Currently reading
Vineland (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)
Tristes Tropiques
Richard III
The Dwarf
The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen
Labyrinths
Giotto to Dürer: Early Renaissance Painting in the National Gallery
Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics
Gravity's Rainbow
A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
An important book on the (relatively) late development of the idea of the State. Since Mogens Hansen has argued repeatedly and insistently -- and quite wrongly, imo -- that the ancient *polis* can and should be understood as representing a State (in the modern sense) -- rather than merely as the more anodyne *cité*, the mere byways of the community, as Strayer puts it -- this book is an important corrective to what has become a dominent and wide-spread misconception.
The fact is, the idea of incorporation postdates the ancient polis; there was no formal consitution or principio legum in the ancient polis; nor could you sue the polis, like you can sue the State of New York or Exxon, etc....