Supreme Court in the News

The book is THE SUPREME COURT AND THE AMERICAN ELITE, 1789-2008, by Lucas A. Powe. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/powsup.html


Here's a link to the author: http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/profile.php?id=POWELA.

Here's a link to his prior book: http://www.amazon.com/Warren-Court-American-Politics/dp/0674006836


Here's what Powe was quoted as saying on a blog: http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/the-judgment-on-justice-souter/#powe
"Everyone will note that he was one of the four members of the liberal bloc and that his replacement will vote as Justice Souter has voted. But he wasn’t always a liberal; indeed, only in the context of the Supreme Court of his era could he be classified as a liberal."

Amazon shows Powe's book as #53,33 today.

John Mitchell - The Big Enchilada

John Mitchell in the Nixon Administration was THE STRONG MAN, a recent book by James Rosen.


http://www.amazon.com/Strong-Man-Mitchell-Secrets-Watergate/dp/0385508646


http://books.google.com/books?id=fHIGQTGemnAC&dq=Strong+Man+Rosen+John+Mitchell&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=Ru3mHzogjK&sig=-z7JGuHDv-jRfDTw1qM1tN3H9sI&hl=en&ei=764eSsW6II-OMoPuzMUF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3


Here's what this web site says:
http://www.writersreps.com/book.aspx?BookID=306:

Chosen by the Wall Street Journal as a "Best Book of 2008" THE STRONG MAN is the first full-scale biography of John Mitchell. Over a decade in the making, THE STRONG MAN examines the central figure in the rise and ruin of Richard Nixon, and the highest-ranking American official ever convicted on criminal charges.

Amazon lists this book at #265,142; I guess the public wasn't looking to remember this man.

Colfax Massacre

The book is THE DAY FREEDOM DIED: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction. Author is Charles Lane. Publisher is Henry Holt and Co.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for the Colfax massacre:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colfax_Massacre

The book is available for Kindle at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-Freedom-Died-Massacre-Reconstruction/dp/0805083421

The book is now out in paperback:
http://us.macmillan.com/thedayfreedomdied

Here's a link to a review in the New York Times last year:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/books/review/Boyle-t.html?pagewanted=print

Here's a review from New Orleans
http://blog.nola.com/susanlarson/2008/03/colfax_massacre.html

We Dissent

The book is called We Dissent: Talking Back to the Rehnquist Court, Eight Cases that Subverted Civil Liberties and Civil Rights. Editor is Michael Avery, a Constitutional Law teacher at Suffolk University Law School. NYU Press published the book.

Reviewed in the New York Law Journal.

http://books.google.com/books?id=u3z4B_BgLBMC&dq=dissent+Michael+Avery&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=yDHvw8EwcK&sig=jhEtF8iY0C8dc4T8s5mj5g1Xh38&hl=en&ei=u6AeSreEGYzCM7mcofAF&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3#PPA7,M1

Spook news

The US Intelligence Community

by Jeffrey T Richelson (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0813343623/ref=pe_606_8908990_pe_ar_t1


A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century by Jeffery T. Richelson
http://www.amazon.com/Century-Spies-Intelligence-Twentieth/dp/019511390X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_b

http://books.google.com/books?id=HohPaIyc5G0C&dq=Richelson+spies&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=5f9NU6GnuC&sig=C2m-Tka5x-3r8xlZNguAlLIcdDo&hl=en&ei=N00fSt6QMOOptgerv5HWCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/HistoryWorld/Modern/?ci=9780195113907&view=usa

Amazon lists this book at #167,304 on May 27, 2009.

Life Science news

Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life (Hardcover)

by Carl Zimmer (Author)

Smithsonian Intimate Guide to Human Origins
Carl Zimmer

Good Germs, Bad Germs: Health and Survival in a Bacterial World
Jessica Snyder Sachs

Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Neil Shubin

Comic Book Panic

Book Readings by Columbia Journalism School Prof. David Hajdu, author of "The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008).

“Every once in a while, moral panic, innuendo, and fear bubble up from the depths of our culture to create waves of destructive indignation and accusation. David Hajdu's fascinating new book tracks one of the stranger and most significant of these episodes, now forgotten, with exactness, clarity, and serious wit, which is the best kind. He illuminates the lives of his protagonists -- from pompous, on-the-make censors to cracked comic book geniuses -- with his own graphic powers, as well as his intense intellectual curiosity. The book is a rarity, vividly depicting a noirish 1950's America but without a trace of irony or nostalgia.” --Sean Wilentz, Professor of History, Princeton University

April 3: Boston, 6:00 p.m., Harvard Book Store, 40 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Mass.

April 7: Washington, DC, 7:00 p.m., Politics & Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.

April 10: New York City, 7:00 p.m., Book Culture, 536 West 112^th Street

April 12: Easton, Penn., 2:00 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 4445 Southmont Way

April 17: Seattle, Wa., 7:30 p.m., Nextbook, Downstairs at Town Hall, 1119 8^th Avenue

April 19: Syracuse, N.Y., 2:00 p.m., Barnes & Noble, 3454 Erie Blvd. East, Dewitt, N.Y.