Sunday, August 22, 2010

Intellectual property, Israel, and more in the book reviews

COMMON AS AIR: Revolution, Art, and Ownership by Lewis Hyde, a history of intellectual property, is taken up in the New York Times. Robert Darnton writes:
The history that Hyde invokes goes back to the Middle Ages, when villagers enjoyed collective rights to common lands, but for the most part it is situated in the era of the founding fathers. Hyde invokes the founders in order to warn us against a new enclosure movement, one that would fence off large sectors of the public domain - in science, the arts, literature, and the entire world of knowledge - in order to exploit monopolies.
Continue reading here.

Also this week, The Settlers: And the Struggle over the Meaning of Zionism by Gadi Taub is reviewed in The Book (New Republic); THE BALFOUR DECLARATION: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict by Jonathan Schneer is taken up in the NY Times; The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin, edited by Randall Kenan is discussed in the Los Angeles Times; and THE GREAT DIVORCE: A Nineteenth-Century Mother's Extraordinary Fight Against Her Husband, the Shakers, and Her Times by Ilyon Woo is reviewed in the Washington Post.

Clair Potter posts a best-books-of-the-summer list. And as always, Ralph Luker has more.