What We Are Reading Today: Doing Justice

Updated 24 March 2019
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What We Are Reading Today: Doing Justice

Author: Preet Bharara

Preet Bharara’s book is divided into four sections: Inquiry, Accusation, Judgment, and Punishment.
Bharara, the one-time US federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, shows why each step of this process is crucial to the legal system.
Bharara uses anecdotes and case histories from his legal career — the successes as well as the failures — to illustrate the realities of the legal system, and the consequences of taking action. 
The book — an overview of crime, punishment and the rule of law — examines first how successful prosecutors select their cases and prepare the evidence they will use in court. 
It also shows “how we all need to think about each stage of the process to achieve truth and justice in our daily lives,” said a review published in goodreads.com.
“His case stories of how justice is done, and how it sometimes fails, are riveting,” it added.
“It is a thought-provoking, entertaining book about the need to find the humanity in our legal system — and in our society,” the review added.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Addiction by Design’ by Natasha Dow Schull

Updated 18 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Addiction by Design’ by Natasha Dow Schull

Drawing on 15 years of field research in Las Vegas, anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll shows how the mechanical rhythm of electronic gambling pulls players into a trancelike state they call the “machine zone,” in which daily worries, social demands, and even bodily awareness fade away.

Once in the zone, gambling addicts play not to win but simply to keep playing, for as long as possible—even at the cost of physical and economic exhaustion.

“Addiction by Design” is a compelling inquiry into the intensifying traffic between people and machines of chance, offering clues to some of the broader anxieties and predicaments of contemporary life.


What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney

Updated 17 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: The Aesthetic Cold War by Peter J. Kalliney

How did superpower competition and the cold war affect writers in the decolonizing world? In “The Aesthetic Cold War,” Peter Kalliney explores the various ways that rival states used cultural diplomacy and the political police to influence writers.

In response, many writers from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean — such as Chinua Achebe, Mulk Raj Anand, Eileen Chang, C.L.R. James, Alex La Guma, Doris Lessing, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, and Wole Soyinka — carved out a vibrant conceptual space of aesthetic nonalignment, imagining a different and freer future for their work.


What We Are Reading Today: American Mirror by Roberto Saba

Updated 17 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Ocean

Updated 15 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: Ocean

Authors: David Attenborough, Colin Butfield

Drawing a course across David Attenborough’s own lifetime, Ocean takes readers through eight unique ocean habitats, through countless intriguing species, and through the most astounding discoveries of the last 100 years, to a future vision of a fully restored marine world, even richer and more spectacular than we could possibly hope.
Ocean reveals the past, present and potential future of our blue planet.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

Updated 14 May 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘How to Change a Memory’ by Steve Ramirez

As a graduate student at MIT, Steve Ramirez successfully created false memories in the lab. Now, as a neuroscientist working at the frontiers of brain science, he foresees a future where we can replace our negative memories with positive ones.

“In How to Change a Memory,” Ramirez draws on his own memories—of friendship, family, loss, and recovery—to reveal how memory can be turned on and off like a switch, edited, and even constructed from nothing.

A future in which we can change our memories of the past may seem improbable, but in fact, the everyday act of remembering is one of transformation.