Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America. Villagers–mainly young women–suffered from unseen torments that caused them to writhe, shriek, and contort their bodies, complaining of pins stuck into their flesh and of being haunted by specters. Believing that they suffered from assaults by an …
In Point Taken, Ross Guberman delves into the work of the best judicial opinion-writers and offers a step-by-step method based on practical and provocative examples. Featuring numerous cases and opinions from 34 esteemed judges – from Learned Hand to Antonin Scalia – Point Taken, explores what it takes to turn “great judicial writing” into “great writing”. Guberman provides …
Good lawyers have an ability to tell stories. Whether they are arguing a murder case or a complex financial securities case, they can capably explain a chain of events to judges and juries so that they understand them. The best lawyers are also able to construct narratives that have an emotional impact on their intended audiences. …
Money travels the modern world in disguise. It looks like a convention of human exchange – a commodity like gold or a medium like language. But its history reveals that money is a very different matter. It is an institution engineered by political communities to mark and mobilize resources. As societies change the way they create money, they …
The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of Government
The era of economic liberalization, spanning 1978 to 2008, is often regarded as a period in which government was simply dismantled. In fact, government was reconstructed to meet the needs of a globalized economy. Central banking, fiscal control, tax collection, regulation, port and airport management, infrastructure development-in all of these areas, radical reforms were made to the …
The Bramble Bush: The Classic Lectures on the Law and Law School
For over seventy years, there has been one book that law students have read to prepare for what they were about to encounter. That book is The Bramble Bush. After all these years and many imitators, The Bramble Bush remains one of the most popular introductions to the law and its study.Llewellyn introduces students to what the law …
Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America’s fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro’s larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, …
Japan and the Shackles of the Past (What Everyone Needs to Know)
Japan is one of the world’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced nations, and its rapid ascent to global power status after 1853 remains one of the most remarkable stories in modern world history. Yet it has not been an easy path; military catastrophe, political atrophy, and economic upheavals have made regular appearances from the feudal era to the …
The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia
Andrei Lankov has gone where few outsiders have ever been. A native of the former Soviet Union, he lived as an exchange student in North Korea in the 1980s. He has studied it for his entire career, using his fluency in Korean and personal contacts to build a rich, nuanced understanding. In The Real North Korea, Lankov substitutes …
Fifty years on from its original publication, Hla Hart’s The Concept of Law is widely recognized as the most important work of legal philosophy published in the twentieth century. It is a classic book in the field of legal scholarship and remains the starting point for most students coming to the subject for the first time.Known as Hart’s …