Academic

Books to Watch For

By propertyprof

As I'm about to head out the door for Thanksgiving break, I'm sitting here trying to clear my desk.   And so let me call your attention to three books in the University of California Press catalog that you may want to read.  Lots and lots of great books in there.  But to pick just a couple.  First, From Demon to Darling: A Legal History of Wine in America.  At last, at last--a book on legal history that has mass appeal!  The synopsis from the U.C. Press website is:

Richard Mendelson brings together his expertise as both a Napa Valley lawyer and a winemaker into this accessible overview of American wine law from colonial times to the present. It is a story of fits and starts that provides a fascinating chronicle of the history of wine in the United States told through the lens of the law. From the country's early support for wine as a beverage to the moral and religious fervor that resulted in Prohibition and to the governmental controls that followed Repeal, Mendelson takes us to the present day?and to the emergence of an authentic and significant wine culture. He explains how current laws shape the wine industry in such areas as pricing and taxation, licensing, appellations, health claims and warnings, labeling, and domestic and international commerce. As he explores these and other legal and policy issues, Mendelson lucidly highlights the concerns that have made wine alternatively the demon or the darling of American society?and at the same time illuminates the ways in which lives and livelihoods are affected by the rise and fall of social movements.

May not quite be Transformation of American Law, but it sure promises to use wine as a pretty illuminating constant against which to judge changes in American culture and law.  I'm most intrigued by what it will show.

Second, Sarah Burns and John Davis' American Art to 1900; finally, Susan Freinkel's American Chestnut: The Life, Death, and Rebirth of a Perfect Tree.  Just the book for your favorite tree -loving friends.  What a charming idea for a book--and a family cemetery appears on the first page, so it has all the makin's of a great story.  I can't wait to read the rest of it.

Alfred Brophy.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on November 26, 2008 (boomark / email).