I am Stephen Carter, professor of law at Yale, and a serious lover of books and ideas. (I blog as wdtlr — can anyone guess why? And, no, it has nothing to do with Linux.)

The name of this blog is taken from a delightful book of the same title by James Russell Lowell, published during the 1880s, in which the great essayist and poet reflected on the lessons from, and offered criticisms of, a variety of volumes that he had read.

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Books on my table

Let’s begin with simply a list of books that I can currently see from the table where I am working, not volumes on the shelf but volumes lying on the table itself. The order is random, just things I have lying around, some for work, some for pleasure:

Ronald Barthes, Image – Music – Text. Collection of essays published in the 1970s. Obviously dated, but some of the essays are brilliant — take a look at “The Third Meaning” to get a sense of the deep connection between totalitarianism and images. The book overall remains a favorite of mine

Jane Brox, Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives. Studying a subject most of don’t think about. It hadn’t previously occurred to me that silence had a history in any interesting sense. In my judgment, one of the top books of 2019, possibly the best.

Oginga Odinga, Not Yet Uhuru: An Autobiography. The Kenyan independence activist from the days of the struggle against colonialism tells his story and makes his case. Published in 1967. Of particular interest are his views about the importance of the formerly colonized, upon assuming power, to behave differently than the former colonizers. There’s a tragedy to the story, because he wound up disillusioned, but the book nevertheless is a useful testament to the difficulties of the struggle.

Wolfram Siemann, Metternich: Strategist and Visionary. I’m a sucker for biographies of influential historical figures but somehow overlooked this one, published in 2019, until recently. The shutdown has left me a lot of time to read. Siemann focuses mainly on Metternich’s cat-and-mouse (and later head-to-head) battles with Napoleon, whom he saw (one would think correctly) as the greatest threat to Europe. Absolutely fascinating.

John F. Callahan, The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison. One of the great prose stylists of the twentieth century wrote beautifully and forcefully in his correspondence. A reminder of a dying art, the art of crafting a missive to be put into the mail, fully understanding that one will have to wait for a reply. I particularly recommend his letters to (and about!) Faulkner.

Martin Gardner, The Annotated Casey at the Bat. Not even sure what it’s doing on the table, but I grew up as a Gardner fan, reading his column in Scientific American, and I have most of his books. Always illuminating, always fun.

Simon de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity. The 1947 monograph that secured de Beauvoir’s reputation. Among the great philosophical and political texts of the last century. One might not agree with her views on, say, the nature of human consciousness, but one has to be impressed with the verve of the prose. And when she comes to the necessary conditions of freedom, she lays out an agenda that protects political and economic rights (that is, the right to a particular standard of living), but also defines freedom in part according to our ability to engage in unfettered discourse. She denies entirely that one can justify repression in the name of ending oppression.

Richard A. Posner, The Little Book of Plagiarism. As the title says, a little book — just a hundred-odd page — but also a big one. Turns out that the subject is far more complex than most of think. Includes several nice bits on the strong incentives to plagiarize.

Herbert O. Yardley, The Education of a Poker Player. Published in 1957, a marvelous meditation on poker and on life from one of the great code-breakers of World War II. My father gave me this book as I was going off to college in the 1970s. Following Yardley’s advice about cards helped me win (or at least, when I lost, now lose too much); his advice about life is harder, not least because unlike the author, I didn’t grow up in a small town working in a saloon and watching people risk everything on the turn of the next card. I should add that the autobiographical parts of the book are more interesting than most of the poker advice.

Maybe that’s enough for now; enough to make a start. Just random books lying on the table. Later I’ll have much more to say.