• QP Blog

    Rabbi David Kasher’s ParshaNut explores the Torah with insight and joy

    In the spirit of Nechama Leibowitz’s classic, New Studies in the Weekly Parsha, Rabbi David Kasher offers 54 essays exploring the vast but understudied genre of Jewish literature known as parshanut, or Torah commentary. From the masters of midrash who began the tradition, to the medieval commentators who defined the style, on down to the scholars of the modern age, Kasher leads an impassioned and engaging tour through the history of Jewish Biblical interpretation. “With engaging clarity and vivacity, Kasher presents a wide range of traditional commentaries on the biblical text. In each chapter, he poses a central question which then becomes a field for vigorous discussion, pursued in a contemporary conversational…

  • QP Blog

    Raskin explores the Yin and Yang of Short Films

    In the first book to study the short film using the yin yang complementarity, Raskin proposes a new paradigm – describing major forms of yin and yang, redefined as ungendered, freed of patriarchal bias. Yin evokes such properties as holding back and an openness to interpretation while yang promotes structure, causality, and control. Ten exemplary short films show how the model illuminates their storytelling. Features richly illustrated, shot-by-shot breakdowns – many in color – and links. “Richard Raskin changed my way of thinking about short films twenty years ago with his marvelous book The Art of the Short Fiction Film. And now he manages to do it again! The Yin and Yang of Short Film Storytelling offers a totally new approach to analyzing…

  • Books,  Coming Soon,  Contemporary Society Series,  QP Blog

    Legal Realism to Law in Action recounts the tradition of innovative courses at Wisconsin Law

    This is a book of papers and interviews about innovative law school courses developed by faculty of the Wisconsin Law School from 1950 to 1970 that forged a path from legal realism to law and social science. These courses took a “law in action” approach to the study of law which became a signature feature of the school’s tradition from that time to the present day. “The Legal Realists of the 1920s and 30s taught that the law that mattered was the law in action, as applied by ordinary officials and experienced by ordinary people. But they mostly failed to get their program adopted as part of professional education alongside…

  • The Coming Storm
    Books,  Books Defying Categories

    Climate Change- Extreme Weather: Reiss brings back The Coming Storm in Second Edition

    The prescient book that first linked specific weather disasters with man-made global warming . . . now in its second edition. … “The most readable and intelligent summary of global warming science and politics I have read… a valiant effort to make people actually care about global warming.” — Bill McKibben, New York Observer … “What Bob Reiss did to elevate our awareness of the destruction of the rain forest in The Road to Extrema, he has now done for global warming… Reiss bypasses political rhetoric and engages us in storytelling, showing us how the greenhouse effect is changing our lives, person by person, community by community, nation by nation.”…

  • Books,  Classic Dissertation Series,  Featured

    Michael O’Neal’s Slavery, Smallholding and Tourism Examines the British Virgin Islands with Anthropology and History

    Explores the political economy of development in the BVI — from plantations, through a smallholding economy, to the rise of tourism. The demise of plantations ushered in a century of imperial disinterest, then a new “monocrop” — tourism — became ascendant. Using an historical and anthropological approach, O'Neal shows how later reliance on tourism and other dependent industries affects many BVIslanders — called the “Belongers” — in ways that echo their historical and economic heritage. NEW IN PAPERBACK, HARDCOVER, and multiple eBOOK FORMATS.

  • QP Blog

    A Simplified Summary of the Louisiana Notary Public Study Guide

    The Louisiana Notary Public exam is based on a 722-page study guide, Fundamentals of Louisiana Notarial Law and Practice. But the official book is famously difficult and organized in a complex way. Readers often need help—including classes and Facebook groups—just to unwind it. This book is, at last, directly aimed at simplifying and outlining the study guide itself. Such a resource offers a better chance of passing the notoriously difficult notary exam. Law school classes and bar exam prep have long given law students the advantage of complete outlines, nutshells, and bar review materials authored by experts in their subjects. It’s time for this concept to be used for notary…

  • Books,  Classics of Law & Society,  QP Blog

    David Garland’s classic Punishment and Welfare is Digitally Remastered,™ adding new preface by the author

    First published in 1985, this classic of law and society scholarship continues to shape the research agenda of today’s sociology of punishment. It is now republished with a new Preface by the author. Punishment and Welfare explores the relation of punishment to politics, the historical formation and development of criminology, and the way in which penal reform grew out of the complex set of political projects that founded the modern welfare state. Its analyses powerfully illuminate many of the central problems of contemporary penal and welfare policy, showing how these problems grew out of political struggles and theoretical debates that occurred in the first years of the 20th century. In…

  • Books,  Featured,  Legal Legends

    Llewellyn’s Classic Guide to Law Study and 1L Advice, The Bramble Bush: features Introduction and notes by Stewart Macaulay

    Written over 80 years ago, but highly relevant still, THE BRAMBLE BUSH is frequently and strongly recommended for students considering law school, just before starting, or early in the first semester. It began as introductory lectures by legal legend Karl Llewellyn to 1Ls at Columbia. It still speaks to law, legal reasoning, class prep, and exam skills--a classic for each new generation. In new paperback, hardcover, Kindle, Apple & Nook. Introduced and annotated.

  • Babcock
    Books,  Journeys and Memoirs Series,  QP Blog

    Barbara Babcock’s memoir Fish Raincoats recounts a woman lawyer’s “firsts”

    The life and times of a trailblazing feminist in American law. The first female Stanford law professor was also first director of the District of Columbia Public Defender Service, one of the first women to be an Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and the biographer of California’s first woman lawyer, Clara Foltz. Survivor, pioneer, leader, and fervent defender of the powerless and colorful mobsters alike, Barbara Babcock led by example and by the written word — and recounts her part of history in this candid and personal memoir. “For woman lawyers, Barbara Babcock has led the way. How? By being smarter and tougher than the men; also, more…

  • SELZNICK
    Books,  Classics of Law & Society

    Selznick’s Law, Society, and Industrial Justice, in 50th Anniversary, adds Foreword by Lauren Edelman

    LAW, SOCIETY, AND INDUSTRIAL JUSTICE is a foundational study of workplace justice, still engaging and referenced a half-century after its original publication. The 50th Anniversary Edition adds an extensive, substantive Foreword by Berkeley’s Lauren Edelman. She writes that the book “remains important for how it conceptualizes law, for how it conceptualizes organizations, and for the theory Selznick offers regarding the moral evolution of organizations as they become ‘institutions,’ or living entities infused with values.” It is “a profound book for many reasons,” as she critically examines. Norms and values still matter in organizational governance – even in what amounts to “private government” – as this classic work reminds us. “Selznick’s…