SuperFreakonomics
By Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner.
HarperCollins; 288 pages; $36.99
In 2005 rogue economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner partnered to write Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. Filled with interesting topics on teachers who cheat, self-serving realtors, and crack-selling boys living with their moms, it was a blockbuster, remaining [...]

“The [boycott] move was not taken lightly. Many lawyers consider legal aid cases a vocational duty. But over the last 15 years that duty has become an untenable burden,” Dylan Young recently wrote for the magazine Precedent.*
Some outsiders, including lawyers practising outside the Legal Aid Ontario system, saw the boycott by the Criminal Lawyers’ Association [...]

Lawyerland: What Lawyers Talk About When They Talk About Law
By Lawrence Joseph
(1997) Farrar Straus Giroux; 225 pages; $31.00
What do lawyers talk about when they talk about law?
Joseph, a law professor at St. John’s University School of Law, reveals what lies underneath a lawyer’s skin through fictional interviews with lawyers from different areas of the law [...]

The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English
By Henry Hitchings
2008, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 440 pages; $29.95
I admit it: the language of law, even today, remains convoluted. Open a commercial contract, for instance, and you’ll see double-barrelled legalese like “keep and maintain,” “goods and chattels,” “will and testament,” and “indemnify and hold harmless.” The [...]

Kitchen Confidential (Updated Edition) by Anthony Bourdain
2007, Harper Perennial; 312 pages; $14.95
Waiter Rant by The Waiter, Steve Dublanica
2008, HarperCollins; 302 pages; $26.95

Mr. Bourdain’s bittersweet tale of being a chef rippled through the mass media in 2000 when it was first published. The candid account of his 25-plus years in the culinary industry outraged some (mostly [...]