Cascoly Books - Politics & Economics |
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Ancient More ancient history
Medieval & Renaissance
Modern Barbara Ehrenreich - Nickel & Dimed Kim Stanley Robinson & China Mieville use science fiction to explore possibilities that Orwell and other social thinkers tried to address. In their societies, there's a mix of anarchism and socialism, cyber fascism and nihilism. Eg, Iron Council describes a society that is literally on the move -- a workforce building a railroad goes rogue and takes the train with them - retireving old track as they lay new before them. Of course, a society cannot accept such freedom and they send out vigilantes and bounty hunters to regain their property. Kevin Philips Arrogant Capital and more The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court - Jeffrey ToobinFrom Publishers WeeklyIt's not laws or constitutional theory that rule the High Court, argues this absorbing group profile, but quirky men and women guided by political intuition. New Yorker legal writer Toobin(The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson) surveys the Court from the Reagan administration onward, as the justices wrestled with abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, gay rights and church-state separation. Despite a Court dominated by Republican appointees, Toobin paints not a conservative revolution but a period of intractable moderation. The real power, he argues, belonged to supreme swing-voter Sandra Day O'Connor, who decided important cases with what Toobin sees as an almost primal attunement to a middle-of-the-road public consensus. By contrast, he contends, conservative justices Rehnquist and Scalia ended up bitter old men, their rigorous constitutional doctrines made irrelevant by the moderates' compromises. The author deftly distills the issues and enlivens his narrative of the Court's internal wranglings with sharp thumbnail sketches (Anthony Kennedy the vain bloviator, David Souter the Thoreauvian ascetic) and editorials (inept and unsavory is his verdict on the Court's intervention in the 2000 election). His savvy account puts the supposedly cloistered Court right in the thick of American life.
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