Tomorrow is my last day of co-op! I can't believe it - three months ago I came out to Southern California for the first time, having never stepped foot in a federal courthouse, and now Pasadena and the Ninth Circuit courthouse feel so familiar. It really has been a great experience and I feel so lucky that it has been part of my law school experience. I am leaving some good weather and some great friends behind.

Today I thought I would share with you some of my favorite law-related but non-casebook reading. I find that every once in a while its great to go back to those books that inspired you to pursue the law, whether they be the classic To Kill A Mockingbird or even, admit it!, John Grisham. Here are a few of my favorites:

A Civil Action, by Jonathan Harr, is the true story of lawyers taking on corporations...and winning. Eventually. For me the combination of an ambitious, if unrealistic, young lawyer, corporate (ir)responsibility, and public health combine to make a thrilling read. Even better, some of the main characters are still practicing right here in Boston. Beyond the excitement of the story, however, the book also illuminates what a long and draining fight class action lawsuits, and litigation of all kinds, can be.

I recently read Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary, by Juan Williams. Prior to attending law school, and even through my first year, I didn’t understand people’s interest in Supreme Court Justices. However, after being in law school a bit longer, and reading this book, I find it fascinating how learning about individual Justices can give you a better idea of what the practice of law was like during their tenure, what the political climate was, and, most of all, remind you that law is made by real people, who are products of their place and time.

One of my favorite books of the past year or two was Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age, by Kevin Boyle. It’s one of those non-fiction history books that gives you an incredible sense of what life was like during a specific period in American history. As they write on the website for the great bookstore Powells, http://www.powells.com/:

“In 1925, Detroit was a smoky swirl of jazz and speakeasies, assembly lines and fistfights. The advent of automobiles had brought workers from around the globe to compete for manufacturing jobs, and tensions often flared with the KKK in ascendance and violence rising. Ossian Sweet, a proud Negro doctor-grandson of a slave-had made the long climb from the ghetto to a home of his own in a previously all-white neighborhood. Yet just after his arrival, a mob gathered outside his house; suddenly, shots rang out: Sweet, or one of his defenders, had accidentally killed one of the whites threatening their lives and homes.

And so it began-a chain of events that brought America's greatest attorney, Clarence Darrow, into the fray and transformed Sweet into a controversial symbol of equality. Historian Kevin Boyle weaves the police investigation and courtroom drama of Sweet's murder trial into an unforgettable tapestry of narrative history that documents the volatile America of the 1920s and movingly re-creates the Sweet family's journey from slavery through the Great Migration to the middle class. Ossian Sweet's story, so richly and poignantly captured here, is an epic tale of one man trapped by the battles of his era's changing times.�

This book got me really interested in Detroit, in Clarence Darrow, and in the history of the NAACP. Arc of Justice is captivating - a moving and devastating portrait of racism, American history, and one man’s story.

One final note: while not directly law related, right now I am reading The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America, by Allan M. Brandt. The Cigarette Century was recommended to me by NUSL professor Richard Daynard, who runs the Public Health Advocacy Institute, http://www.phaionline.org/. Check out their work on Tobacco Control here: http://www.phaionline.org/projects/tobacco-control/.

Have a great holiday everyone!