Law in America

A Short History [Modern Library Chronicles]

By: Lawrence M. Friedman

Narrated by: Alan Nebelthau

Lawrence M. Friedman is Professor of Law at Stanford University and author of 23 books about law and legal history. Hailed as American law's greatest living historian, Friedman traces the evolution of America's legal system from the colonial period to the present. A Modern Library Chronicle, this book is concise, insightful, and graced with wit.©2002 Lawrence M. Friedman

Very Good Book

I am surprised that no one has reviewed this title. It is a very interesting listen. I thought it might be boring, but it details how the US legal system started and evolved with social pressures thereafter. Should be a required part of high school curricula. I am a non-legal type; lawyers might find it too light...maybe not.

Fascinating stuff... for college freshmen

This book has a gee whiz aspect to it that I found irritating. The author begins with an anecdote about how he begins his freshman course at Stanford by bringing a newspaper into the class and showing how all the stories on the front page (Patriots Win Superbowl?) have something to do with law. If that sounds exciting and insightful to you, this may be the book for you. If it sounds like a pretty banal observation, pass this one up. The book lacks a coherent focus, and seems to delight in the sort of random factoids that are designed, again, to make an impression on college freshmen: early American law had a lot of provisions to deal with slavery. Umm, ok, so what? I think the author wants us to scratch your head and say "if law was wrong about the morality of slavery, what other moral issues could it be wrong about?" I'd like to think this wouldn't have struck me as deep even when I was a college freshman. He also makes frequent reference to the work of actual scholars without providing actual citations or context--again the sort of thing to whet the appetite of freshmen without scaring them off (or allowing them to check your claims and demonstrate that their professor has no clothes).

Here's the good news: it turns out that audible has a lot of interesting books on law, many targeted at law school students rather than undergraduates. I'm pretty new to the area myself, so I can't provide great recommendations, but keep looking and you'll find something worthwhile.