Books

Subscribe to Books via RSS

I am sure that many of you, like me, are deluged with email messages at this point in the year from well-meaning students taking your fall courses who ask whether a particular text–or version of a text–marked as “required” on the book list is really required. There are many ways to respond to these requests.  A number of my my Facebook friends–including former students–suggest a simple response, something akin to: “What part of required do you not understand?”

While that kind of a response sometimes is very appealing (especially when I get two emails asking about this kind of thing on the same day), I have decided to use these interactions as a teaching moment–of sorts. Set forth below is a version of a message that I send, in case it is of some use to you in this or another similar context. The specific inquiry to which I am responding relates to a student’s question about using a 2013 “statutory supplement” in my Fall 2015 Business Associations course.

Hey, [name of student]. Thanks for reaching out to me. This is a common question. It has an easy (although perhaps unpalatable) answer. I marked the 2015 statutory resource book (not…

My friend and corporate law colleague Marco Ventoruzzo (Penn State Law and Bocconi University) recently let me know that he and several others–Pierre-Henri Conac, Gen Goto, Sebastian Mock, Mario Notari, and Arad Reisberg–have published a coauthored teaching text entitled (and focused on) Comparative Corporate Law.  As someone who has taught that subject (as well as comparative and cross-border mergers and acquisitions) in the past, I have been very interested in taking a look at the book–the first of its kind, as far as I know.  Luckily, I was able to grab a review copy from the publisher, West Academic Publishing (American Casebook Series), at the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) conference, which I am attending this week.  This post shares a bit about the book (based on a relatively quick examination–peeking more closely into some chapters than others) and my ideas for teaching from it.  

I recommend the book and would use it in a course I would teach on the subject matter.  The content is really wonderful.  Nearly everything I need as a foundation for a course in comparative or cross-border corporate law is included.  However, I have a few general criticisms, primarily based on my personal teaching perspective, that I will note in this post.

For a university discussion group this summer, I read William Deresiewicz’s book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life (2014).

Deresiewicz, a former Yale English professor, caused quite a stir in higher education circles with his Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League article in the New Republic (and other articles in various outlets), which promoted Excellent Sheep pre-publication.

Deresiewicz’s attack on the ivy league can be summarized as follows:

  • Encourages a system that leads to resume-padding instead of authentic learning and service
  • Too much focus on future financial success and not enough focus on life’s big questions
  • Not enough socioeconomic diversity
  • Faculty preoccupied with research and do not spend enough time on teaching/service
  • Risk-taking is not encouraged; error for margin for students is too small
  • Coursework not rigorous enough
  • Students are kept doing busy-work rather than allowed to explore
  • Encourages a system that can lead to depression, isolation, etc. 

Deresiewicz taught at Yale for 10 years and was supposedly denied tenure in 2008. When I found out that Deresiewicz’s was denied tenure, I was tempted to write off his book as sour grapes, but I think it best…

I have been reading Paul Mahoney’s brilliant new book, Wasting a Crisis: Why Securities Regulation Fails (University of Chicago Press 2015). You should too.

Mahoney attacks the traditional market failure rationale for our federal securities laws. He argues that contrary to the traditional narrative, market manipulation was not rampant prior to 1933 and the securities markets were operating reasonably well. Mahoney concludes that “‘lax’ regulation was not a substantial cause of the financial problems accompanying the Great Depression and . . . most (although not all) of the subsequent regulatory changes were largely ineffective and in some cases counterproductive.”

Mahoney looks at state blue sky laws, the Securities Act, the Exchange Act, the Public Utility Holding Company Act, and, regrettably only briefly, the Investment Company Act. He concludes by discussing the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank Acts. He discusses the rationales for each regulation and whether those rationales are supported by the facts. Mahoney backs up his argument with a great deal of empirical research, some of which has appeared in earlier articles. Warning: Some of that discussion may be a little difficult for those without a background in regression analysis or financial economics, but you can follow Mahoney’s conclusions without understanding…

Library

A number of months ago, a friend told me about Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. The vision of the Imagination Library is “to foster a love of reading among [the] county’s preschool children and their families by providing them with the gift of a specially selected book each month.”

The books are free of charge, and anyone with preschool children can sign up, regardless of family income. Our two-year old son loves getting the books in the mail.  

While the Imagination Library has already served over 800,000 children, I wonder if their choice architecture is limiting their reach. Also, I wonder if their choice architecture is preventing use of the program by families who need the books the most. Currently, families can sign up online to receive the books. It is a simple process, but you need to have heard about the program, need to have internet access, and need to be able to fill out the sign-up questions.

A nudge, such as an opt-out form (through the mail, or, if allowed, at the hospital) might allow the Imagination Library to reach a greater number of children. (If Gerber Life Insurance knows when we have a baby, I…

Conscious

Recently, I finished reading Conscious Capitalism, written by Whole Foods Market co-CEO John Mackey and Babson College professor Raj Sisodia.

The book is much more “popular press” than academic, as should be clear from the splashy subtitle “liberating the heroic spirit of business.” There is a bit of academic influence in the appendix and notes, but it is mostly social business advocacy and story telling. In fact, the authors state that the primary purpose of the book “is to inspire the creation of more conscious businesses: businesses galvanized by higher purposes that serve and align the interests of all their major stakeholders.” (pg. 8). The book is interesting, passionate, and may accomplish its primary purpose.

The authors paint a compelling picture of Whole Foods Market and similar companies like Trader Joe’s, The Container Store, Costco, and Southwest Airlines. These companies appear to take a long-term view and consider what is best for all their stakeholders. I would have appreciated, however, more attention to the struggles the companies must have faced in attempting to satisfy all of their stakeholders. After finishing the book, I was left wishing the authors would have spent more time discussing how to make decisions in…

Frankel OConnor Yale

Each summer, I try to read a few books related to work and a few books not related to work.

This summer, I have tagged Tamar Frankel’s Trust and Honesty: America’s Business Culture at a Crossroad and Flannery O’Connor’s Everything That Rises Must Converge.

Open to other reading suggestions in the comments. I have a pretty deep “want to read” list, but am always looking for more additions.

I am also listening to a Yale online course called Philosophy and the Science of Human Nature, taught by Tamar Gendler. I am already more than halfway finished with the course – mostly listening in the car or while doing various chores. While I did not take any Philosophy courses in college, much of the material is more familiar than I would have thought. These open courses have been fun, and I am open to suggestions of other good courses.  

Many of you have probably heard of bitcoin, the private digital currency that some mainstream merchants are now accepting. (Rand Paul recently became the first presidential candidate to accept donations in bitcoin.)

Bitcoin was developed by a software programmer who used the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It is built on cryptography software known as the blockchain, which both issues the currency and authenticates transactions using it.

If you haven’t heard of bitcoin or you don’t know much about it, I strongly recommend an interesting, informative new book : The Age of Cryptocurrency: How Bitcoin and Digital Money are Challenging the Global Economic Order, by Paul Vigna and Michael J. Casey.

Vigna and Casey are reporters for the Wall Street Journal. I think they’re a little too optimistic about the future of digital currency, but their book is an excellent non-technical introduction to the bitcoin phenomenon and the blockchain software that underlies it. The book isn’t limited to bitcoin; Vigna and Casey talk about other digital currency. They also discuss other potential applications for the blockchain software, such as gambling, self-enforcing “smart” contracts, and currency exchange.

The book’s discussion of regulatory issues is limited. If you’re looking for a discussion…

I’m a big fan of Ernest Hemingway. I love his writing style. I’m currently rereading all of his novels, and I ran across a quote that I think every lawyer and law professor should read and take to heart.

I don’t think Hemingway was a fan of lawyers. The only lengthy portrayal of a lawyer in his fiction is in To Have and Have Not, and that lawyer is a crooked, double-crossing sleaze. I’m reasonably sure he never wrote or said anything specifically about legal writing. But the following passage from The Garden of Eden captures the essence of good legal writing:

Be careful, he said to himself, it is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

No legal writing instructor could have said it better than Papa.

I recently purchased and read two Cass Sunstein (Harvard) books: Simpler: The Future of Government and Wiser: Getting Beyond GroupThink to Make Groups Smarter (with Reid Hastie (Chicago))

Cass Sunstein is a enjoyable writer to read, and Simpler was an easy, relatively short read (though he admits that his editor prompted the cutting of 30,000 words from the original manuscript). I may do a separate post on Wiser at a later date.

Simpler provides an inside look at Cass Sunstein’s time at the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (“OIRA”) from 2009-2012. Supposedly, OIRA was created by the Paperwork Reduction Act in 1980. OIRA plays an important role in overseeing federal regulation.

A few random thoughts about Simpler:

  • If you have read Sunstein’s earlier work, Kahneman (Princeton), and Ariely (Duke) much of Simpler will be familiar behavioral economics;
  • Sunstein’s political confirmation process sounds absolutely awful. I wonder how many qualified potential civil servants are scared away by processes like this;
  • The Food Plate (below) is much simpler than the Food Pyramid I grew up with;
  • Sunstein reminded me that sometimes rule-makers (including professors – e.g. with our syllabi) can become experts in rule systems,

…