I may change these from time-to-time.
What books do you recommend for prospective law students?
Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer
Eugene Volokh, Academic Legal Writing
What books do you recommend for faculty?
Ken Bain, What the Best College Teachers Do
Nancy Duarte, Resonate
Cal Newport, Deep Work and A World Without Email
Andy Delbanco, College
What Books do you recommend for aspiring book authors?
Courtney Maum, Before and After the Book Deal: A Writer's Guide to Finishing, Publishing, Promoting, and Surviving Your First Book
Susan Rabiner and Alfred Fortunato, Thinking Like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published
William Germano, From Dissertation to Book
What books have you found most helpful to understanding politics in our cultural moment?
Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind
Yuval Levin, A Time to Build
Steven D. Smith, The Disintegrating Conscience and the Decline of Modernity
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy
What books have you found most helpful to understanding Christian faith in our current moment?
Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence
Tim Keller, Generous Justice
Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise
C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Bethany Hoang and Kristen Deede Johnson, The Justice Calling
Andy Crouch, Tech-Wise Family and Strong and Weak
Joseph Bottum, An Anxious Age
Esau McCaulley, Reading While Black
What books have been most central to your own intellectual work and development?
Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue
Sheldon Wolin, Politics and Vision
Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and Tradition
H. Jefferson Powell, The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism
Stanley Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader
What books have you found surprising, engaging, or encouraging in the last few years?
Robert Louis Wilken, Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom
Lydia Dugdale, The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom
Luke Sheahan, Why Associations Matter: The Case for First Amendment Pluralism
Alec Hill, Living in Bonus Time: Surviving Cancer, Finding New Purpose
Justin Whitmel Early, Made for People: Why We Drift into Loneliness and How to Fight for a Life of Friendship
What books have you endorsed?
Following Professor Will Baude’s example, I thought it would be useful to collect and highlight the books that I have formally endorsed, since by endorsing them I found them important and hope that others interested in their subjects will read them. Here are the books (as best I can remember) that I’ve endorsed and what I’ve said about them, listed alphabetically by author’s last name:
Ashutosh Bhagwat, Our Democratic First Amendment (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
“Bhagwat’s eminently readable prose drives home the importance of speech, press, assembly, and petition to our current and future democratic experiment. Readers will benefit from this book’s careful consideration of these rights individually and collectively, and how our use of them protects and performs sovereignty, citizenship, and democracy.”
Michael F. Bird, Religious Freedom in a Secular Age: A Christian Case for Liberty, Equality, and Secular Government (Zondervan, 2022)
“Michael Bird is an astute and measured voice in today’s discourse on religion and politics. This book’s global perspective will challenge readers of all backgrounds and beliefs toward better arguments and better understanding.”
Peter Greer and Chris Horst, Rooting for Rivals: How Collaboration and Generosity Increase the Impact of Leaders, Charities, and Churches (Bethany House Publishers, 2018)
“Rooting for Rivals is full of practical and compelling guidance for effective partnership in and out of the church--a reminder that the scriptural counsel to look not only to our own interests but also to the interests of others applies even when those interests are closely aligned.”
Cathleen Kaveny, Ethics at the Edges of Law: Christian Moralists and American Legal Thought (Oxford University Press, 2017)
“Ethics at the Edges of Law is one of the most important recent books at the intersection of law and theology. Kaveny’s thoughtful and at times unconventional engagement with some of the major twentieth-century figures in these two disciplines offers glimmers of both tragedy and hope-and a reminder that our lived experiences unfold in the shadow of both.”
Ronald J. Krotoszynski, Jr., The Disappearing First Amendment (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
“This important book from one of the country's leading First Amendment scholars highlights pitfalls in modern First Amendment doctrine and suggests how courts can strengthen protections for our expressive and democratic interests.”
Richard J. Mouw, How to Be a Patriotic Christian: Love of Country as Love of Neighbor (InterVarsity Press, 2022)
“Rich Mouw’s reflection on Christian faith, patriotism, and citizenship is essential reading for our times from one of the wisest and kindest voices around.”
Alan Noble, You are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World (InterVarsity Press, 2021)
“In this timely meditation, Alan Noble reminds us that brokenness, loneliness, and purposelessness will not be conquered by living our best life, finding our true self, or even belonging to the right family, club, or church. To the contrary, our greatest fears and anxieties are not problems to be solved but mysteries to be embraced through the knowledge of self that comes only from knowing that the self belongs to Christ.”
Henri J.M. Nouwen, Following Jesus: Finding Our Way Home in an Age of Anxiety (Convergent Books, 2019)
“Few writers have influenced me more than Henri Nouwen. These newly published lectures offer fresh and timely insights amid the familiar cadences of Nouwen’s prose, written from a place of deep anxiety but even deeper hope.”
Todd C. Ream, Jerry A. Pattengale, and Christopher J. Dever, editors, Public Intellectuals and the Common Good: Christian Thinking for Human Flourishing (InterVarsity Press, 2020)
“The phrases ‘public intellectuals’ and ‘common good’ are often misunderstood and misappropriated. But confusion over their meanings does not diminish their importance—inside and outside of Christian discourse. This impressive volume assembles leading experts and practitioners whose work and lives shed light on what it means for Christians to engage in public discourse, and the social ends toward which that engagement points.”
Steven D. Smith, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Eerdmans, 2018)
“Written with Smith’s characteristic clarity and bite, Pagans and Christians in the City canvasses a broad landscape of history, law, political theory, and religion to explore some of the deepest past and present questions of humanity—and warns how our answers to those questions will shape our future.”
Asma Uddin, The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America (Pegasus Books, 2021)
“An exemplar of charitable civic engagement. Without oversimplification or caricature, Uddin dives headfirst into the complex world of Muslim-Christian relations. With clear and accessible prose, her nuanced analysis both explains and models how Muslims and conservative Christians can find common ground across their differences.”
Christopher J.H. Wright, Here Are Your Gods: Faithful Discipleship in Idolatrous Times (InterVarsity Press, 2020)
“Wright’s careful dive into Scripture on the meaning of idolatry packs a punch for our times—an important reminder that idols, including political idols, are false gods that we create in our image, capable of great harm and destruction but ultimately ciphers within the true created order.”
Timothy Zick, Managed Dissent: The Law of Public Protest (Cambridge University Press, 2023)
“This book is a tour de force on the constitutional dimensions of protest and dissent. Tim Zick weaves together important but often disconnected threads of the law to show the significant impediments to the law of public protest and what can be done to remove them.”
I also wrote the Foreword to Robert Cochran’s excellent book, The Servant Lawyer: Facing the Challenges of Christian Faith in Everyday Law Practice (InterVarsity Press, 2024).
What three books would you recommend to people who want to spend money to buy them?
Tough call, but I’m going to go with Learning to Disagree, and Confident Pluralism, and Liberty’s Refuge.
If you don’t have the money or you live in an oppressive regime but somehow have uncensored internet access, you can download Liberty’s Refuge for free under a Creative Commons license. In all seriousness, one of the most gratifying aspects of writing this book and making its content freely available has been hearing from people who live in places that don't yet have the freedom of assembly but who are working hard to change that reality.