Essential reading for anyone contemplating a legal career.
An insider reports on the legal profession’s impending implosion.
Focusing on two vital institutions, the law schools who act as gatekeepers and “big law,” the prestigious firms that set the tone, Harper (Law/Northwestern Univ.; The Partnership: A Novel, 2010, etc.), for 25 years a partner at the distinguished firm of Kirkland and Ellis, now an adjunct professor, is perfectly positioned to reflect on alarming developments that have brought the legal profession to a most unfortunate place. The lawyer bubble, he argues, as with the dot-com, real estate and financial bubbles that preceded it, cannot be blamed on the Great Recession. Rather, it’s a creation of those charged with safeguarding the profession, who’ve abandoned any long-term vision out of greed for money, power and status. In thrall to the U.S. News and World Report’s annual rankings, law schools regularly manipulate the methodology that determines the listings; deans focus on the short-term financial performance of their own institutions, encouraging an oversupply of applicants and graduating students into a job market already glutted. Similarly, big law takes its cues from the American Lawyer’s list of the nation’s top 100 firms, looking to maneuver for position, sacrificing long-established firm cultures in favor of immediate profit and maximum partner reward, and causing widespread dissatisfaction within the ranks. Harper describes associate labor in these firms as depressing, unfulfilling and unrelenting. Most readers will shed no tears at this sorry spectacle, but the author clearly cares deeply about the future of his beloved profession, and he reminds us of a time when a legal career was more about service, collegiality, community and shared purpose. He offers numerous suggestions that might allow the profession to cushion the consequences of the bubble about to burst, but given the pathologies he describes, their adoption appears unlikely anytime soon.
Essential reading for anyone contemplating a legal career.Pub Date: April 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-0465058778
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
A history, published in Britain shortly after the author wrote it in 1937, of the few months surrounding the Barcelona Telephone Exchange riots and what the writer determines as the Communist betrayal of all of Spain's anti-fascist forces. The crux of Orwell's writing is to show the ridiculous misrepresentations of the actual happenings in Barcelona and on the front and their meaning for the rest of Spain. The Communists were joined with the Government. Another anti-fascist faction was the P.O.U.M. or anarchist militia. They were closely allied with socialist worker movements, ready to build up a workers' revolution. In the beginning when issues were but hazily defined, Orwell joined the P.O.U.M. and fought with them- at the front. The Communists, considering anarchist-socialist revolutionary policies as presumptive, sought successfully to purge the P.O.U.M. and rendered them through messy journalism, coercive police methods, withdrawal of arms, false reports- as Trotskyists, pro-Franco, anything but the potent patriotic force they were. Thus republican Spain lost a power that could have helped beat Franco. Orwell's report is as exciting as it is meditative. With his quiet exactitude the midnight skirmishes, the political issues, and the utter futility of war come clearly into focus. Perhaps not a book to create sensation in a day when much of what happened at Barcelona has been realized, but one enlightening in terms of showing the war way toward mutual understanding and fair play.
Pub Date: May 15, 1952
ISBN: 1849025975
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1952
With this detailed, versatile cookbook, readers can finally make Momofuku Milk Bar’s inventive, decadent desserts at home, or see what they’ve been missing.
In this successor to the Momofuku cookbook, Momofuku Milk Bar’s pastry chef hands over the keys to the restaurant group’s snack-food–based treats, which have had people lining up outside the door of the Manhattan bakery since it opened. The James Beard Award–nominated Tosi spares no detail, providing origin stories for her popular cookies, pies and ice-cream flavors. The recipes are meticulously outlined, with added tips on how to experiment with their format. After “understanding how we laid out this cookbook…you will be one of us,” writes the author. Still, it’s a bit more sophisticated than the typical Betty Crocker fare. In addition to a healthy stock of pretzels, cornflakes and, of course, milk powder, some recipes require readers to have feuilletine and citric acid handy, to perfect the art of quenelling. Acolytes should invest in a scale, thanks to Tosi’s preference of grams (“freedom measurements,” as the friendlier cups and spoons are called, are provided, but heavily frowned upon)—though it’s hard to be too pretentious when one of your main ingredients is Fruity Pebbles. A refreshing, youthful cookbook that will have readers happily indulging in a rising pastry-chef star’s widely appealing treats.
Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-72049-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2011
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