The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs

Neal Katyal, director of the Center on National Security and the Law at Georgetown University Law School, recently stepped down as the United States’ acting solicitor general. A professor at Georgetown University, he was the lead counsel for the Guantanamo Bay detainees in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In that case, the U.S. Supreme Court found that military commissions to try detainees violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice and four Geneva Conventions.

“Lawyers are trained to think far too much about law being the primary constraint on behavior. In this brilliant book, Jacobs reminds us that the way in which space is configured—from the organization of cities to the layout of individual apartments—alters the path of human interaction in profound ways.”

(Photo Courtesy of Random House)