Featured New Books - November 2009

Top secret : when our government keeps us in the dark / Geoffrey R. Stone. Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2007.
KF5753 .S76 2007 Annex

This book explores a history of government secrecy as well as the current tensions between the Bush administration and the media. Of course, we would like to believe that in a country that prides itself on the freedom of speech and in this current information age, even everyday citizens could learn what exactly their elected officials are up to. However, that is not the case. Is the government's action to prevent and punish the leakage of classified information to the media within the realm of the First Amendment? Top Secret reveals exactly what factors are at work in this tension between government secrecy and freedom of the press.

At home in the law : how the domestic violence revolution is transforming privacy / Jeannie Suk. New Haven : Yale University Press, c2009.
KF9322 .S85 2009 Annex

In the past forty years, the idea of home, which is central to how the law conceives of crime, punishment, and privacy, has changed radically. Legal scholar Jeannie Suk shows how the legitimate goal of legal feminists to protect women from domestic abuse has led to a new and unexpected set of legal practices. Suk examines case studies of major legal developments in contemporary American law pertaining to domestic violence, self-defense, privacy, sexual autonomy, and property in order to illuminate the changing relation between home and the law. She argues that the growing legal vision that has led to the breakdown of traditional boundaries between public and private space is resulting in a substantial reduction of autonomy and privacy for both women and men.

The ugly laws : disability in public / Susan M. Schweik. New York : New York University, c2009.
KF480 .S39 2009 Annex

In 1881, the Chicago City Code read, "Any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed... shall not... expose himself to public view." These "ugly laws" began in San Francisco in 1867, then spread through the U.S. and abroad; many in the U.S. weren't repealed until the 1970s. Schweik, co-director of UC Berkley's disabilities studies program, explores the emergence of these laws and their tragic consequences for thousands. Motivated largely by the desire to reduce beggar populations and to expand the role of charitable organizations, in practical terms the ugly laws meant "harsh policing; antibegging; systematized suspicion...; and structural and institutional repulsion of disabled people." Schweik discusses the nineteenth century conditions that created a demand for these laws, but notes how the resulting practices have carried through to the present. Schweik draws on a deep index of resources, from legal proceedings to out-of-print books, to tell the story of individuals long lost to history. Her detailed analysis will be of primary interest to those involved with the history of social justice in the U.S. and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 18 Illus.

Sidewalks : conflict and negotiation over public space / Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, c2009.
HT153 .L68 2009 Annex

In this first book-length analysis of the sidewalk as a distinct public space, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht examine the evolution of the American urban sidewalk and trace conflicts that have arisen over its competing uses. They discuss the characteristics of sidewalks as small urban public spaces, and such related issues as the ambiguous boundaries of their "public" status, contestation over specific uses, control and regulations, and the implications for First Amendment speech and assembly rights. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples as well as case study research and archival data from five cities—Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Seattle—the authors focus on how the functions and meanings of street activities have shifted and have been negotiated through controls and interventions. They consider sidewalk uses that include the display of individual and group identities (in ethnic and pride parades, for example), the everyday politics of sidewalk access, and larger political actions (including Seattle's 1999 antiglobalization protests) and examine the complex regulatory frameworks that manage street and sidewalk life. The role of urban sidewalks in the early twenty-first century depends, the authors conclude, on what we want from sidewalk life and how we balance competing interests.

American gulag : inside U.S. immigration prisons / Mark Dow. Berkeley : University of California Press, c2004.
JV6483 .D69 2004 Annex

Long before Abu Ghraib, and even before September 11th, detainees in America's immigration prisons were being stripped, beaten, and sexually abused. Dow has spent years interviewing inmates, guards, and officials, and he gives a jarring account of a dangerously arbitrary system. Alien inmates—from political refugees who present themselves at airports to permanent residents convicted of misdemeanors—can be locked up for years, in harsh conditions, with no real recourse. Dow argues that the practices of the I.N.S. (which was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in 2003) laid the groundwork for the indefinite detentions and the muting of civil liberties after September 11th. By "blurring the distinction between alien, criminal, and terrorist," detention takes on its own brutal logic. After a Somali man is left to bake in the sun in a sealed car to discourage others from applying for asylum, an immigration official explains, "I'm not trying to prosecute them. I just want them to quit coming here."

Louis D. Brandeis and the making of regulated competition, 1900-1932 / Gerald Berk. Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2009.
KF1609 .B47 2009 Annex

This book provides an innovative interpretation of industrialization and statebuilding in the United States. Whereas most scholars cast the politics of industrialization in the progressive era as a narrow choice between breaking up and regulating the large corporation, Berk reveals a third way: regulated competition. In this framework, the government steered economic development away from concentrated power by channeling competition from predation to improvements in products and production processes. Louis Brandeis conceptualized regulated competition and introduced it into public debate. Political entrepreneurs in Congress enacted many of Brandeis's proposals into law. The Federal Trade Commission enlisted business and professional associations to make it workable. The commercial printing industry showed how it could succeed. And 30 percent of manufacturing industries used it to improve economic performance. In order to make sense of regulated competition, Berk provides a new theory of institutions he calls "creative syncretism," which stresses the recombinability of institutional parts and the creativity of actors.