe make seemingly impulsive and otherwise irrational decisions.

Randy PickerPaul H. and Theo Leffmann Professor of Commercial LawAnne Libera, The Second City Almanac of Improvisation. The Second City is one of thegreat cultural institutions of Chicago and one with strong University of Chicago ties.Bernie Sahlins, AB ’43, co-founded Second City and that grew out of an earlierincarnation on campus. Libera’s book offers a window into the process of improvisationand sketch creation at Second City. It does so through materials that she has assembledfrom the gifted comedians who have flowed through Second City over the years,including early greats such as Alan Arkin and more recent prominent Second City alumssuch as Tina Fey. A fun, easy read on the creative process at work and play.

Richard H. McAdamsBernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research ScholarCandice Millard, Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murderof a President, recounts the horrible and amazing story of the murder of James Garfield.Millard moves across multiple subjects, the politics leading to Garfield’s election, themotive of his assassin, the efforts of Alexander Graham Bell to save his President, thefailures of pre-antiseptic medicine, and the succession of Chester Arthur.

Laura WeinribAssistant Professor of LawMy recommendation this year is Pure, a novel by Andrew Miller. The book traces theefforts of a young engineer named Jean-Baptiste Baratte to dig up the ancient Parisiancemetery of Les Innocents and to demolish the church that sits on its grounds. In the run-up to the French Revolution, the cemetery’s walls are crumbling, and the stench andpoison of its mass grave are seeping into the surroundings. Baratte is charged withexhuming the corpses, a task he approaches with as much ambivalence as thepersonalities he meets and the futures they promise. Despite the premise, the novel is farmore than allegory. Its rich details and captivating characters make Miller’s grislyexploration of Baratte’s physical and spiritual journey a gripping and rewarding read.

Aziz HuqAssistant Professor of Law and Herbert and Marjorie Fried Teaching ScholarThe Condemnation of Blackness: Race Crime and the Making of Modern Urban Americaby Khalil Gibran Muhammad is a gripping account of the origins of statisticaljustifications for the harsh policing of African Americans. Readers interested in ourcurrent debates on racial profiling may find the latter revealingly illuminated byMuhammad’s genealogy of the early statistical foundations of claims about the intrinsicnature of black criminality.

Jennifer NouNeubauer Family Assistant Professor of LawAfter seeing the movie, I’d recommend reading Solomon’s Northrup’s Twelve Years aSlave to get Northrup’s first-person account of slavery’s brutalities; the film has importantvisuals, but the book does a better job of conveying Northrup’s perspectives on his

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experiences.

Saul LevmoreWilliam B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of LawThe Crusades, by Zoe Oldenbourg, is a terrific history, attentive to social history,personalities, religious fervor and much more.

Aziz HuqAssistant Professor of LawRain by Don Paterson, a Scottish poet and musician, is an accessible, yet bracinglyastringent, book of poems that captures both Paterson’s local cadences and also vocalizesevocatively wider concerns of aging, loss, and grief.

Craig FuttermanClinial Professor of LawThis is a somewhat odd recommendation, because I have only just begun reading thebook, High Rise Stories—Voices from Chicago Public Housing, by Audrey Petty. Mystudents and I spent six years working from the ground floor of Stateway Gardens, afamily public housing high rise as the development was gradually demolished building bybuilding as a part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation. Much likethe personal stories in this book, our experiences at Stateway complicated ourunderstanding of life in Chicago public housing communities. While the communitieswere often most known from the outside by conditions of extreme poverty and violence(images of “gangbangers” and drug dealers had a tendency to eclipse all other life), wecame to know a real community—individuals and families who adapted to conditions ofabandonment. We experienced regular acts profound generosity, care for others, anddownright neighborliness that are often lacking in modern neighborhoods. As I recognizethe many problems faced by the people there, I also find myself tearing up as I look at thevacant land where hundreds of families once lived. Audrey Petty, whom I know to be agifted writer and teacher, shares a number of personal narratives in this book that havethe potential to complicate all of our understanding of Chicago public housingcommunities.

Tom GinsburgLeo Spitz Professor of International LawThe New Testament. It’s a runaway bestseller that I’d oddly never read. I was encouragedto do so by Professor Joseph Weiler of NYU, who argued an important case in theEuropean Court of Human Rights defending the Italian state’s ability to put crucifixes inpublic classrooms. He suggested that I ought to check out the New Testament, as I hadonly read the Old. Even though you know how the story ends, it’s still a great read after2000 years. Highly recommended to Jews, Muslims, and those of non-Christian faith whohave never looked at it.

Kenneth DamMax Pam Professor Emeritus of American & Foreign Law and Senior LecturerKenneth Pollack,Unthinkable: Iran, the Bomb, and American Strategy. An analysis ofIran's foreign policy with special reference to its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability.Written by a Middle Eastern expert, Kenneth Pollack, who has extensive governmental

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experience in Middle East Affairs and a long record as a scholar writing on MiddleEastern Affairs.

Alison LaCroixProfessor of Law and Ludwig and Hilde Wolf Teaching ScholarThree books by British or Irish female authors — one memoir of post-World War IIWales as observed by the literary-minded daughter of a novelistically dysfunctionalfamily (Bad Blood by Lorna Sage); one novel of early 1960s Ireland based heavily on theauthor's own experience (The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien, not to be confused with hermore recent, more lurid memoir Country Girl); and one novel of England in the first halfof the twentieth century that spans both world wars and centers on a heroine whose liferestarts each time she dies (Life After Life by Kate Atkinson). All three are absorbingpersonal histories that open a window onto a specific historical moment.

Anup MalaniLee and Brena Freeman Professor of Law

John Scalzi, Redshirts (but really any John Scalzi book I can get my hand on; he’s aUniversity of Chicago College grad)Ray Monk, Robert OppenheimerPaul Sally, Tools of the Trade

Richard H. McAdamsBernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research ScholarNatalie Shapero, No Object, is a brilliant and moving collection of poetry, written by agraduate of the law school (class of 2011). Shapero is a 2012-2014 Kenyon Review fellowat Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio and the recent recipient of a 2013 Ruth LillyFellowship from the Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine.

Richard H. McAdamsBernard D. Meltzer Professor of Law and Aaron Director Research ScholarJames Shapiro, Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? Academic experts generallyavoid the contentious Shakespeare authorship debate, but Shapiro, a Professor Englishand Comparative Literature at Columbia University, offers a fascinating historiography ofthe controversy, one that includes the authorship doubts of Mark Twain, Sigmund Freud,and Helen Keller and concludes with the reasons Shapiro believes in the authenticity ofthe man from Stratford.

Saul LevmoreWilliam B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of LawI am reading Probably Approximately Correct, by Leslie Variant. It is a book that ischanging how I think about everyday things, education, and especially legal theory. Itconnects machine learning, artificial intelligence, and evolutionary theory. Among otherthings, it’s a terrific way to see why the new generation finds computer science the fieldto study.

Tom GinsburgLeo Spitz Professor of International LawWilliam T. Vollman’s Imperial, which is about a part of Southeastern California where I

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have relatives who are farmers. The story of the Imperial Valley distills the seamiest sidesof California history: turning the desert to farmland with corrupt water deals;environmental degradation; housing booms and housing busts; graveyards of namelessillegal immigrants pursuing busted dreams in El Norte. The story is peculiarlyCalifornian while also capturing the flavor of every border in the world, which all sharecertain qualities no matter what countries they separate.