Looking for a good book or two to dig into this summer? Now in its tenth year, the Stanford Law School faculty’s Summer Reading List offers up some of our professors’ favorite reads.

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Paul Brest, Former Dean and Professor Emeritus, recommends The Premonition by Michael Lewis

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis is a gripping and frightening story about the lack of capacity of government organizations to respond to the pandemic. A page-turner.

 

 

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Richard T. Ford, George E. Osborne Professor of Law, recommends Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White by Patricia Sullivan, The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck, and his own book, Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History

Justice Rising: Robert Kennedy’s America in Black and White for a new perspective on a well-covered era in American history. Patricia Sullivan delivers a page turner that puts Bobby Kennedy near the center of the racial justice movement. She charts his evolution from a supporter of McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (which he later deeply regretted) to one of the very few white politicians trusted by civil rights leaders. A highlight is her account of when James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, Lorraine Hansberry and Kenneth Clark met RFK in his Manhattan apartment to discuss racial violence in the Jim Crow south. Makes you wonder how different things would be if he had survived and become President instead of Nixon.

The Memory Theater: if Hans Christian Andersen met Terry Gilliam and David Lynch, they might come up with something almost this good. Structured as a fairy tale, the novel depicts a world torn by war and populated with magical beings, surreal landscapes and a theater troupe that writes history by performing both momentous and mundane events in its plays. A leafy Arcadia where its’ always twilight and no one ages become a unique vision of hell; a massive library set on fire by an invading army and a mobile theater are two types of paradise. Written in the deceptively simple prose of a great children’s story, it’s a poetic mediation on the viciousness of contrived innocence and the costs of obsession.

Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History: Okay, this one’s not fair, it’s my own book. Still, if you ever wondered why every year kids are sent home from their graduations and proms for wearing the wrong clothes, why employers have rules against braided hairstyles or requiring high heels and make up, I have some answers. And if you think fashion is trivial, I’ve got hundreds of examples, taken from the Renaissance through last year to prove that what we wear both reflects and shapes our politics, social interactions and individual sense of self.

 

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Lawrence Friedman, Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law, recommends An American Summer: Love & Death in Chicago by Alex Kotlowitz and Anthony Trollope’s books The Warden, The Eustace Diamonds, and The Way We Live Now

I’d like to recommend Alex Kotlowitz, An American Summer: Love & Death in Chicago; this is a beautifully written, though very sad account of violence and despair in the city.

I’m also probably repeating myself from past years, but as a tremendous fan of Anthony Trollope, I don’t think it’s possible to recommend him enough: hard to pick out special favorites, but The Warden, The Eustace Diamonds, and The Way We Live Now are particularly and deservedly popular.

 

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Ronald J. Gilson, Charles J. Meyers Professor of Law and Business, Emeritus, recommends Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein, and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

Summer reading for me gives rise to two different lists: one for serious books that sometimes get put off during the school year, and a one that is just for fun in response to everything that causes things to be put off during the school year. The book at the top of my serious list for this summer is Kahneman, Sibony and Sunstein’s new book Noise. The book explores the impact on judgment of a low signal to noise ratio and how we might adjust our decision process to avoid the negative impact. Despite its successful effort to show that the problem is serious and so belongs on this list, it’s written well enough that it can be read on the beach. At the top of my fun list is Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary. It’s pure science fiction entertainment moved along by the threat of an apocalypse, first contact with an alien race, a wisecracking main character and enough real science to make the plot plausible if you don’t push too hard.

 

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Robert W. Gordon, Professor of Law, recommends The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary Carter and Eric Ambler’s novels A Coffin for Dimitrios, Journey Into Fear, and Background to Danger

I can’t recommend too highly Zachary Carter, The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (Random House 2020). This is a rambling, wide-ranging history of Keynes’s life and thought, his Bloomsbury friends and economist colleagues, his famous critique of the Versailles Treaty, his influence on Depression-era and postwar economic policy, his great antagonists in the economics profession, his disciples and enemies among U.S. academics and policymakers, and his enduring relevance today. What a great combination of clear and elegant exposition of economic theory, of cycles of rise and fall in Keynes’s academic acceptance and political influence, and sheer fascinating gossip about his social circle. A serious and thoughtful book, but also a very entertaining one.

I’m also rediscovering—after a long absence—the spy novels of Eric Ambler. Anyone who now likes the work of writers like John le Carré and Alan Furst should appreciate Ambler’s pioneering books in the genre—A Coffin for Dimitrios, Journey Into Fear, Background to Danger, among many others.

 

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Hank Greely, Deane F. and Kate Edelman Johnson Professor of Law, recommends The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, The Modern Myths by Philip Ball, and Assembling California by John McPhee

My recommendations this time lean heavily to science fiction—sort of.

My strongest recommendation goes to something I think is only “good” as a novel, but importantly thought-provoking as a vision of the future: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future (2020).This book provides a plausible scenario for how the world and climate change from about 2023 (soon!) until the 2050s. There are human protagonists with personal stories; the stories aren’t bad but read this book for the smart way he plays out the crisis. Science fiction is rarely accurate at showing “the” path in the future but it is often good at showing plausible paths. This book does that, about the biggest problem in the world.

In other science fiction, I revisited two classics this year, both, I realized, about apocalypses: Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969, about the bombing of Dresden) and Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1959, post nuclear war). Unlike some Vonnegut, this one really holds up. And Miller’s is almost as good for a look at monastic life as the preview of the next 1800 years.

In a related vein, I enjoyed a new book from Philip Ball, a British science journalist, called The Modern Myths. He looks at seven stories that have resonated through our culture in ways similar to those of ancient myths: Robinson Crusoe, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dracula, The War of the Worlds, Sherlock Holmes, and Batman.

And last, after 28 years I’ve finally gotten around to the great John McPhee’s Assembling California (1994) on (mainly Northern) California geology and geology-related history. It’s wonderful. He’s got me planning trips to various road cuts, book in hand.

 

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William B. Gould IV, Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, recommends Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One Click America by Alec MacGillis and The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America by Gabriel Winant

One of the best books I’ve read on inequality and how Amazon has been able to push so many around is Fulfillment: Winning and Losing in One Click America by Alec MacGillis. The development of character and plot makes it read like a dramatic novel. I highly recommend it. I’ve recently embarked on Gabriel Winant’s The Next Shift, also about the transformation of much of the American economy from high to low wage which is first rate substantively, valuable, and easy to read, though not as compelling as Fulfillment.

 

 

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Erik Jensen, Professor of the Practice of Law and Director of Rule of Law Program, recommends How China Escaped the Poverty Trap by Yuen Yuen Ang and After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency by Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith

Some of us have been writing for years about conceptual problems with the crass chicken-and-egg debate in development economics and political economy about what comes first, institutions or economic growth. Eschewing simplicity, Yuen Yuen Ang, in her very clever book, How China Escaped the Poverty Trap, lays out what she calls a “coevolutionary narrative” about the adaptive interaction between institutions and economic growth. It’s a must read for those interested in how countries develop.

And for those interested in the question of how countries in decline might rebuild, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith’s After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency details legal reforms that should be undertaken to mend the presidency. Milton Friedman back in the 1960’s observed that: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” In its nearly 400 pages, After Trump made sure that there were plenty of ideas “lying around.” It proposes more than 50 concrete reforms ranging from proposals on vacancies, to a prohibition on presidential blind trusts, to protections for the press from presidential retaliation, to revision of the special counsel regulations.

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Mark Lemley, William H. Neukom Professor of Law, BA ’88, recommends A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

The first book in a remarkable new science fiction series set in an empire built on poetry. At once a mystery, a fast-paced thriller, and an exploration of what it means to be an outsider.

 

 

 

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Michael W. McConnell, Richard and Frances Mallery Professor of Law, recommends The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro and The Caves of Perigord by Martin Walker

The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro: This is a well-plotted mystery featuring an artist who makes money on the side doing reproductions of famous paintings, especially Degas. On the brink of a career breakthrough, she is arrested and accused of involvement in the famous theft of a Degas from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Engaging characters, interesting and reasonably plausible story line.

The Caves of Perigord by Martin Walker: Another modern novel involving art—this one a rock containing a 17,000 year old drawing in the style of the Caves of Lascaux—which is stolen while under examination by experts at an auction house. The book interweaves three independently interesting stories about the history of his work, all located a  valley in southeastern France: one involving the ancient artist, one involving the present-day theft and an attempt to discover where the fragment originated, and one involving a British officer working with the French resistance in the weeks prior to D-Day.

 

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Lisa Larrimore Ouellette, Professor of Law and Justin M. Roach, Jr. Faculty Scholar, recommends Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen, Why Won’t You Apologize? by Harriet Lerner, and Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, by Jennifer Eberhardt

I’ve been reading roughly a book a week across a wide variety of genres since the start of the pandemic—mostly on audiobook—so I could give many recommendations. But I’ll focus on three of the books that have stuck with me the most, which I read as part of my work on the new committee on Teaching and Classroom Climate.

Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most, by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project, provides a valuable framework for thinking about how conversations go awry, and how to approach difficult topics in a more constructive way. Even though I read it with classroom conversations in mind, it has also improved discussions within my own household.

Harriet Lerner’s Why Won’t You Apologize? is a quick read on the power of owning up to your mistakes—both big and small—with a sincere and non-defensive apology that acknowledges the harm you’ve caused and demonstrates a commitment to get things right going forward.

Finally, I highly recommend Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, by Stanford Professor of Psychology Jennifer Eberhardt. She is a gifted writer, presenting rigorous research conducted by herself and others through engaging and memorable stories, including about her own family.

 

 

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A. Mitchell Polinsky, Josephine Scott Crocker Professor of Law and Economics, recommends Caste by Isabel Wilkerson and Deacon King Kong by James McBride

I found Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste powerful and disturbing. I highly recommend it. On a much lighter note, I greatly enjoyed James McBride’s Deacon King Kong.

 

 

 

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Robert L. Rabin, A. Calder Mackay Professor of Law, recommends Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

In a strikingly original work of fiction, Maggie O’Farrell takes the little-known facts of the death of William Shakespeare’s only son, Hamnet, at age eleven, and creates an intriguing network of family relationships surrounding this event. Interestingly, the pivotal (and most compelling) character is not Shakespeare himself, but his wife Anne (Agnes) Hathaway. But the entire family, including Shakespeare, of course, is vividly brought to life. O’Farrell’s stylistic imagination matches her weaving of this intricate tale.

 

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David Alan Sklansky, Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, recommends The New Wilderness by Diane Cook

I loved The New Wilderness by Diane Cook. It’s a stunning, deeply thoughtful novel about climate change, what we owe to each other, and our relationship with the natural world. It’s also a gripping adventure story, although not exactly an uplifting one.

 

 

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David M. Studdert, Professor of Medicine (PCOR/CHP) and Professor of Law, recommends A Promised Land by Barack Obama

My summer suggestion is A Promised Land by Barack Obama. Begins with a tour through his upbringing, student days, and time in the Illinois and US senates, and then settles into a detailed account of the first few years of his presidency. For anyone who didn’t already know, the 44^th can write!

 

 

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Barton H. “Buzz” Thompson, Jr., Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, recommends The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s by William Hitchcock, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy by Robert Dallek, and The Last Hunt by Deon Meyer

In my continued quest to read biographies of all the presidents, I recently finished William Hitchcock’s The Age of Eisenhower: America and the World in the 1950s. I was not looking forward to Eisenhower, but I found Hitchcock’s book a fascinating history of the 1950s, which convinced me that far more was happening in that often-forgotten decade than I had realized and that Eisenhower was a surprisingly hands-on president. I am now reading An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy by Robert Dallek. I chose the book because it has a reputation for balance and focuses primarily on JFK’s presidency. I have not been disappointed. In between the two biographies, I read The Last Hunt, the most recent novel by Deon Meyer, an Afrikaner who writes great mysteries based in South Africa (primarily Cape Town). I was slightly disappointed—The Last Hunt is not Meyer’s best. I still highly recommend Meyer, however, who is a master at his craft. If you’ve never read Meyer, read his books in order.

 

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Beth Van Schaack, Leah Kaplan Visiting Professor of Human Rights, recommends The Overstory by Richard Powers, The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese, and Last Mission to Tokyo by Michel Paradis

I am currently doing some reading focused on climate change and the environment. I’ve started with The Overstory by Richard Powers, a remarkable novel that tracks the lives of five trees. I also have on my proverbial nightstand The Tennis Partner by our own Abraham Verghese (author of the magisterial Cutting for Stone). From more of a work perspective, I am reading Michel Paradis’s Last Mission to Tokyo, which tells the amazing story of the “Doolittle Raiders,” which led to an important war crimes trial that had been somewhat lost to history. Paradis has been litigating cases on Guantanamo for years now, so the quest for justice for the Raiders, who were captured and tortured by Japan, is no doubt an inspiration.

 

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Allen S. Weiner, Senior Lecturer in Law, recommends Missionaries by Phil Klay

I enthusiastically recommend Missionaries by Phil Klay. Klay is a former U.S. Marine who tells stories about war deeply informed by his own experiences; his earlier collection of short stories called Redeployment won a national book award. This book follows the separate stories of characters—an American journalist, a U.S. Special Forces operator, a Colombian army officer, and a Colombian paramilitary fighter—as their lives converge in Klay’s rich tale. The book highlights the complexities and ambiguities of modern armed conflicts against nonstate armed groups like those in Afghanistan and Colombia. We are left doubting whether there are good guys or bad guys in war, or whether there are any “good wars” at all. All Klay shows us for certain is that war inflicts deep suffering on those caught up in it.