A Book Gloat

When I have a successful day at a used bookshop, I usually trail home with a bag or two of books, which I then paw over, describing to La C each's individual excellence, and why I am pleased to have found it.

I thought it might make for an amusing blog post in this political silly season to share "the book gloat" (as we call it) here.

So, first, after a long day of helping La C with her feral cat colony as a subset of Neighborhood Cats (seriously worthy cause alert!), and knowing that we had shopping and then another feral cat project to do, I pointed out that I was owed a book browse. La Caterina agreed, and we repaired to P.S. Bookshop, which I frequented before their move, but which I had not visited since the visit last year of my now-sisiter-in-law. It was more than time to go--almost a full year, plenty of time for new stock to accumulate.

I walked away with:

John T. McNeill's A History of the Cure of Souls (1952): First English edition,Very good condition, dust jacket, inscribed by the author "to Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, good scholar and good neighbor, with high esteem from John T. McNeill." A nice association copy of a well-respected early account of spiritual direction through the ages, which one of the Amazon reviewers, the spiritual director and author Robert Kellemen, describes as"a magisterial mapping of the landscape of two millennium of soul care and spiritual direction."

Gilbert Highet's collection of essays, "A Clerk of Oxenford" (1954), a collection of light essays from the well-regarded classicist whom I know best from his translation of Werner Jaeger's Padeia. A first edition, good shape (dust jacket only fair, but present).

Kenneth Craycraft's The American Myth of Religious Freedom (1999)(review copy, with publisher's materials). In very good shape, no dj. A provocative and interesting analysis of what the Framers of the Constitution were really about with the religion clauses of the First Amendment, by a theologian. Judgment reserved on the merits of the work; we'll see.

Gilbert King's The Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (2012) (review copy; with publisher's materials). Almost like new. An account of a pre-Brown Thurgood Marshall's involvement with an appalling instance of lynch law.

John Farrell's Attorney for the Damned (2012) (review copy; no materials). The latest biography of the inspiration for an unknown number of legal careers--including, in no small part, mine.

and, finally,

The Shorter Cambridge Medieval History (1952) both volumes, no dj, reprint. Just what I need to contextualize the disparate areas of medieval law and life I have studied with
those which I have not.

A delightful haul, and books which I will read and enjoy. More tan once, I suspect; I'm a big re-reader.