Amar's new book is a lot, and I will have a lot to say about it www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/akhil...
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I dont do book reviews and havent read this but the description makes me want to fuck him up. A story of the universe bending toward justice in...1920?!?!? When white men routinely lost their minds in the north and killed people. And things fluctuated; they didnt trend up (for women or black people)
aug 30, 2025, 8:40 pm • 23 0 • view
We worked equality out by 1920 is one heck of a take
aug 30, 2025, 8:41 pm • 16 0 • view
It’s going to be a challenging review to write because…. Yeah
aug 30, 2025, 8:47 pm • 17 0 • view
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln…”
aug 30, 2025, 8:49 pm • 12 0 • view
This is 6 yrs before 1920 but it has a similarly rosy view And to be fair, most black people were not lynched
aug 30, 2025, 8:52 pm • 22 1 • view
You could walk into a movie theater and pay a couple cents to watch a lynching video. In the north.
aug 30, 2025, 8:55 pm • 13 3 • view
Oh yeah, my specialty is northern discrimination. The myth of northern innocence is IMO toxic to con law and more importantly history education nationwide
aug 30, 2025, 8:58 pm • 16 0 • view
I’ll note Amar is one the first to normalize Bove (possibly because he wants to send students to clerk for him)
aug 30, 2025, 9:05 pm • 10 0 • view
Yikes
aug 30, 2025, 9:27 pm • 3 0 • view
Like 10% of white Protestants would literally join the Klan within a year or two of 1920.
aug 30, 2025, 9:42 pm • 4 0 • view
We grabbed tens of thousands of women off the street and incarcerated them for unfounded promiscuity or STDs.
aug 30, 2025, 9:47 pm • 17 2 • view
An amazing book (i lucked out that scott was my editor on one of my articles)
aug 31, 2025, 1:43 am • 3 0 • view
I know this rhetorical, but why is it that I didn't learn about this stuff until after law school...?
aug 31, 2025, 1:48 am • 3 0 • view
Same!
aug 31, 2025, 1:48 am • 3 0 • view
The age old pastime of blaming & punishing women for making men do bad sexual things.
aug 30, 2025, 9:57 pm • 3 0 • view
We know what we did
aug 30, 2025, 10:02 pm • 1 0 • view
Let it be a lesson to us* (*Of exactly what, tho 😒)
aug 30, 2025, 10:05 pm • 1 0 • view
A man recently had the audacity to say, in my presence, “As I’ve gotten older, I realized that teenage girls don’t know what they’re doing to teenage boys when they wear short skirts.” “What is it they’re doing?” I inquired “They’re making boys look at them as objects.”
aug 30, 2025, 11:53 pm • 0 0 • view
So 'Birth of a Nation: Hardbound'?
aug 30, 2025, 9:40 pm • 0 0 • view
“foremost constitutional scholar” seems false to me
aug 30, 2025, 7:57 pm • 20 0 • view
Sure, it that’s a tier. If it’s an individual…
aug 30, 2025, 7:58 pm • 3 0 • view
I’ll say that it captures the vibe
aug 30, 2025, 7:59 pm • 12 0 • view
😂
aug 30, 2025, 8:00 pm • 10 0 • view
There’s one footnote in particular that I’m not going to spoil but will absolutely merit comment
aug 30, 2025, 8:01 pm • 9 0 • view
Cmon, spoil it so I don’t have to spend $40.
aug 30, 2025, 8:03 pm • 16 0 • view
It’s a string cite to all of the opinions in which he has been cited
aug 31, 2025, 12:24 am • 23 0 • view
Lololol
aug 31, 2025, 2:00 am • 1 0 • view
Oh my. Did he also say that he has many leather-bound books and his apartment smells of rich mahogany?
aug 31, 2025, 1:23 am • 4 0 • view
🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️🤦🏻♂️
aug 31, 2025, 12:26 am • 5 0 • view
This fits. In one of those National Constitution Center debates in '18 about birth right citizenship he was up against some buffoon, but he gratuitously brought up "that he was meeting with a SCOTUS justice the next day" or something. constitutioncenter.org/news-debate/...
aug 31, 2025, 1:07 am • 1 0 • view
My understanding is that he saw JD Vance and was openly like “why are we admitting the state school rubes?” And that is among the reasons JD Vance is the way he is
aug 31, 2025, 1:12 am • 11 1 • view
On one hand, he wasn't wrong to think JD Vance sucks. On the other hand, that is still a terrible outlook.
aug 31, 2025, 1:21 am • 3 0 • view
That’s also just something you wouldn’t say unless you’re a total asshole.
aug 31, 2025, 1:17 am • 7 0 • view
Totally (speaking as a Michigan Texas alum lol)
aug 31, 2025, 1:18 am • 4 0 • view
This sounds entirely on point for both Amar and Vance.
aug 31, 2025, 1:54 am • 14 1 • view
For real? I can’t tell who is joking anymore.
aug 31, 2025, 1:21 am • 0 0 • view
Could totally be an unfounded rumor, but that is what I heard
aug 31, 2025, 1:24 am • 1 0 • view
A new term: Egociting.
aug 31, 2025, 1:35 pm • 1 0 • view
In case any reader wasn't aware of who he is?
aug 31, 2025, 12:26 am • 2 0 • view
From your thread, I take it that it appeals to America's better angels? That's an interesting period for that sort of approach. I look forward to reading what you have to say. It'll heavily influence whether I try to read the book this fall or wait.
aug 30, 2025, 6:48 pm • 1 0 • view
Is it good?
aug 30, 2025, 5:14 pm • 6 0 • view
depends on your evaluative criteria. It tells the story it intends to tell, and it tells it well. It is not the definitive history of anything.
aug 30, 2025, 5:19 pm • 16 0 • view
Sounds like an Amar book.
aug 30, 2025, 5:20 pm • 15 0 • view
That’s actually one reason I tend to like his books. They’re very good, just not as definitive and comprehensive as they sell themselves as. They’re advancing a legal-historical argument and mode of rhetoric, often quite well, but they aren’t the field-closing, era-defining works they want to be.
aug 30, 2025, 10:07 pm • 7 0 • view
I agree. His biography of the Constitution is very good. It’s a great reference.
aug 30, 2025, 10:09 pm • 1 0 • view
Yes, I have my elective seniors read it every summer. But all his books (including the first volume in this three volume group) no one gets to be the final word in a discussion as complex as living out our constitutional values. And in a way, his overarching framework admits he can’t be either!
aug 30, 2025, 10:11 pm • 0 0 • view
I do not like this. I think trying to close fields by means of partial histories advertised as History is bad. It is undemocratic and politically stultifying, even if the substance is good (I do not think it is). But I will say more, later.
aug 30, 2025, 10:14 pm • 6 0 • view
I am looking forward to reading your thoughts! I enjoyed Words That Made Us, though it had plenty of flaws and was very self-indulgent in many places, and so I anticipated this volume would be similar on balance. I gather it is substantively different.
aug 30, 2025, 10:17 pm • 2 0 • view
Have you read Greg Ablavsky’s review of the first book?
aug 30, 2025, 10:18 pm • 1 0 • view
I haven’t, but I’ll go look it up. I’m not a real lawyer or legal academic and just do my best to keep up on the field (so I know who Ablavsky is at least!) but I often miss things like a particularly good review or article. Thanks for the tip.
aug 30, 2025, 10:22 pm • 1 0 • view
Oh I wasn’t assuming you didn’t know the literature or anything! It’s definitely worth reading the review. It’s brutal.
aug 30, 2025, 10:24 pm • 0 0 • view
I have, and it will be a challenge to avoid repeating what he said
aug 30, 2025, 10:20 pm • 0 0 • view
It's different, but I have some common issues with both.
aug 30, 2025, 10:22 pm • 1 0 • view
A very Hamburgian standard of success in legal history!
aug 30, 2025, 9:02 pm • 4 0 • view
I read the reviews and if Calabresi said something like he did for this work about anything I did, I’d be questioning myself. Maybe that’s just me
aug 30, 2025, 5:32 pm • 1 0 • view
Sorry, I only read one biography per person/document.
aug 30, 2025, 5:13 pm • 7 0 • view
📌📌
aug 31, 2025, 1:58 am • 0 0 • view
I suppose it’s hard to write a US history that emphasizes the centrality of an equal-rights tradition. But maybe, for a certain audience (including judges who like “history and tradition”), it’s important to try?
aug 30, 2025, 9:11 pm • 3 0 • view
That’s not the problem honestly
aug 30, 2025, 9:12 pm • 4 0 • view
Spoiler: the problem is the “definitive” part
aug 30, 2025, 9:16 pm • 4 0 • view
This is A story that one might tell. It is not The Story and it leaves out a lot and erases a lot.
aug 30, 2025, 9:17 pm • 10 0 • view
And that is very expressly the point. There is no room for other stories. They are wrong. I disagree.
aug 30, 2025, 9:31 pm • 7 1 • view
Tentatively entitled "The 1863 Project"
aug 30, 2025, 5:11 pm • 29 0 • view
I have a hunch he said a lot of these things in my 2013 seminar.
aug 30, 2025, 5:12 pm • 0 0 • view
Esp.: bsky.app/profile/joed...
aug 30, 2025, 5:13 pm • 5 0 • view
I think it is best interpreted as a work of hagiography, in the original sense of an idealized biography cataloguing miracles and depicting martyrdom to perpetuate a faith
aug 30, 2025, 5:16 pm • 42 1 • view
In the common vernacular, (work with me, please) are you suggesting it is Amar’s spin on history?
aug 30, 2025, 5:51 pm • 0 0 • view
You think I am exaggerating. I am not. There are scores of pages dedicated to the death portraits of antislavery figures. Glad you asked, not John Brown whom he dismisses as a fanatic.
aug 30, 2025, 5:26 pm • 39 0 • view
I mean he was certainly a fanatic!
aug 30, 2025, 5:32 pm • 12 0 • view
aug 30, 2025, 5:33 pm • 13 0 • view
It's not a bad one!
aug 30, 2025, 5:37 pm • 6 0 • view
Being mildly anti-slavery reflects an immense failure of character
aug 30, 2025, 10:10 pm • 5 1 • view
>
aug 30, 2025, 10:12 pm • 3 0 • view
Tell my wife...hello
aug 30, 2025, 10:36 pm • 1 0 • view
So uncivil. Should have dialogued with the Border Ruffians.
aug 30, 2025, 5:42 pm • 2 0 • view
I’m sure we’re both aware that the word has negative connotations and that when one calls someone a “violent fanatic” it is usually not a compliment nor a tribute to their political significance
aug 30, 2025, 5:43 pm • 13 0 • view
Woof
aug 30, 2025, 5:26 pm • 1 0 • view
Omg!! Black women didn’t get the vote until 1965, not the 1920 date this guy says. John Brown is just “a fanatic??” To jail
aug 31, 2025, 1:39 am • 0 0 • view
aug 30, 2025, 5:27 pm • 23 0 • view
So few white/white adjacent folk have reckoned with the idea that extremism in opposition to slavery is no vice (to coin a paraphrase), or if they have, simply to disagree and conclude that it is/was a vice. “Oppose slavery sure, but not like that. Civil disagreement™️ with slavery only” or something
aug 30, 2025, 9:46 pm • 2 0 • view
Thank you for putting this on my radar screen. I'll be interested to read what he has to say about the 3/5 clause
aug 30, 2025, 5:18 pm • 2 0 • view
A lot of his heavy lifting on the 3/5 clause is in the first volume, The Word That Made Us. It’s…fine? He’s not the worst about making excuses for it but he does skirt around the depths of its horror sometimes.
aug 30, 2025, 10:15 pm • 1 0 • view
Quite telling that that's the bar. I intend to raise it.
aug 30, 2025, 11:07 pm • 1 0 • view
Saw this in the Little Free Library near my house the other day 👍
aug 30, 2025, 5:57 pm • 3 0 • view
Where does this guy find the time
aug 30, 2025, 5:19 pm • 3 0 • view
If it’s anything like his past stuff, 50% of it is repurposed from prior work.
aug 31, 2025, 4:59 am • 1 0 • view
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
aug 31, 2025, 3:52 pm • 1 0 • view