The New York Times has released its list 0f "100 Notable Books of 2009." Can't say I recognize very many (probably fewer than ten). Each December / January when a compilation like this comes out, I say to myself "maybe THIS is the year that West's Commercial Law Statutes makes the list." And every year I come away disappointed. Sigh.
One book that's not on the list is The Man Who Loved Books Too Much, by Allison Bartlett. My wife, Lisa, thinks the book is an unauthorized bio of me. The title fits, but the subtitle suggests that the author had someone else in mind ("The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession"). Additional info on the book can be found here and here.
So what books published in 2009 are on your list of favorites?
Here's a partial list:
*Brock, Gillian. Global Justice: A Cosmopolitan Account. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
*Brown, Theodore L. Imperfect Oracle: The Epistemic and Moral Authority of Science. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009.
*Carmody, Chi, Frank Garcia and John Linarelli, eds. Distributive Justice and International Economic Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
*Cassese, Antonio. The Oxford Companion to Criminal Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
*Cohen, G.A. Why Not Socialism? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
*Doniger, Wendy. The Hindus: An Alternative History. New York: Penguin Press, 2009.
*Ginbar, Yuval. Why Not Torture Terrorists? Moral, Practical and Legal Aspects of the ‘Ticking Bomb’ Justification of Torture. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
*Griffel, Frank. Al-Ghazālī’s Philosophical Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
*Haj, Samira. Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition: Reform, Rationality and Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009.
*Hallaq, Wael B. Sharī‘a: Theory, Practice, Transformations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
*al-Jazīrī, ‘Abd al-Rahmān (Nancy Roberts, trans.). Islamic Jurisprudence According to the Four Sunni Schools, Vo. 1: Modes of Islamic Worship. Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2009.
*Lloyd, Sharon. Morality in the Philosophy of Thomas Hobbes: Cases in the Law of Nature. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
*Luper, Steven. The Philosophy of Death. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
*Marmor, Andrei. Social Conventions: From Language to Law. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.
*Sen, Amartya. The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2009.
*Tanaka, Yuki and Marilyn B. Young, eds. Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History. New York: The New Press, 2009.
*Trachtman, Joel P. and Chantal Thomas, eds. Developing Countries in the WTO Legal System. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | November 30, 2009 at 03:29 PM
This has been a year of reading older books for me. I haven't read anything on the Times list, though Lethem's Chronic City and Urofsky's Brandeis biography are on my Hanukkah wish list (and I've just added Robin Kelly's Thelonious Monk biography, which I didn't know about until now).
Posted by: Eric Fink | November 30, 2009 at 11:11 PM
I wasn't crazy at all about the book by Sen mentioned above- it seemed to me to be all over the place, not focused but intent on mentioning everything he'd done in his career, including lots of stories and side material for no important purpose, and to not support its most philosophically interesting and important points (the attack on the use of ideal theory in thinking about justice, for example) with anything like adequate argument. From someone of Sen's caliber I found it deeply disappointing. There was material there to provide the base for 3 or 4 interesting books, but what he wrote was none of them. I'd suggest skipping it.
Unfortunately I'm usually a year or so behind on books, so most of what I've been reading was published in '08 or so. I also don't get to read too much fiction, but I did really like the new book _Year of the Horse_ by Justin Allen. He's a friend of mine so I'm not disinterested, but I did find it a very enjoyable read and a book with many different levels.
Posted by: Matt | November 30, 2009 at 11:52 PM