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Featured Titles
Worst-Case Scenarios
by Cass R. Sunstein (Harvard University Press, 2007)
Nuclear bombs in suitcases, anthrax bacilli in ventilators, tsunamis and meteors, avian flu,
scorchingly hot temperatures: nightmares that were once the plot of Hollywood movies are now
frighteningly real possibilities. How can we steer a path between willful inaction and
reckless overreaction? This work explores these and other worst-case scenarios and shows
how private individuals and public officials might best respond to low-probability risks of
disaster-emphasizing what we will lose from precautions as well as from inaction. It also
offers an understanding of the uses and limits of cost-benefit analysis, especially when
current generations are imposing risks on future generations. Throughout, the author uses
climate change as a defining case, but he also discusses terrorism, depletion of the ozone
layer, genetic modification of food, hurricanes, and worst-case scenarios faced in our
ordinary lives.
Design: Deborah Hodgdon
Cover Art: Cameron Davidson/Photographer's Choice/Getty Images
Belva Lockwood: The Woman Who Would Be President
by Jill Norgren (New York University Press, 2007)
This work recounts the life story of one of the 19th century's most accomplished
advocates for women's rights. Born on a farm in upstate New York in 1830, she married
young, but after her husband's premature death, she earned a college degree, became a
teacher, and moved to Washington, DC with plans to become an attorney-an occupation all but
closed to women at that time. Not only did she become one of the first female attorneys in
the U.S., but in 1879, she became the first woman ever allowed to practice at the bar of the
Supreme Court. In 1884, Lockwood continued her trailblazing ways as the first woman to run
a full campaign for the U.S. Presidency. She ran for President again in 1888. Although her
candidacies were unsuccessful, as she knew they would be, she demonstrated that women could
compete with men in the political arena.
Jacket: Portrait of Lockwood that she used on her campaign cards, reprinted by
permission of the Library of Congress.
The Lawyer Myth: A Defense of the American Legal Profession
by Rennard Strickland and Frank T. Read (Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 2008)
Lawyers and the legal profession have become scapegoats for many of the problems of our age.
In this work, the authors look behind current anti-lawyer media images to explore the
historical role of lawyers as a balancing force in times of social, economic, and political
change. They confront the hypocrisy of critics from both the right and the left, as well as
their attempts to exploit popular misperceptions about lawyers and judges, most often to
further their own social and political agendas. By revealing the facts and reasoning behind
the decisions in such cases as the infamous McDonald's coffee spill, the authors provide
a clear explanation of the operation of the law while addressing misconceptions about the
number of lawsuits, runaway jury verdicts, and legal "technicalities" that turn
criminals out on the street. Acknowledging that no system is perfect, the authors propose a
slate of reforms for the bar, the judiciary, and law schools that will enable today's
lawyers - and tomorrow's - to live up to the noble potential of their profession.
Jacket Design by Beth Pratt
Torture and Democracy
by Darius Rejali (Princeton University Press, 2007)
This study of modern torture takes the reader from the late 19th century to the aftermath of
Abu Ghraib, from slavery and the electric chair to electrotorture in American inner cities,
and from French and British colonial prison cells and the Spanish-American War to the fields
of Vietnam, the wars of the Middle East, and the new democracies of Latin America and
Europe. As the author traces the development and application of one torture technique after
another in these settings, he argues that, as the 20th century progressed, democracies not
only tortured, but they set the international pace for torture. Dictatorships may have
tortured more, and more indiscriminately, but the U.S., Britain, and France pioneered and
exported techniques that have become the lingua franca of modern torture: methods that leave
no marks. As democracy and human rights spread after WWII, so too did these methods. The
author also tackles the controversial question of whether torture really works, answering
the new apologists for torture point by point.
Jacket Front Photograph: "Man with Tied Hands" © Kamil Vojnar/Getty Image
Jacket Design: Tracy Baldwin