William B. Gould IV, Charles A. Beardsley Professor of Law, Emeritus, recommends Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present And Future of American Labor by Steven Greenhouse, The Technology Trap: Capitol, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation by Carl Benedikt Frey, A Wicked War by Amy Greenberg, In Hoffa’s Shadow by Jack Goldsmith, Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber by Mike Isaac, and more!

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“About four or five books have occupied my attention these past few months First, Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present And Future of American Labor, an engaging and lively discussion of the present rather sad state of labor, written by ex-New York Times writer, Steve Greenhouse. I found it so provocative that I reviewed it for the University of San Francisco Law Review.

“Much more dense, hard slogging, and of limited usefulness was The Technology Trap: Capitol, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation by Carl Benedikt Frey.

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“I learned a good deal about the Mexican War, the U.S. invasion of Mexico from Amy Greenberg’s engaging A Wicked War. It’s a wide-ranging treatment of not only the battles, but also Polk and Clay, as well as racial attitudes of white Americans. In so doing, it brought to mind much of what my friend, the late Miguel Mendez used to talk to me about, i.e., the marked similarity in white beliefs about Mexicans and black Americans.

“The big hit of recent months though was In Hoffa’s Shadow by Harvard law Professor Jack Goldsmith, whose stepfather was Teamster boss and Hoffa’s gofer—and the FBI’s prime suspect as the man who drove Hoffa to his killers. It is written well, in a style that you wouldn’t expect from a law professor. It’s about Goldsmith‘s relationship with his stepfather, his reconciliation with the man he had rejected as an impediment to his own advancement, and his search for the truth about Hoffa’s disappearance. It’s a book about Hoffa, his hard and violent struggle in the Teamster leadership, his clashes with RFK (whom Goldsmith despises), and his criminal trials. (I now want to re-read Hoffa and the Teamsters by the Jameses, a husband and wife team.) The book gets as close as any to figuring the who-dunnit in Hoffa’s death. The description of the day of his disappearance will have your heart in your mouth.

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“I was particularly interested in this book because I’ve lived in Detroit and knew well Father Clement Kern, for whom I did volunteer legal work for indigent workers at Most Holy Trinity (near Tiger stadium in Corktown) once a week. Little did I know of Father Kern’s friendship with Goldsmith‘s stepfather and some of the other Teamsters who make an appearance in this book. (I did, however, know some of the rank and file in Hoffa‘s Teamsters local- but that’s another story.)

In Hoffa’s Shadow touches me on another personal level too. I had dinner with Hoffa here at Stanford a few months before his disappearance. He seemed so isolated that night, constantly referencing newspaper articles that he had read. (Goldsmith emailed me and told me that Hoffa had only started to read books while in prison.) This is a great read, exciting for me and many.

New York Times correspondent Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber was also interesting, with useful background to how this company became so dominant and the personalities around it, as was David Blight’s Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, a towering biography of America’s most prominent black citizen in the 19th century

“I am about a quarter to half of the way through Border Wars: Inside Trump‘s Assault on Immigration by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, the issue likely to get Trump re-elected, a quarter into The Political Culture of the American Whigs by Daniel Howe, and about to dip into The Second Founding: How the Civil War And Reconstruction Remade the Constitution by an old favorite of mine [Eric Foner], having read two or three of his books earlier,” says Gould.