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courtroom, legal historian Hoffer (Uncivil
Warriors: The Lawyers’ Civil War) persua-
sively argues that intense litigation signals
a period of social upheaval, “a temporary
disparity between new and old social
norms.” Each chapter focuses on a cluster
of case studies
that illuminate
a contested
“phase change”
in American
identity and
culture. For
example, he
argues, real
estate title cases
in the colonial
U.S. gave voice
to mutual frustrations between yeoman
farmers and a new commercial elite. Before
the Civil War, fraud suits connected to
slave trading illuminated increasing
Southern anxiety about the future of the
institution; cases in the North regarding
back pay and the legality of craft unions
bespoke concerns about the dignity of the
individual in industrial society. The second
half of the book posits that litigation helped
extend the rights of the individual, as in
stockholder suits against the fraudulent
machinations of Gilded Age railroad
financiers and consumer class action torts
against corporate wrongdoing. Chapters
regarding changes in divorce and the
landmark civil rights lawsuits in the mid-
20th century illuminate shifting paradigms
in gender and race relations, respectively.
This eloquent, well-organized book will
particularly delight academic readers
new to legal history and will give those
in the legal field a greater sense of their
profession’s role in shaping America’s
culture and character. (Sept.)
The Many Lives of
Michael Bloomberg
Eleanor Randolph. Simon & Schuster, $30
(480p) ISBN 978-1-4767-7220-2
The tech mogul turned New York City
mayor proved billionaires can be good
politicians, according to this admiring
but not sugarcoated biography. Journalist
Randolph recounts Michael Bloomberg’s
reshaping of Wall Street with the 1982
introduction of his Bloomberg Terminals,
which give up-to-the-nanosecond market
data and analysis to traders. In Randolph’s
telling, Bloomberg was a hard-charging
leader who demanded fanatical devotion
from employees and who allegedly allowed
a woman-unfriendly corporate culture to
flourish; one employee claimed Bloomberg
told her to “kill it” when she was pregnant.
The book’s heart is its chronicle of
Bloomberg’s 2002–2013 tenure as mayor
of New York City, in which, Randolph
judges, he proved competent and inno-
vative—overhauling the city’s schools,
building bike lanes and pedestrian
plazas, banning smoking in bars—
though his technocratic politics had fail-
ings too, including the police stop-and-
frisk program that Bloomberg defended
as a measure to prevent gun violence, but
which many New Yorkers denounced as
racist. In Randolph’s coverage of his post-
mayoral philanthropy, Bloomberg is
depicted as a kind of anti-Trump, a
domineering tycoon who is stable, centrist,
and environmentally conscious. Randolph’s
respectful but clear-eyed profile unearths
a complex, prickly personality beneath
Bloomberg’s uncharismatic surface, per-
ceiving in his “dreary monotone” the “nasal
voice of New York City.” The result is a
vivid, timely study of Bloomberg’s brand
of plutocracy. Photos. (Sept.)Melania and Michelle:
First Ladies in a New Era
Tammy R. Vigil. Red Lightning, $26 (216p)
ISBN 978-1-68435-101-5
In this somewhat shallow survey,
communication professor Vigil (Moms in
Chief) looks at how the two most recent
first ladies have handled their unelected,
unpaid, and perhaps unchosen position.
From their debuts on the campaign trail,
through their times in the White House,
Vigil dissects the two women’s fashion
choices, social media presences, missteps
(such as Trump’s “I Really Don’t Care”
jacket and Obama’s perceived overstep-
ping of the role’s bounds with the Let’s
Move campaign), and parenting decisions.
She pays particular attention to how the
press and the current era’s focus on social
media has challenged the two in ways not
seen by previous first ladies and seeks,
somewhat unsuccessfully, to demonstrate
commonalities between them: for
example, Vigil argues they are similar
since both rose from lower-middle-class
backgrounds to success as, respectively, anattorney and model. While Vigil does offer
some nice historical anecdotes about first
ladies as far back as Martha Washington,
the overall effect is repetitive, and there’s
not much new analysis or insight beyond
what’s already been covered in the media.
It’s not really clear who the audience is for
this study. (Sept.)None of Your Damn Business:
Privacy in the United States from
the Gilded Age to the Digital Age
Lawrence Cappello. Univ. of Chicago, $30
(352p) ISBN 978-0-226-55774-8
Capello, a professor of U.S. labor history
and privacy law, makes his debut with a
timely and engaging book on the latter
subject. Through a series of chronological
case studies, he examines the tension
between individual and collective rights
to privacy and changing public interests.
Capello makes a persuasive argument for
privacy as both a personal necessity and a
societal good and notes that, over the last
century and a
half, privacy
advocates have
focused too
much on the
individual right
to privacy and
have failed to
“position pri-
vacy as a larger
societal right
essential to the
progress of any free civilization.” He
simultaneously acknowledges that
“claims to privacy almost always push
against a legitimate counterweight that
other people care about” and must be
balanced against the competing needs of
the public and other interests. His
examples—involving Gilded Era tabloids,
Roe v. Wade, and Facebook—effectively
counter the old chestnut that only guilty
people have something to hide. Capello’s
puckish sensibilities and engaging style
dovetail wittily with his well-chosen and
thoughtful examples, resulting in an aca-
demic text that any reader can appreciate.
This book is a must-read for legislators,
policymakers, and anyone curious about
the ways their privacy could potentially
be compromised by the government, the
media, or data brokers. (Sept.)