I read a recent Facebook conversation among law professors about the following question: what purpose do blurbs serve on academic books? Putting aside endorsements from people who are President/celebrity-level famous, do blurbs ever cause anybody to buy a book?
I was embarrassed to realize when reading the thread that I actually have bought quite a few books because of a blurb. (Indeed, I was extra embarrassed to realize that I bought one just last week because of the blurb, but now I’m too embarrassed to say which one.)
Some of these were in an early stage of my book-buying life, when I was still a student and would see that Professor So-and-So, who I looked up to, had said a book was great. I was naive enough to treat this the same as if Professor So-and-So had personally emailed me and said, “Hey Will, I recommend you buy this book.” I didn’t know that some people are profligate or insincere blurbers and in any event all blurbs need to be decoded.
A little older and wiser, I instead treated blurbs as a signal of modest importance. If there are a bunch of books on a topic and I don’t know much about the authors, I might be more likely to pick up the one with blurbs by people I’ve heard of. Regardless of the content, a blurb says, “this is the book on this subject that was important enough for me to blurb.”
Now I’d say I still look at blurbs, but more to get a gestalt of how the book is presenting itself. Are the blurbs all by academics? All by law professors? All by people on one side of the ideological spectrum? Do they use words like “groundbreaking” or “accessible” or something else? Etc. Probably this approach is still wrong and I’ll grow into something else.
In any event, this made me realize that even I, who have not been asked to blurb very many books, don’t really keep track of which ones I have blurbed or what I said about them. And if I cared enough to blurb the book, you would think that I should care enough to tell you about it. So I will try to use this post to collect a list of my blurbs, and then you could hold me accountable if the books are bad or I mislead you.
“A strong supplement that provides the legal and political context for the most significant Supreme Court cases. It provides important background for all constitutional law students." — Me, on Randy Barnett & Josh Blackman, An Introduction to Constitutional Law: 100 Supreme Court Cases Everyone Should Know
“Originalism is one of the most important theories of constitutional interpretation, and yet it is often misunderstood. Ilan Wurman's explanation and defense of originalism is therefore important and timely. It is also sophisticated, accessible, and fun to read. This book should be given to every law student.” — Me, on Ilan Wurman, A Debt Against The Living: An Introduction to Originalism
"Judge Sutton, a leading federal judge who's spent his career championing federalism, is the perfect bearer of this important message: Not all constitutional law comes from the federal Constitution-we must remember state constitutions. This book should change the way constitutional law is taught and litigated." — Me, on Judge Jeffrey Sutton, 51 Imperfect Solutions: States and the Making of American Constitutional Law
"Confident Pluralism is important both as a theoretical book and as a practical one. Inazu’s unusually thoughtful treatment builds on theories of pluralism to show how contemporary legal doctrine and civic engagement can and should put that pluralism into practice.” — Me, on John Inazu, A Confident Pluralism: Surviving and Thriving Through Deep Difference
If I blurbed your book and have forgotten, please remind me!