I used to read George Will's columns all the time. That was when I subscribed to Newsweek, and Will's column was one of the many items that magazine picked up from its parent newspaper, The Washington Post. I'm not such a fan anymore, partly because George turned out to be a hypocrite on family values, like so many "conservatives," and partly because I now prefer The Economist to any of the American newsmagazines.
This column, from April 28th, is pretty good, however. I might note that one of the Senators on the Judiciary Committee actually asked Elena Kagin one of Will's suggested questions. (It was the one about Thurgood Marshall's statement that "You do what you think is right and let the law catch up." She dodged the question by pointing out that, if confirmed, she would be Justice Kagin, not Justice Marshall. That's trivially obvious; the point is: Would she make decisions on the basis of Justice Marshall's dictum?
Will supports Justice Scalia's notion that the Constitution doesn't change, and that, in fact, the purpose of constitutions is to prevent change. That's fair enough, but this whole original intent idea founders, it seems to me, on one fact. From the text of the Constitution, as ratified, it is clear that the intent of the framers and ratifiers was to count slaves as 3/5ths of free people. It is also clear that no one, no one, at the Constitutional Convention actually liked this provision. The Southerners wanted to count their slaves as full people, not out of regard for human rights, but because that would have given them a lock on the House of Representatives, as well as the Senate. Many Northerners didn't want to count the slaves at all, because the slaves were not allowed to vote and lacked the other rights of people included in the citizenry. In other words, the original intent was to make a compromise between incompatible positions, so that the Constitution could be completed. I don't see where a modern judge gets a lot of guidance from that, except for Abraham Lincoln's point: It's all about the Union.
Glenn A Knight
In my study
Showing posts with label U. S. Supreme Court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label U. S. Supreme Court. Show all posts
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Privileges, Immunities, and Guns
I was going to say that I don't like George Will very much. But I'm going to modify that sentiment to say that I don't read George Will very often, so I don't really know if I like him or not these days. For many years I subscribed to Newsweek, and Will's column (recycled from the Washington Post) was a mainstay of that magazine. His column would show up occasionally in our local paper The Gazette, but I came to avoid everything but the sports and the comics in that rag.
Be that as it may, today I read George Will's column in the Washington Post online, on entitled "How the Constitution, Filtered by the High Court, Affects Guns." I was expecting the usual right-wing argument about everyone's right to carry a gun in order to kill federal officers if they ever come to force you to give up your coal-burning furnace. (In my view, by the way, inciting people to carry guns for the purpose of opposing the authority of the federal government is treason or damned close to it.) But no! Will's column discusses whether the Supreme Court should use the "equal protection" clause or the "privileges and immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment to dispose of the gun laws of Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois.
This is a much more interesting argument. The chain of the argument goes something like this:
The Bill of Rights didn't create a bunch of rights by fiat of the Federal Government, but codified a number of pre-existing privileges - the rights of Englishmen, if you will. Therefore, the Bill of Rights is a list (an incomplete list) of basic human rights.
The Fourteenth Amendment stated two things: We are all entitled to equal protection of the laws, and the states have to recognize the common "privileges and immunities" of Americans. Will says, and I think he's right in this, that the Bill of Rights is a good starting point if you need a catalog of privileges and immunities.
Therefore, all of the protections of the Bill of Rights, which acted to restrict the Federal Government, were extended to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. And I agree with Will that this was the intent of the authors of that amendment, and that their intent was frustrated by the Supreme Court in the 1870s. The extension of the Bill of Rights to the states, a process known as incorporation, was, in fact, mostly carried out, decision by decision, by the Warren Court in the 1950s and 1960s.
Will wants the court to use the privileges and immunities clause because, taken together with the 10th Amendment, it provides a framework for asserting all sorts of individual rights against both the state and the Federal governments. I'm not sure I like that, but I do think that the equal protection clause doesn't provide a very good basis, logically speaking, for overruling an ordinance that prohibited everyone from having a handgun.
Be that as it may, today I read George Will's column in the Washington Post online, on entitled "How the Constitution, Filtered by the High Court, Affects Guns." I was expecting the usual right-wing argument about everyone's right to carry a gun in order to kill federal officers if they ever come to force you to give up your coal-burning furnace. (In my view, by the way, inciting people to carry guns for the purpose of opposing the authority of the federal government is treason or damned close to it.) But no! Will's column discusses whether the Supreme Court should use the "equal protection" clause or the "privileges and immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment to dispose of the gun laws of Chicago and Oak Park, Illinois.
This is a much more interesting argument. The chain of the argument goes something like this:
The Bill of Rights didn't create a bunch of rights by fiat of the Federal Government, but codified a number of pre-existing privileges - the rights of Englishmen, if you will. Therefore, the Bill of Rights is a list (an incomplete list) of basic human rights.
The Fourteenth Amendment stated two things: We are all entitled to equal protection of the laws, and the states have to recognize the common "privileges and immunities" of Americans. Will says, and I think he's right in this, that the Bill of Rights is a good starting point if you need a catalog of privileges and immunities.
Therefore, all of the protections of the Bill of Rights, which acted to restrict the Federal Government, were extended to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment. And I agree with Will that this was the intent of the authors of that amendment, and that their intent was frustrated by the Supreme Court in the 1870s. The extension of the Bill of Rights to the states, a process known as incorporation, was, in fact, mostly carried out, decision by decision, by the Warren Court in the 1950s and 1960s.
Will wants the court to use the privileges and immunities clause because, taken together with the 10th Amendment, it provides a framework for asserting all sorts of individual rights against both the state and the Federal governments. I'm not sure I like that, but I do think that the equal protection clause doesn't provide a very good basis, logically speaking, for overruling an ordinance that prohibited everyone from having a handgun.
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Knight’s Reading List XI: November 2007
Reading List:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers.
Drake, David. Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified.
Marks, Sheldon, M.D. Prostate and Cancer.
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer.
Non-Fiction:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. 512 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index.
The late Steve Ambrose was a very well-known popular historian, author of Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, and multivolume biographies of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. This book is in the tradition of oral histories of World War II, of which John Toland’s Battle: The Story of the Bulge (1959) is a fine example. I was a little surprised not to see Toland’s book in Ambrose’s Bibliography. Nor did he refer to John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy (1982, with a new introduction 1994), a really fine account of the period June-August, 1944.
Ambrose’s accounts of D-Day and the liberation of France, the Battle of the Bulge, and the late battles will be familiar to those who have read much in the history of World War II. Less familiar and, therefore, perhaps more interesting, was the section on the battle of the Hurtgen Forest. The drama of the battles around Bastogne may have led us to ignore the almost utterly pointless slaughter occasioned by Eisenhower’s decision to continue offensive operations on the Western Front through the bitter winter of 1944-1945. Had the allies settled down into winter quarters, a fine tradition of European warfare, they could have resumed the offensive in the spring with little difference – except that many casualties suffered in the Hurtgen Forest would not have occurred.
Another interesting aspect of this book is that Ambrose devotes a section of six chapters to “Live in the ETO.” This covers the roles of the many non-combat personnel involved in the theater: nurses, medics, prisoners, as well as some discussion of what was a thoroughly segregated army. Even though World War II modified American social and technological life, it was, nonetheless, a product of the culture of the time, and many assumptions and relationships were carried over from the homeland to the European theater.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. xii + 343 pages. Bibliography. Solutions to Exercises. Final Exam. Index. About the Author.
I still find calculus mysterious, but that isn’t Krantz’s fault.
Marks, Sheldon. Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival (Third Edition). 2003. xv + 349 pages. Index.
I concur with Dr. E. Torrey Fuller’s comments on this book. “Originally published in 1995, this is one of the best books available on prostate cancer. It is user friendly, with forty chapters in question-and-answer format and a helpful index. Like most books written by urologists, it primarily covers treatment issues and includes little on causes (except nutrition), research, and other issues.”
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. 1996. xxi + 344 pages. Index.
Ornish is a well-known television doctor who pushes diet and meditation as pathways to better health. This cookbook represents an attempt to bring Ornish-healthy food to people who can’t afford a personal chef. I didn’t find it an indispensable addition to my kitchen’s library (unlike, say, Joy of Cooking). I do have Ornish’s Eat More, Weigh Less, but his recipes end up on my table a lot less often than dishes from Gabe Mirkin’s Fat Free, Flavor Full or Sarah Schlesinger’s 500 Fat-Free Recipes.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Books, 2006. 274 pages. Cases Cited. Notes. Acknowledgments. Illustration Credits. Index.
This book was written as a companion to a PBS series on the United States Supreme Court in American history. (I have not seen the series, so I can’t compare the book to it.) This may explain Jeffrey Rosen’s choice of format: Each of the four principal chapters is structured around the relations between two key players in an important period of the Court’s history: John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson in the early history of the Republic, John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., around the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas in the mid-century period, and William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Rosen’s thesis is that temperament matters more than intellectual brilliance, political power, or legal knowledge. A justice with the right temperament will be able to build coalitions, broker compromises, and affect many decisions. A less fortunate justice will anger and alienate his or her colleagues, and write many minority opinions whose brilliance can’t conceal the simple fact that they are written in a losing cause.
This is an attractive thesis, and it helps to account for the inability of Antonin Scalia to participate more often in the majority side of decisions. I have, however, a few reservations. John Marshall’s congenial (and convivial) disposition certainly helped him to carry his Court on many occasions. On the other hand, one reason for his influence in American jurisprudence is that Marshall was Chief Justice from 1801 until 1835; Jefferson was President from 1801 to 1809. It may also be a little unfair to compare Holmes and the first Harlan, as they were on the Court together for only nine years, out of tenures that exceeded thirty years for each man.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. (Introduction, 1997). A Mariner Book. xv + 404 pages.
This is a really fine travel book, by one of the outstanding travel writers. The author travelled from Boston, Massachusetts, to southern Argentina, by train. Theroux’s observations are keen, and his descriptions are clear. Theroux isn’t about taking his own viewpoint out of the picture; in his books the reporter – his experiences, his frustrations, his opinions – is very much a part of the story. An elegantly written book.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer: What You Need to Know to Make Informed Decisions. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, Health and Wellness, 2006. xv + 280 pages. Notes. Index.
Fuller was an M.D., but not an oncologist (cancer specialist), when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. His purpose was to write “the book I wish had been available to me when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.” In my opinion, as an interested party, he has succeeded remarkably well. Of the various books I have read on prostate cancer, this one ranks with Prostate Cancer for Dummies as the most useful.
Part of the usefulness of Surviving Prostate Cancer is Fuller’s attitude, as captured in the title. Fuller expresses, and shares, a determination to beat this disease. Driving this book is the conviction that prostate cancer is beatable. Fuller covers the various treatment options – and there are many – clearly and thoroughly. His bibliography includes a brief description of each book, with an indication of his recommendations. (He recommends both Prostate Cancer for Dummies and Prostate and Cancer.) For example, he does not recommend the American Cancer Society’s Complete Guide to Prostate Cancer with this comment: “Thus, the book lacks specific information to help a man choose which treatment is best for him. These shortcomings may be an inevitable consequence of having sixty-two authors and trying not to offend anyone.”
Fiction:
Drake, David. Queen of Demons. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1998. 480 pages. Sequel to: Lord of the Isles.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1999. 612 pages. Sequel to: Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 2007. 333 pages. Sequel to: The Fortress of Glass.
David Drake, who recently became a contributor to this blog, has been writing excellent science fiction and fantasy since the early 1970s. I’ve known Dave for 34 years now, and he is both a good friend and one of my favorite authors. The Lord of the Isles/Crown of the Isles series encompasses a total of nine novels, all featuring a group of four young friends from a village back of beyond, who are thrust into position of power and peril in an age of powerful magic and malevolent magicians. Drake very nicely balances the naturalism of his prose with the fantastic aspects of his subject matter. There is very little more frightening than a horror story told in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, and David Drake is very good at letting his stories develop their own atmospheres.
You can find out more about Dave and his books at: http://david-drake.com/index.html.
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers.
Drake, David. Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified.
Marks, Sheldon, M.D. Prostate and Cancer.
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer.
Non-Fiction:
Ambrose, Stephen E. Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany, June 7, 1944-May 7, 1945. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. 512 pages. Notes. Bibliography. Index.
The late Steve Ambrose was a very well-known popular historian, author of Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, and multivolume biographies of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard M. Nixon. This book is in the tradition of oral histories of World War II, of which John Toland’s Battle: The Story of the Bulge (1959) is a fine example. I was a little surprised not to see Toland’s book in Ambrose’s Bibliography. Nor did he refer to John Keegan’s Six Armies in Normandy (1982, with a new introduction 1994), a really fine account of the period June-August, 1944.
Ambrose’s accounts of D-Day and the liberation of France, the Battle of the Bulge, and the late battles will be familiar to those who have read much in the history of World War II. Less familiar and, therefore, perhaps more interesting, was the section on the battle of the Hurtgen Forest. The drama of the battles around Bastogne may have led us to ignore the almost utterly pointless slaughter occasioned by Eisenhower’s decision to continue offensive operations on the Western Front through the bitter winter of 1944-1945. Had the allies settled down into winter quarters, a fine tradition of European warfare, they could have resumed the offensive in the spring with little difference – except that many casualties suffered in the Hurtgen Forest would not have occurred.
Another interesting aspect of this book is that Ambrose devotes a section of six chapters to “Live in the ETO.” This covers the roles of the many non-combat personnel involved in the theater: nurses, medics, prisoners, as well as some discussion of what was a thoroughly segregated army. Even though World War II modified American social and technological life, it was, nonetheless, a product of the culture of the time, and many assumptions and relationships were carried over from the homeland to the European theater.
Krantz, Steven G. Calculus Demystified. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. xii + 343 pages. Bibliography. Solutions to Exercises. Final Exam. Index. About the Author.
I still find calculus mysterious, but that isn’t Krantz’s fault.
Marks, Sheldon. Prostate and Cancer: A Family Guide to Diagnosis, Treatment, and Survival (Third Edition). 2003. xv + 349 pages. Index.
I concur with Dr. E. Torrey Fuller’s comments on this book. “Originally published in 1995, this is one of the best books available on prostate cancer. It is user friendly, with forty chapters in question-and-answer format and a helpful index. Like most books written by urologists, it primarily covers treatment issues and includes little on causes (except nutrition), research, and other issues.”
Ornish, Dean, M.D. Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish. 1996. xxi + 344 pages. Index.
Ornish is a well-known television doctor who pushes diet and meditation as pathways to better health. This cookbook represents an attempt to bring Ornish-healthy food to people who can’t afford a personal chef. I didn’t find it an indispensable addition to my kitchen’s library (unlike, say, Joy of Cooking). I do have Ornish’s Eat More, Weigh Less, but his recipes end up on my table a lot less often than dishes from Gabe Mirkin’s Fat Free, Flavor Full or Sarah Schlesinger’s 500 Fat-Free Recipes.
Rosen, Jeffrey. The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Books, 2006. 274 pages. Cases Cited. Notes. Acknowledgments. Illustration Credits. Index.
This book was written as a companion to a PBS series on the United States Supreme Court in American history. (I have not seen the series, so I can’t compare the book to it.) This may explain Jeffrey Rosen’s choice of format: Each of the four principal chapters is structured around the relations between two key players in an important period of the Court’s history: John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson in the early history of the Republic, John Marshall Harlan and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., around the beginning of the 20th century, Hugo Black and William O. Douglas in the mid-century period, and William H. Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Rosen’s thesis is that temperament matters more than intellectual brilliance, political power, or legal knowledge. A justice with the right temperament will be able to build coalitions, broker compromises, and affect many decisions. A less fortunate justice will anger and alienate his or her colleagues, and write many minority opinions whose brilliance can’t conceal the simple fact that they are written in a losing cause.
This is an attractive thesis, and it helps to account for the inability of Antonin Scalia to participate more often in the majority side of decisions. I have, however, a few reservations. John Marshall’s congenial (and convivial) disposition certainly helped him to carry his Court on many occasions. On the other hand, one reason for his influence in American jurisprudence is that Marshall was Chief Justice from 1801 until 1835; Jefferson was President from 1801 to 1809. It may also be a little unfair to compare Holmes and the first Harlan, as they were on the Court together for only nine years, out of tenures that exceeded thirty years for each man.
Theroux, Paul. The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. (Introduction, 1997). A Mariner Book. xv + 404 pages.
This is a really fine travel book, by one of the outstanding travel writers. The author travelled from Boston, Massachusetts, to southern Argentina, by train. Theroux’s observations are keen, and his descriptions are clear. Theroux isn’t about taking his own viewpoint out of the picture; in his books the reporter – his experiences, his frustrations, his opinions – is very much a part of the story. An elegantly written book.
Torrey, E. Fuller, M.D. Surviving Prostate Cancer: What You Need to Know to Make Informed Decisions. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, Health and Wellness, 2006. xv + 280 pages. Notes. Index.
Fuller was an M.D., but not an oncologist (cancer specialist), when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2004. His purpose was to write “the book I wish had been available to me when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.” In my opinion, as an interested party, he has succeeded remarkably well. Of the various books I have read on prostate cancer, this one ranks with Prostate Cancer for Dummies as the most useful.
Part of the usefulness of Surviving Prostate Cancer is Fuller’s attitude, as captured in the title. Fuller expresses, and shares, a determination to beat this disease. Driving this book is the conviction that prostate cancer is beatable. Fuller covers the various treatment options – and there are many – clearly and thoroughly. His bibliography includes a brief description of each book, with an indication of his recommendations. (He recommends both Prostate Cancer for Dummies and Prostate and Cancer.) For example, he does not recommend the American Cancer Society’s Complete Guide to Prostate Cancer with this comment: “Thus, the book lacks specific information to help a man choose which treatment is best for him. These shortcomings may be an inevitable consequence of having sixty-two authors and trying not to offend anyone.”
Fiction:
Drake, David. Queen of Demons. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1998. 480 pages. Sequel to: Lord of the Isles.
Drake, David. Servant of the Dragon. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 1999. 612 pages. Sequel to: Queen of Demons.
Drake, David. The Mirror of Worlds. New York, Tom Doherty Associates, A Tor Book, 2007. 333 pages. Sequel to: The Fortress of Glass.
David Drake, who recently became a contributor to this blog, has been writing excellent science fiction and fantasy since the early 1970s. I’ve known Dave for 34 years now, and he is both a good friend and one of my favorite authors. The Lord of the Isles/Crown of the Isles series encompasses a total of nine novels, all featuring a group of four young friends from a village back of beyond, who are thrust into position of power and peril in an age of powerful magic and malevolent magicians. Drake very nicely balances the naturalism of his prose with the fantastic aspects of his subject matter. There is very little more frightening than a horror story told in a perfectly matter-of-fact tone, and David Drake is very good at letting his stories develop their own atmospheres.
You can find out more about Dave and his books at: http://david-drake.com/index.html.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Knight's Reading List IX: September 2007
After the August 2007 reading list, you won’t be surprised to find another four Harry Potter novels on the September 2007 list. Two other novels – one good, one really bad – round out the fiction group. In non-fiction we have one computer techie book, one investment guide, one work on the Supreme Court of the United States, and one polemic on politics, religion and oil. A mixed bag, indeed, which won’t surprise those of you who know me.
Non-Fiction:
Maria Langer. Quicken 2007: The Official Guide. 2007. xxvii + 484 pages, including Index. If you use Quicken, the personal finances software from Intuit, this guide could be useful for you. It has major sections on Quicken functionality for cash flow, investing, managing property and debt, financial planning and tax management. It is, of course, more of a reference than a work to be read for pleasure, or even for general information. Read 21 August-7 September 2007.
Kevin Phillips. American Theocracy. 2006. xvi + 462 pages, including Notes and Index. Kevin Phillips became famous – famous in political junkie circles, anyway – back in the 1960s, when he published The Emerging Republican Majority. In that book, he accurately predicted some of the major trends in the partisan politics of the next forty years. The South became Republican territory, the Sun Belt became the core of conservative country, and the Republicans benefited from the racial and social tensions which riddled American society. Forty years later, Phillips’s youthful enthusiasm had turned to horror: His Republican majority had given rise to George W. Bush, the religious right, and an unholy alliance between the petroleum sector and foreign oil powers. Phillips seems to feel that, because he predicted the success of the Southern Strategy, he is somehow responsible for its results. So, he has turned to writing polemics attacking the political nexus of the Bushes, the evangelicals, and the oil producers. American Dynasty (which I have not read) preceded American Theocracy. American Theocracy is heavy reading, because Phillips is no prose stylist. But it is chockful of material to feed any conspiracy theorist’s hunger for tales of the evildoers behind it all. You can fill the breaks in reading American Theocracy watching Fahrenheit 911, Jesus Camp, or Crude Awakening. Read 29 July-16 September 2007.
Charles B. Carlson. The Smart Investor’s Survival Guide. 2002. xxiii + 325 pages. I wish I had read this one earlier, but I don't know that any individual's investment decisions could have affected the impact of the recent financial crisis. There have been bigger forces at work in the credit markets, in particular - and this does relate back to Kevin Phillips and his work - the set of policies designed to allow people to improve their standards of living, without increasing the incomes which ought to have been required to support those standards. At this point, "smart investor" sounds like an oxymoron. Read 3-26 September 2007.
Earl M. Maltz. The Chief Justiceship of Warren Burger, 1969-1986. 2000. xvi + 307 pages, including Appendix, Bibliography, Index of Cases, and Subject Index. This is a volume in a series from the University of South Carolina Press, Chief Justiceships of the United States Supreme Court. At the time this book was published, volumes had been published on Melville W. Fuller, John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth, John Marshall, Stone and Vinson, and Edward Douglass White. Read 17-29 September 2007.
Fiction:
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 2000. 734 pages. I suppose that one can sum up the difference between a literary novel and a genre novel written for young people in this fact: I read Goblet in eight days and Deathly Hallows in three, while it took me seven weeks to get through The Stone the Builder Refused. Read 26 August-2 September 2007.
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. 2003. 870 pages. Read 2-8 September 2007.
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. 2005. 652 pages. Read 8-10 September 2007.
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 2007. 759 pages. Read 10-12 September 2007.
Elizabeth Peters. The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits. 1971. 247 pages. Elizabeth Peters, a cat fancier from Maryland, has become a prolific author of mystery novels, who is perhaps best known for her Amelia Peabody series set in late 19th- and early 20th-century Egypt. This was an early book, and it shows. Peters’ acceptance of a sort of Reefer Madness attitude toward drug use rings of Puritan disapproval. And that’s only one of the bad points in this improbable adventure set in Mexico. Read 17-19 September 2007.
Madison Smartt Bell. The Stone the Builder Refused. 2004. xvii + 747 pages. This is the third work in a trilogy on the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint Louverture. Bell does an amazing job of weaving French, Creole, and various African expression through the dialogue. His characterizations of both fictional and historical persons have depth and texture. Bell has a very solid grasp of the political realities of the relations between Haiti, Santo Domingo, France, and the United States. The title is taken from a Biblical citation, a Psalm quoted several times in the New Testament. Read 10 August-27 September 2007.
Non-Fiction:
Maria Langer. Quicken 2007: The Official Guide. 2007. xxvii + 484 pages, including Index. If you use Quicken, the personal finances software from Intuit, this guide could be useful for you. It has major sections on Quicken functionality for cash flow, investing, managing property and debt, financial planning and tax management. It is, of course, more of a reference than a work to be read for pleasure, or even for general information. Read 21 August-7 September 2007.
Kevin Phillips. American Theocracy. 2006. xvi + 462 pages, including Notes and Index. Kevin Phillips became famous – famous in political junkie circles, anyway – back in the 1960s, when he published The Emerging Republican Majority. In that book, he accurately predicted some of the major trends in the partisan politics of the next forty years. The South became Republican territory, the Sun Belt became the core of conservative country, and the Republicans benefited from the racial and social tensions which riddled American society. Forty years later, Phillips’s youthful enthusiasm had turned to horror: His Republican majority had given rise to George W. Bush, the religious right, and an unholy alliance between the petroleum sector and foreign oil powers. Phillips seems to feel that, because he predicted the success of the Southern Strategy, he is somehow responsible for its results. So, he has turned to writing polemics attacking the political nexus of the Bushes, the evangelicals, and the oil producers. American Dynasty (which I have not read) preceded American Theocracy. American Theocracy is heavy reading, because Phillips is no prose stylist. But it is chockful of material to feed any conspiracy theorist’s hunger for tales of the evildoers behind it all. You can fill the breaks in reading American Theocracy watching Fahrenheit 911, Jesus Camp, or Crude Awakening. Read 29 July-16 September 2007.
Charles B. Carlson. The Smart Investor’s Survival Guide. 2002. xxiii + 325 pages. I wish I had read this one earlier, but I don't know that any individual's investment decisions could have affected the impact of the recent financial crisis. There have been bigger forces at work in the credit markets, in particular - and this does relate back to Kevin Phillips and his work - the set of policies designed to allow people to improve their standards of living, without increasing the incomes which ought to have been required to support those standards. At this point, "smart investor" sounds like an oxymoron. Read 3-26 September 2007.
Earl M. Maltz. The Chief Justiceship of Warren Burger, 1969-1986. 2000. xvi + 307 pages, including Appendix, Bibliography, Index of Cases, and Subject Index. This is a volume in a series from the University of South Carolina Press, Chief Justiceships of the United States Supreme Court. At the time this book was published, volumes had been published on Melville W. Fuller, John Jay and Oliver Ellsworth, John Marshall, Stone and Vinson, and Edward Douglass White. Read 17-29 September 2007.
Fiction:
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 2000. 734 pages. I suppose that one can sum up the difference between a literary novel and a genre novel written for young people in this fact: I read Goblet in eight days and Deathly Hallows in three, while it took me seven weeks to get through The Stone the Builder Refused. Read 26 August-2 September 2007.
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. 2003. 870 pages. Read 2-8 September 2007.
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. 2005. 652 pages. Read 8-10 September 2007.
J. K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. 2007. 759 pages. Read 10-12 September 2007.
Elizabeth Peters. The Night of Four Hundred Rabbits. 1971. 247 pages. Elizabeth Peters, a cat fancier from Maryland, has become a prolific author of mystery novels, who is perhaps best known for her Amelia Peabody series set in late 19th- and early 20th-century Egypt. This was an early book, and it shows. Peters’ acceptance of a sort of Reefer Madness attitude toward drug use rings of Puritan disapproval. And that’s only one of the bad points in this improbable adventure set in Mexico. Read 17-19 September 2007.
Madison Smartt Bell. The Stone the Builder Refused. 2004. xvii + 747 pages. This is the third work in a trilogy on the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint Louverture. Bell does an amazing job of weaving French, Creole, and various African expression through the dialogue. His characterizations of both fictional and historical persons have depth and texture. Bell has a very solid grasp of the political realities of the relations between Haiti, Santo Domingo, France, and the United States. The title is taken from a Biblical citation, a Psalm quoted several times in the New Testament. Read 10 August-27 September 2007.
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