Does reading make you a better person. Probably not! But reading is a great way to expand your horizons. So, now that the spring semester is almost over, this is what we will be reading during the month of May:

Beyond Legal Reasoning by Jeffrey Lipshaw (Routledge, 2017). We need to thank Paul Caron (via TaxProfBlog) for bringing Lipshaw’s ambitious new book to our attention. It’s a book about legal theory, one that explains what “thinking like a lawyer” means. This book is an intellectually ambitious one because Lipshaw attempts to demarcate the outer limits of legal reasoning and tries to bridge the gap between legal reasoning and legal judgement. We will write up an extended review of this book in the days ahead.

Never Caught by Erica Armstong Dunbar (Atria, 2016). This tome tells the story of Ona Judge, a runaway slave belonging to George and Martha Washington, and the Washingtons’ attempts to recover their slave. (We discovered this work via “Book TV” on C-Span.)

Freedom National by James Oakes (Norton, 2013). This book chronicles the destruction of slavery in the United States. (Randy Barnett, via Volokh Conspiracy, brought this historical opus to our attention.)

Better Presentations by Jonathan Schwabish (Columbia University Press, 2016). Or: how to avoid “death by power point.” (Jason Kottke, via kottke, brought this useful book to our attention.)

Miscellaneous books. We will be in Havana, Cuba and in Washington, D.C. for most of May, and we expect to visit a wide variety of book shops in both cities, so we will most likely discover and read other books during the month of May.