Description (3900 characters maximum): Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2012. xxii, 363 pp. The noted historian and author of Jefferson's Louisiana has collected a dozen essays that span legal issues from the development of the United States from the legal rights of colonists, to the Red Scare of 1920, issues revolving around Sunday blue laws in Massachusetts in the 1950s to the legal issues regarding the status of Puerto Rico. Author Bio (3900 characters maximum): George Dargo 1935-2012] grew up in Brooklyn, New York. A graduate of Erasmus Hall High School and Columbia College, he...

xv, 266 pp. Using fiction as a lens through which to view particular developments in the law, each of the essays in this book discusses a work of literary fiction - some classical (the tale of Ruth in the Bible, the fiction of Franz Kafka and Herman Melville, the plays of William Shakespeare), some modern (the post-September 11 fiction of William Gibson, Ken Kalfus, Claire Messud, Ian McEwan and Helen Schulman) - that concerns, directly or indirectly, the historical development of the law. This exploration of legal history through fiction pays particular attention to its relevance to our...