Apr 5
The April 1 issue of Library Journal provides a review of America’s First Great Depression. “This timely book will be of great use not just to students of economic history but also to readers who wish to find historical precedent for today’s uncertain, turbulent times.” Read the review.
I’ll be giving a public lecture in Beijing on April 8 with John McMillan, Information Commissioner of Australia. The lecture is organized by Tsinghua University Law School in conjunction with the Carter Center. We’ll also participate in an all-day forum at the law school on April 9.
The April newsletter for Governance is now posted. Features open access to commentaries on Belgium’s 600-day period without a new government; access to a talk by Brigid Laffan on the Eurozone crisis; and other material.
History News Network has posted a review of America’s First Great Depression, written by Jim Cullen, HNN book review editor. Read the review.
The journal International Affairs has published a review of The Logic of Discipline. The book “comes to us in the long tradition of Polanyian political economy, analysing the embeddedness of markets in their social and political context.” Access the review.
Today’s Toronto Globe and Mail includes an editorial commenting on my article about WikiLeaks in the current issue of International Review of Administrative Sciences. Says the G&M: “WikiLeaks did not transform the political world.” Also a story in the Times of India. There is also a March 28 interview about the article on the Pacific Standard website.
Brooke Gladstone of NPR’s On the Media spoke at the Rappaport Center about her book, The Influencing Machine, and the role of media in politics. The event was co-sponsored with Suffolk Law’s Media Law Group. Photo left to right: Greg Massing, the Center’s Executive Director; Austra Zubkovs, the Center’s communications coordinator; Brooke Gladstone; and Sarah Nashat of the Media Law Group.
Richard Sylla, Henry Kaufman Professor of the History of Financial Institutions and Markets, New York University, has contributed a comment on America’s First Great Depression: “Alasdair Roberts’s poignant yet balanced account of the financial, economic, and political crises of the 1830s and 1840s provides us with a distant mirror reflecting our current travails. By not knowing and learning from history, we continue to make the same mistakes our ancestors did. If you want to complete your education, America’s First Great Depression is a good place to begin.”
The Rappaport Center hosted a lunch roundtable on the policing of the Occupy protests at Suffolk Law today. The lead speaker was Professor Alex Vitale of Brooklyn College, who discussed the policing strategies of ten major US cities. Comments were provided by Boston PD Superintendent in Chief Dan Linskey and attorney Ben Wish of Todd & Weld. The roundtable series is supported by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. Read a story about this event.
Professor Claude Rochet has published a commentary on The Logic of Discipline in the latest issue of Revue française d’administration publique. Claude is also the author of Politiques publiques: de la stratégie aux résultats (De Boeck, 2010).
Alasdair S. Roberts 
