Alumni may submit their recent books for inclusion in the Law Report’s “Books in Print” section by emailing lawreport@yale.edu.
Wanted: Alumni and faculty authors who are on (or preparing to go on) book tours!
Please send us the title and a short description of your new book, as well as the dates/times/locations of your book tour appearances. We will post the information here so that alumni will know when you'll be speaking/signing in their neighborhood!
Saturday, May 3rd
Tuscon, AZ
Friday, October 10th
One of America’s most distinguished social innovators and the founder of its first public interest law firm, Charles Halpern has been a catalyst for launching an array of enduring institutions dedicated toward enriching human lives and our world. In Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom, Halpern reflects on his distinguished career—a journey that led him from career-mindedness to a life devoted to social justice and activism.
But this captivating memoir is about more than even that. It’s about the inner work that makes the outer work possible. Over the course of his remarkable career, Halpern founded the Center for Law and Social Policy, where he litigated landmark environmental protection and constitutional rights cases; was the founding dean of the City University of New York School of Law, where he initiated a program for training public interest attorneys; was president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, where he launched an innovative grant program, supporting new programs that drew together social justice advocacy with meditation and spiritual inquiry; and was a founding board member of the progressive-think tank Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action. Throughout these endeavors, he sought ways to develop inner resources that complemented his cognitive and advocacy skills. These explorations led him to the conviction that what he calls “the practice of wisdom” is essential both to his own success and to our collective capacity to effectively address the challenges of the twenty-first century.
With wit and self-deprecating humor, Halpern shares candid and revealing lessons from every stage of his life, from boyhood to his post-retirement activism, describing his journey and the teachers and colleagues he encountered on the way—a cast of characters that extends from Barney Frank and Ralph Nader to Ram Dass and the Dalai Lama. Making Waves and Riding the Currents vividly demonstrates the life-enhancing benefits of integrating a commitment to social justice with the cultivation of wisdom.
Professor Peter H. Schuck
(Edited by Peter H. Schuck and James Q. Wilson)
Tuesday, April 22nd
Washington, DC
Wednesday, April 23rd
Thursday, April 24th
Wednesday, April 30th
Berlin, Germany
Atlantic Initiative
Building on de Tocqueville's concept of American exceptionalism, this collection of essays, contributed by some of the nation's top scholars and thinkers, takes on the weighty task of sizing up America in a way its people and others can comprehend. Far more than simple history, they outline the current state of American institutions and policies—from the legal system to marriage to the military to the Drug War—and anticipate where these are headed in the future.
David O. Stewart '78
The Summer of 1787
Wednesday, September 10th
6:30 pm
Washington, DC
Historical Society of Washington, DC
The Summer of 1787 traces the struggle at the Philadelphia Convention to create the world's first constitutional democracy. Using the delegates' fiery rhetoric, the book explores the conflicts and hard bargaining that invented a government to meet the crises of the not-quite-united states - huge debts, hostile neighbors, armed rebellion, and the very real prospect of dissolving into three nations or more.
It was a desperate balancing act. The people should have power, but could they be trusted? Would a strong central government leave room for the states? Why did they contrive the convoluted electoral college for electing the president? And what of the grinding compromises over slavery, America's original sin? The heroes include the familiar and the unlikely:
Gouverneur Morris, the one-legged aristocrat who roared out America's first abolitionist speech, then wrote the final draft of the Constitution. Ben Franklin, whose gentle wit salved many wounds, and whose compromise resolved the Convention's toughest problem. George Mason, the slave-owner whose refusal to sign the Constitution led to the Bill of Rights. Scottish immigrant James Wilson, who with haughty John Rutledge of South Carolina remade the Constitution in ways the delegates never expected. The incomparable George Washington, whose steadfast leadership was the summer's indispensable glue.
Closeted together in a single room through a sultry Philadelphia summer, the delegates hammered out a government charter that embodied the best of America's dreams, and the worst of America's realities. The making of the Constitution will come alive for you in the pages of this book, and your feelings about how the nation started will never be the same.