In the Mail
By 
Ok, see everybody next week!
Other recent reads/arrivals:
- I’ve been looking forward to it since her knockout short story in the New Yorker last year, and Lauren Groff’s Arcadia is the most enjoyable and entertaining new novel I’ve read in a while (with A Visit From the Goon Squad still pending; I’m always behind on fiction.) Set in an ultimately failed commune built around a charismatic, self-serving rock star in upstate New York and its aftermath, it starts from the perspective of a young boy and develops with him in intervals of roughly a decade. Somewhat remarkably given its setting, it’s devoid not only of easy political axe-grinding but condescending satire, and it’s beautifully written. Recommended.
- An excellent companion to the new Caro is Andrew Polsky’s Elusive Victories: The American Presidency At War, which I’ve also been looking forward to for a long time, and will have more about imminently.
- Just received Sandy Levinson’s Framed, a continuation of his critiques of the American constitutional framework, which are more necessary than ever.
- Kevin McMahon’s Nixon’s Court, which argues that Nixon’s (unusually large because of LBJ’s botched replacement of Earl Warren) contingent of Supreme Court appointments had a larger impact than is commonly assumed.
- Justin Crowe’s Building the Judiciary, a contribution to the literature on how the development of judicial power is largely the result of delegation.