Cory Robin and I go way back. We were in a political discussion together where the hot topic was the WTO protests in Seattle—the “Occupy” movement of 1998. Since then, I’ve always been a deep admirer of his essays; if he’s saved his emails from the intervening fifteen years, I’m sure he’d find a bunch from me praising his various pieces from the London Review of Books when they came out. I was thrilled to learn he was collecting his pieces into a book. I was even more thrilled when I read it and saw how he was able to link them together into a coherent argument which—well, read my blurb on the book…

The United States was founded on the principle that no individual is above the law. We are, as John Adams said, “a nation of laws, not men.” But that principle is under assault, as Glenn Greenwald explains in his powerful new book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful.

As the economy fails to improve, as we chart the rise of the Tea Party and the Republican Party’s ability to express disdain for unemployment benefits without significant political cost, Americans lack a roadmap for the role of class and gender in the new American landscape. Joan Williams’ book, Reshaping the Work-Family Debate: Why Men and Class Matter (Harvard 2010), supplies that roadmap. The book creates an innovative framework for examining the relationship between law, work and family in the post-industrial economy.