May 12, 2008
New Law Titles from the University of California Press
Details below the folod. [JH]
- The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All, by Peter Linebaugh
- The Health Care Revolution: From Medical Monopoly to Market Competition, by Carl F. Ameringer
- Public Health Law: Power, Duty, Restraint, (2d ed.), by Lawrence O. Gostin
- Global Rebellion: Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda, by Mark Juergensmeyer
- Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights, by Bill Ivey
The Magna Carta Manifesto
Liberties and Commons for All
By Peter Linebaugh
376 pages, $24.95
978-0-520-24726-0
University of California Press, February 2008
Description: This remarkable book shines a fierce light on the current state of liberty and shows how longstanding restraints against tyranny–and the rights of habeas corpus, trial by jury, and due process of law, and the prohibition of torture–are being abridged. In providing a sweeping history of Magna Carta, the source of these protections since 1215, this powerful book demonstrates how these ancient rights are repeatedly laid aside when the greed of privatization, the lust for power, and the ambition of empire seize a state. Peter Linebaugh draws on primary sources to construct a wholly original history of the Great Charter and its scarcely-known companion, the Charter of the Forest, which was created at the same time to protect the subsistence rights of the poor.
About The Author: Peter Linebaugh is Professor of History at the University of Toledo. He is the author of The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century and co-author (with Marcus Rediker) of Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic.
The Health Care Revolution
From Medical Monopoly to Market Competition
By Carl F. Ameringer
272 pages, $49.95
978-0-520-25480-0
University of California Press, April 2008
Description: America's market-based health care system, unique among the nations of the world, is in large part the product of an obscure, yet profound, revolution that overthrew the medical monopoly in the late 1970s. In this lucid, balanced account, Carl F. Ameringer tells how this revolution came into being when the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress prompted the antitrust agencies of the federal government–the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department–to change the rules of the health care system. Ameringer lays out the key events that led up to this regime change; explores its broader social, political, and economic contexts; examines the views of both its proponents and opponents; and considers its current trajectory.
About The Author: Carl F. Ameringer is Professor of Health Policy and Politics at the L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the author of State Medical Boards and the Politics of Public Protection.
Public Health Law
Power, Duty, Restraint
Revised and Expanded Second Edition
By Lawrence O. Gostin
840 pages, $45.00
978-0-520-25376-6
University of California Press, forthcoming July 2008
Description: Public Health Law, first published in 2000, has been widely acclaimed as the definitive statement on public health law at the start of the twenty-first century. Lawrence O. Gostin's definition was based on the notion that government bears a responsibility for advancing the health and well-being of the general population, and the book developed a rich understanding of the government's powers and duties while showing law to be an effective tool in the realization of a healthier and safer population. In this second edition, Gostin analyzes the major health threats of our times, from emerging infectious diseases and bioterrorism to chronic diseases caused by obesity.
About The Author: Lawrence O. Gostin is Associate Dean and the Linda D. and Timothy J. O'Neill Professor of Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he directs the O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law. Dean Gostin is also Professor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins University and Director of the Center for Law and the Public's Health (a WHO and CDC Collaborating Center).
Global Rebellion
Religious Challenges to the Secular State, from Christian Militias to al Qaeda
By Mark Juergensmeyer
384 pages, $27.50
978-0-520-25554-8
University of California Press, May 2008
Description: Why has the turn of the twenty-first century been rocked by a new religious rebellion? From al Qaeda to Christian militias to insurgents in Iraq, a strident new religious activism has seized the imaginations of political rebels around the world. Building on his groundbreaking book, The New Cold War?: Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State, Mark Juergensmeyer here provides an up-to-date road map through this complex new religious terrain. Basing his discussion on interviews with militant activists and case studies of rebellious movements, Juergensmeyer puts a human face on conflicts that have become increasingly abstract. He revises our notions of religious revolution and offers positive proposals for responding to religious activism in ways that will diminish the violence and lead to an accommodation between radical religion and the secular world.
About The Author: Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology and Director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the winner of the Grawemeyer Award for his book Terror in the Mind of God (UC Press). He is the editor of Global Religions: An Introduction and is also the author of The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State and Gandhi's Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution, both from UC Press.
Arts, Inc.
How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights
By Bill Ivey
368 pages, $24.95
978-0-520-24112-1
University of California Press, May 2008
Description: In this impassioned and persuasive book, Bill Ivey, the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, assesses the current state of the arts in America and finds cause for alarm. Even as he celebrates our ever-emerging culture and the way it enriches our lives here at home while spreading the dream of democracy around the world, he points to a looming crisis. The expanding footprint of copyright, an unconstrained arts industry marketplace, and a government unwilling to engage culture as a serious arena for public policy have come together to undermine art, artistry, and cultural heritage–the expressive life of America. In eight succinct chapters, Ivey blends personal and professional memoir, policy analysis, and deeply held convictions to explore and define a coordinated vision for art, culture, and expression in American life.
About The Author: Bill Ivey was the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 through 2001, was director of the Country Music Foundation from 1971 to 1998, and was twice elected Chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He presently serves as founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.
May 12, 2008 in Collection Development | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 08, 2008
New and Forthcoming Law Titles from Elsevier
Details below the fold. [JH]
- The IT-Digital Legal Companion: A Comprehensive Business Guide to Software, IT, Internet, Media and IP Law, by Gene Landy with assistance from Amy Mastrobattista (forthcoming June 2008)
- A Litigator's Guide to DNA: From the Laboratory to the Courtroom, by Ron Michaelis, Robert Flanders and Paula Wulff
- E-Discovery: Creating and Managing an Enterprise-wide IT Program: A Technical Guide to Digital Investigation and Litigation Support, by Karen Schuler (forthcoming October 2008)
- Background Screening and Investigations: Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives, by Kim M. Kerr and W. Barry Nixon
- Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, (3d ed.), by Brent Turvey
The IT-Digital Legal Companion
A Comprehensive Business Guide to Software, IT, Internet, Media and IP Law
By Gene Landy with assistance from Amy Mastrobattista
Paperback, ISBN-13: 978-1-59749-256-0, 639 pages
Publication date: June 2008
Imprint: SYNGRESS
Price: $59.95
Description: To compete effectively in digital business markets, you need to understand how the law affects your digital technology business. The contents include detailed plain English business and legal guidance on:
- Intellectual Property for Digital Business
- Digital Contract Fundamentals
- Open Source
- Development and Consulting
- Software as a Service
- Software Licensing and Distribution
- Web and Internet Agreements
- Privacy
- Digital Multimedia Content and Distribution
- IT Standards
- Web and Mobile Technology and Content Deals
- Video Game Deals
- International Distribution
- Legal Affairs Management
- Forms Appendix in the book and downloadable online 38 sample forms for deals and transactions and for the Web.
The content goes from the basics to advanced topics such as off-shoring, anti-circumvention, open source business models, user-created content, reverse engineering, mobile media distribution, web and game development, mash-ups, web widgets, and massively multiplayer games.
A Litigator's Guide to DNA
From the Laboratory to the Courtroom
By Ron Michaelis, Robert Flanders and Paula Wulff
Hardbound, 448 pages
Publication date: January 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-12-374036-6
ISBN-10: 0-12-374036-3
Imprint: ACADEMIC PRESS
Price: $89.95
Description: A Litigator's Guide to DNA educates litigators, judges, criminalists, students, and others about all aspects of the use of DNA evidence in criminal and civil trials. It includes discussions of the molecular biological basis for the tests, essential laboratory practices, probability theory and mathematical calculations. It presents issues relevant to all parties involved in trying a case, from the prosecution and the defense, and to the judge and jury. The book is also extremely useful as a text for students aspiring to careers in forensic science and criminal law. The authors provide a full background on both the molecular biology and the mathematical theory behind forensic tests written specifically for people with little or no science background. No other book relates the foundational information on molecular biology and statistics to legal practice issues as extensively as this book does.
E-Discovery: Creating and Managing an Enterprise-wide IT Program
A Technical Guide to Digital Investigation and Litigation Support
By Karen Schuler
Paperback, ISBN-13: 978-1-59749-296-6, 300 pages
Publication date: October 2008
Imprint: SYNGRESS
Price: $69.95
Description: One of the hottest topics in computer forensics today, electronic discovery (e-discovery) is the process by which parties involved in litigation respond to requests to produce electronically stored information (ESI). According to the 2007 Socha-Gelbmann Electronic Discovery Survey, it is now a $2 billion industry, a 60% increase from 2004, projected to double by 2009. The core reason for the explosion of e-discovery is sheer volume; evidence is digital and 75% of modern day lawsuits entail e-discovery. A recent survey reports that U.S. companies face an average of 305 pending lawsuits internationally. For large U.S. companies ($1 billion or more in revenue)that number has soared to 556 on average, with an average of 50 new disputes emerging each year for nearly half of them. To properly manage the role of digital information in an investigative or legal setting, an enterprise--whether it is a Fortune 500 company, a small accounting firm or a vast government agency--must develop an effective electronic discovery program. Since the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, which took effect in December 2006, it is even more vital that the lifecycle of electronically stored information be understood and properly managed to avoid risks and costly mistakes. This books holds the keys to success for systems administrators, information security and other IT department personnel who are charged with aiding the e-discovery process.
Background Screening and Investigations
Managing Hiring Risk from the HR and Security Perspectives
By Kim M. Kerr and W. Barry Nixon
List Price: $49.95
Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann (March 18, 2008)
ISBN-10: 0750682566
ISBN-13: 978-0750682565
Description: While all employers must accept risk when forming business relationships, the degree of risk, whether it be high, low, or somewhere in the middle, is determined by the efficiency and effectiveness of the hiring model. Employment background screening, both pre- and post-hire, gives hiring personnel a glimpse into a person’s past behavior patterns, propensities, and likely future behavior.
Background Screening and Investigations provides risk-mitigation strategies that can significantly lower the likelihood of a negative outcome. The book draws upon the experience of Kerr and Nixon to provide readers with a blueprint for combining the skills of both security and human resources professionals in order to negotiate legal hurdles and implement best practices in background screening. The book also describes all aspects of the background screening process – its history and evolution, the imperative for implementing a screening process, and how to create a comprehensive policy.
Criminal Profiling
An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis
Third Edition
By Brent Turvey
Hardbound, 816 pages
Publication date: April 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-12-374100-4
ISBN-10: 0-12-374100-9
Imprint: ACADEMIC PRESS
Price: $79.95
Description: Now in its third edition, Criminal Profiling is established as an industry standard text. It moves evidence-based criminal profiling into a full embrace of the scientific method with respect to examining and interpreting behavioral evidence. If focuses on criminal profiling as an investigatve and forensic process, helping to solve crime through an honest understanding of the nature and behavior of the most violent criminals. Throughout the text, the author outlines specific principles and practice standards for Behavioral Evidence Analysis, focusing on the application of theory and method to real cases. Criminal Profiling, Third Edition, is an ideal companion for students and professionals alike, including investigators, forensic scientists, criminologists, mental health professionals, and attorneys. With contributing authors representing law enforcement, academic, mental health, and forensic science communities, it offers a balanced perspective not found in other books on this subject. Readers will use it as a comprehensive reference text, a handbook for evaluating physical evidence, a tool to bring new perspectives to cold cases, and as an aid in preparing for criminal trials.
May 8, 2008 in Collection Development | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
May 01, 2008
New Law & Public Policy Titles from MIT Press
Details below the fold. [JH]
Antitrust
- Handbook of Antitrust Economics, edited by Paolo Buccirossi
Current Affairs
- The Road to Democracy in Iran, by Akbar Ganji
- Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters, by Hans Blix
- The Epicenter of Crisis: The New Middle East, edited by Alexander T. J. Lennon
Environment
- American Environmental Policy, 1990-2006: Beyond Gridlock, by Christopher McGrory Klyza and David Sousa
- Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics: Reclaiming the Environmental Agenda, by Nicholas A. Ashford and Charles C. Caldart
Taxation
- Fundamental Tax Reform: Issues, Choices, and Implications, edited by John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow
- Taxing Ourselves: A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes, 4th ed., by Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija
Technology
- Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times, edited by Megan Boler
- The Privacy Advocates: Resisting the Spread of Surveillance, by Colin J. Bennett (forthcoming, October 2008)
Antitrust
Handbook of Antitrust Economics
Edited by Paolo Buccirossi
Cloth: $95.00
MIT Press, April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-02627-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-02627-7
Book Description: Over the past twenty years, economic theory has begun to play a central role in antitrust matters. In earlier days, the application of antitrust rules was viewed almost entirely in formal terms; now it is widely accepted that the proper interpretation of these rules requires an understanding of how markets work and how firms can alter their efficient functioning. The Handbook of Antitrust Economics offers scholars, students, administrators, courts, companies, and lawyers the economist’s view of the subject, describing the application of newly developed theoretical models and improved empirical methods to antitrust and competition law in both the United States and the European Union. (The book uses the U.S. term "antitrust law" and the European "competition law" interchangeably, emphasizing the commonalities between the two jurisdictions.)
After a general discussion of the use of empirical methods in antitrust cases, the Handbook covers mergers, agreements, abuses of dominance (or unilateral conducts), and market features that affect the way firms compete. Chapters examine such topics as analyzing the competitive effects of both horizontal and vertical mergers, detecting and preventing cartels, theoretical and empirical analysis of vertical restraints, state aids, the relationship of competition law to the defense of intellectual property, and the application of antitrust law to "bidding markets," network industries, and two-sided markets.
Current Affairs
The Road to Democracy in Iran
Akbar Ganji
Cloth: $14.95
MIT Press, April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-07295-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-07295-3
Book Description: Akbar Ganji, called by some "Iran's most famous dissident," was a commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. But, troubled by the regime's repressive nature, he became an investigative journalist in the 1990s, writing for Iran's pro-democracy newspapers. Most notably, he traced the murders of dissident intellectuals to Iran's secret service. In 2000 Ganji was arrested, sentenced to six years in prison, and banned from working as a journalist. His eighty-day hunger strike during his last year in prison mobilized the international human rights community.
The Road to Democracy in Iran, Ganji's first book in English, demonstrates his lifelong commitment to human rights and democracy. A passionate call for universal human rights and the right to democracy from a Muslim perspective, it lays out the goals and means of Iran's democracy movement, why women's rights trump some interpretations of Islamic law, and how the West can help promote democracy in Iran (he strongly opposes U.S. intervention) and other Islamic countries.
Throughout the book Ganji argues consistently for universal rights based on our common humanity (and he believes the world's religions support that idea). But his arguments never veer into abstraction; they are rooted deeply in the realities of life in Islamic countries, and offer a clear picture of the possibilities for and obstacles to improving human rights and promoting democracy in the Muslim world.
About the Author: Since his release from prison in March 2006, Akbar Ganji has been traveling outside Iran, meeting with intellectuals and activists in the international human rights community. He is currently living in the United States.
Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters
Hans Blix
Cloth: $14.95
MIT Press, April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-02644-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-02644-4
Book Description: In 2002 Dr. Hans Blix, then chief United Nations weapons inspector, lead his team on a search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Before the United States went to war with Iraq the next March, he maintained there were no WMD in Iraq. History proved him right.
For more than forty years Dr. Blix has worked on global disarmament, and with this new book he renews the call for nuclear nonproliferation. His interests, though, go beyond stemming the threat of nuclear attack from rogue states and terrorists. It is not, he argues, a recipe for success for nuclear states to tell the rest of the world that it must stay away from the very weapons that nuclear states claim are indispensable. We will never be able to convince rogue states to halt the pursuit of nuclear weapons programs unless we take the lead in a new nonproliferation and disarmament movement.
Looking back at the UN post-World War II efforts against the use of nuclear weapons, Blix documents the retreat from early commitments by nuclear powers, most alarmingly from pledges against first use and toward programs to develop new types of nuclear weapons. He urges us to revive these efforts, and that the world's powers also look at issues of global disarmament and security as pieces of the same puzzle. Why Nuclear Disarmament Matters includes specific suggestions--how the UN can set the stage for a credible multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation process; what kind of treaties would be most helpful--and recommendations for regional policy, including providing the Middle East with enriched uranium for civilian nuclear power production but not allowing uranium enrichment there.
About the Author: From March 2000 to June 2003 Hans Blix was Executive Chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC). Dr. Blix, author of Disarming Iraq, is Chair of the Swedish government's Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction.
The Epicenter of Crisis
The New Middle East
Edited by Alexander T. J. Lennon
Paper: $25.00
MIT Press, March 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-62216-5
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-62216-5
Book Description: The Epicenter of Crisis argues that six contiguous states epitomize the security challenges of a post-9/11, globalized world: Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Characterized by a dramatically transforming Islam, ethnic conflict, civil war, failed states, and terrorism, this "new Middle East" is the epicenter of what some call an arc of crisis, stretching from the Balkans into Southeast Asia. The Epicenter of Crisis examines this geopolitically dynamic region, analyzing the changing role of Islam in these six critical countries, the dangers posed by potential failed states, and the evolving terrorist threat
The contributors, all specialists in Middle East or foreign policy, address such crucial issues as the relationship between the Saudi royal family and Al Quaeda, Syria's waning influence over Hizbollah, media coverage of the war in Iraq, a new U.S. strategy for dealing with Iran, Afghanistan's opium industry, and the effectiveness of U.S. multi-billion-dollar assistance to Pakistan. The Epicenter of Crisis challenges readers to reconceptualize the boundaries of the Middle East in a changed world.
Environment
American Environmental Policy, 1990-2006
Beyond Gridlock
Christopher McGrory Klyza and David Sousa
Cloth: $69.00
MIT Press, January 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-11313-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-11313-7
Book Description: The "golden era" of American environmental lawmaking, between 1964 and 1980, saw twenty-two pieces of major environmental legislation (including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act) passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed into law by presidents of both parties. But since then environmental issues have divided the parties and engendered bitter interest-group politics, with most new proposals blocked by legislative gridlock. In this book, Christopher McGrory Klyza and David Sousa argue that this longstanding legislative stalemate at the national level has forced environmental policymaking onto other pathways, both inside and outside government. Despite the congressional impasse, they write, environmental policymaking today is vibrant and complex--although the results fall short of what is needed in the years ahead.
Klyza and Sousa identify and analyze five alternative policy paths, which they illustrate with case studies: "appropriations politics" in Congress; executive authority, including the rulemaking process; the role of the courts, whose role in environmental policymaking has grown in the era of legislative gridlock; “next-generation” collaborative experiments (which, the authors argue, should be seen as an important approach but not a panacea); and policymaking at the state level. Their comprehensive analysis of the state of environmental policymaking since 1990 shows that although legislative gridlock is unlikely to dissipate anytime soon, the nation continues to move in the direction favored by environmentalists, largely because of the policy legacies of the 1960s and 1970s that have created an enduring 'green state" rooted in statutes, bureaucratic routines, and public expectations.
About the Authors: Christopher McGrory Klyza is Robert '35 and Helen '38 Stafford Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. David Sousa is Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound.
Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics
Reclaiming the Environmental Agenda
Nicholas A. Ashford and Charles C. Caldart
Cloth: $90.00
MIT Press, May 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-01238-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01238-6
Book Description: The past twenty-five years have seen a significant evolution in environmental policy, with new environmental legislation and substantive amendments to earlier laws, significant advances in environmental science, and changes in the treatment of science (and scientific uncertainty) by the courts. This book offers a detailed discussion of the important issues in environmental law, policy, and economics, tracing their development over the past few decades through an examination of environmental law cases and commentaries by leading scholars. The authors focus on pollution, addressing both pollution control and prevention, but also emphasize the evaluation, design, and use of the law to stimulate technical change and industrial transformation, arguing that there is a need to address broader issues of sustainable development.
Environmental Law, Policy, and Economics, which grew out of courses taught by the authors at MIT, treats the traditional topics covered in most classes in environmental law and policy, including common law and administrative law concepts and the primary federal legislation. But it goes beyond these to address topics not often found in a single volume: the information-based obligations of industry, enforcement of environmental law, market-based and voluntary alternatives to traditional regulation, risk assessment, environmental economics, and technological innovation and diffusion. Countering arguments found in other texts that government should play a reduced role in environmental protection, this book argues that clear, stringent legal requirements--coupled with flexible means for meeting them--and meaningful stakeholder participation are necessary for bringing about environmental improvements and technological transformations.
About the Authors: Nicholas A. Ashford is Professor of Technology and Director of the Technology and Law Program at MIT. Charles C. Caldart is Director of Litigation of the National Environmental Law Center and a Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT.
Taxation
Fundamental Tax Reform
Issues, Choices, and Implications
Edited by John W. Diamond and George R. Zodrow
Cloth: $45.00
MIT Press, April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-04247-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-04247-5
Book Description: Reform of the federal income tax system has become a perennial item on the domestic policy agenda of the United States, although there is considerable uncertainty over specifics. Indeed the recent report of the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform recommended not one but two divergent policy directions (and included extensive discussion of a third). In Fundamental Tax Reform, top experts in tax policy discuss a wide range of issues raised by the prospect of significant tax reform, identifying the most critical questions and considering whether the answers are known, unknown--or unknowable.
The debates over tax reform usually concern the advantages and disadvantages of income-based taxation as opposed to any of the several alternative forms of consumption-based taxation. The book opens with chapters that discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and political feasibility of these options. Other chapters consider the effects of tax reforms on businesses, especially their investment behavior, and include a discussion of possible problems in any transition to a consumption-based tax; international taxation issues arising in an era of globalization; and individual behavioral response to tax reform, including a view of the topic from the perspective of the relatively new field of behavioral economics.
Taxing Ourselves, 4th Edition
A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes
Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija
Cloth: $60.00
MIT Press, April 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-19573-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-19573-7
Book Description: As Albert Einstein may or may not have said, "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." Indeed, to follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the two by discussing the key issues clearly and without a political agenda: Should the federal income tax be replaced with a flat tax or sales tax? Should it be left in place and reformed? Can tax cuts stimulate the economy, or will higher deficits undermine any economic benefit? Tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out in accessible language what is known and not known about how taxes affect the economy, offer guidelines for evaluating tax systems, and provide enough information to assess both the current income tax system and the leading proposals to reform or replace it (including the flat tax and the consumption tax).
The fourth edition of this popular guide has been extensively revised to incorporate the latest information, covering such recent developments as the Bush administration's tax cuts (which expire in 2011) and the alternatives proposed by the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. Slemrod and Bakija provide us with the knowledge and the tools--including an invaluable voter's guide to the tax policy debate--to make our own informed choices about how we should tax ourselves.
About the Authors: Joel Slemrod is Paul W. McCracken Collegiate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy and Director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigan. Jon Bakija is Associate Professor of Economics at Williams College and Visiting Associate Professor of Law at Cornell University Law School, 2007-2008.
Technology
Digital Media and Democracy
Tactics in Hard Times
Edited by Megan Boler
Cloth: $40.00
MIT Press, May 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-02642-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-02642-0
Book Description: In an age of proliferating media and news sources, who has the power to define reality? When the dominant media declared the existence of WMDs in Iraq, did that make it a fact? Today, the "Social web" (sometimes known as Web 2.0, groupware, or the participatory Web)--epitomized by blogs, viral videos, and YouTube--creates new pathways for truths to emerge and makes possible new tactics for media activism. In Digital Media and Democracy, leading scholars in media and communication studies, media activists, journalists, and artists explore the contradiction at the heart of the relationship between truth and power today: the fact that the radical democratization of knowledge and multiplication of sources and voices made possible by digital media coexists with the blatant falsification of information by political and corporate powers.
The book maps a new digital media landscape that features citizen journalism, The Daily Show, blogging, and alternative media. The contributors discuss broad questions of media and politics, offer nuanced analyses of change in journalism, and undertake detailed examinations of the use of Web-based media in shaping political and social movements. The chapters include not only essays by noted media scholars but also interviews with such journalists and media activists as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Media Matters host Robert McChesney, and Hassan Ibrahim of Al Jazeera.
The Privacy Advocates
Resisting the Spread of Surveillance
Colin J. Bennett
Cloth: $28.00
MIT Press, October 2008
ISBN-10: 0-262-02638-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-262-02638-3
Book Description: Today, personal information is captured, processed, and disseminated in a bewildering variety of ways, and through increasingly sophisticated, miniaturized, and distributed technologies: identity cards, biometrics, video surveillance, the use of cookies and spyware by Web sites, data mining and profiling, and many others. In The Privacy Advocates, Colin Bennett analyzes the people and groups around the world who have risen to challenge the most intrusive surveillance practices by both government and corporations. Bennett describes a network of self-identified privacy advocates who have emerged from civil society--without official sanction and with few resources, but surprisingly influential.
A number of high-profile conflicts in recent years have brought this international advocacy movement more sharply into focus. Bennett is the first to examine privacy and surveillance not from a legal, political, or technical perspective but from the viewpoint of these independent activists who have found creative ways to affect policy and practice. Drawing on extensive interviews with key informants in the movement, he examines how they frame the issue and how they organize, who they are and what strategies they use. He also presents a series of case studies that illustrate how effective their efforts have been, including conflicts over key-escrow encryption (which allows the government to read encrypted messages), online advertising through third-party cookies that track users across different Web sites, and online authentication mechanisms such as the short-lived Microsoft Passport. Finally, Bennett considers how the loose coalitions of the privacy network could develop into a more cohesive international social movement.
About the Author: Colin Bennett is Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. He is the coauthor (with Charles Raab) of The Governance of Privacy: Policy Instruments in Global Perspective (updated paperback edition, MIT Press, 2006).
May 1, 2008 in Collection Development, New Publications | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 25, 2008
The Law and Politics Book Review's Fiction Issue
The Law and Politics Book Review has published a special issue devoted to fiction. The issue reviews twenty-two American, British, and European novels from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. Including some unexpected novels, this is a good checklist for law and literature collections. Details below the fold. [JH]
McEwan, Ian. SATURDAY. Reviewed by Lynne S. Viti, Writing Program, Wellesley College.
April 25, 2008 in Collection Development | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
