1000 TIMES MORE FAIR: What Shakespeare's Plays Teach Us about Justice - Softcover

Yoshino, Kenji

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0061769126 ISBN 13: 9780061769122

Publisher: EccoPress, 2012

Synopsis

"Fascinating....Loaded with perceptive and provocative comments on Shakespeare's plots, characters, and contemporary analogs."
--Justice John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court of the United States

"Kenji Yoshino is the face and the voice of the new civil rights."
--Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickled and Dimed

A Thousand Times More Fair is a highly inventive and provocative exploration of ethics and the law that uses the plays of William Shakespeare as a prism through which to view the nature of justice in our contemporary lives. Celebrated law professor and author Kenji Yoshino delves into ten of the most important works of the Immortal Bard of Avon, offering prescient and thought-provoking discussions of lawyers, property rights, vengeance (legal and otherwise), and restitution that have tremendous significance to the defining events of our times--from the O.J. Simpson trial to Abu Ghraib. Anyone fascinated by important legal and social issues--as well as fans of Shakespeare-centered bestsellers like Will in the World--will find A Thousand Times More Fair an exceptionally rewarding reading experience.

About this title

Review

"Neither a prosecutor nor a defense lawyer herein, Yoshino is a refreshingly engaging advocate for Shakespeare."--Newark Star Ledger

"Fascinating. . . . Loaded with perceptive and provocative comments on Shakespeare's plots, characters, and contemporary analogs."--Justice John Paul Stevens, Supreme Court of the United States

"[W]ell-informed by scholarship, nuanced and appealingly written. . . . [P]erhaps the most enlightening study of the subject to appear in a century."--Charlotte Observer

"Who knew that there was such a brilliant and fresh reading of Shakespeare waiting to be discovered? Only Kenji Yoshino, with a poet's ear for language and a lawyer's passion for justice, could have done it."--Carol Gilligan, University Professor, NYU

"The ingenious and well-argued premise of Kenji Yoshino's new book is that justice in a form that we can understand and relate to modern concepts of legal justice is a pervasive theme of Shakespearean drama. . . . Shakespeare, in law as in so much else, remains our contemporary."--Judge Richard A. Posner

"Until Kenji Yoshino's book, I had found little of value in 'Law and Literature' studies. He redeems the mode. Shakespeare, most capacious of souls, is shown by Yoshino to illuminate the vast and complex structures that must inform the role of law in our struggle for a just society."--Harold Bloom, author of SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN

"Kenji Yoshino brings to his lively reading of the plays the full force of his passionate brooding on issues of justice in contemporary society. A THOUSAND TIMES MORE FAIR will appeal to anyone interested in the uses of great art to reflect on some of our culture's most vexing problems."--Stephen Greenblatt, author of WILL IN THE WORLD

"Readers will find Yoshino provocative, often controversial, and Shakespeare, as always, entertaining."--Publishers Weekly

"A sensitive and lively mind work[s] its way through the legal themes in some of the most beautiful passages in English literature."--New Republic

"A remarkably imaginative and scholarly work. It reminds us that in Shakespeare's time, like our own, the law and ideas of justice were in flux."--California Lawyer

From the Back Cover

Celebrated legal scholar Kenji Yoshino's first book, Covering, was acclaimed--from the New York Times Book Review to O, The Oprah Magazine to the American Lawyer--for its elegant prose, its good humor, and its brilliant insights into civil rights and discrimination law. Now, in A Thousand Times More Fair, Yoshino turns his attention to the question of what makes a fair and just society, and delves deep into a surprising source to answer it: Shakespeare's greatest plays. Through fresh and insightful readings of Measure for Measure, Titus Andronicus, Othello, and others, he addresses the fundamental questions we ask about our world today and elucidates some of the most troubling issues in contemporary life.

Enormously creative, engaging, and provocative, A Thousand Times More Fair is an altogether original book about Shakespeare and the law, and an ideal starting point to explore the nature of a just society-and our own.

About this edition

• Publisher: EccoPress
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0061769126
• ISBN 13: 9780061769122
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320