I'm a legal scholar interested in this area though my usual area is corporate and commercial law. This is an excellent book. Although I gather BT has refined his views somewhat since he wrote this, it is I think a very useful and fresh way to look at the course of American jurisprudence, and based on other research I have done, accurate as well. BT has a crisp and unpretentious writing style and his arguments are straightforward. I have not quite finished the book, but based on first 2/3 I am already very glad I picked it up. He is admirably even-handed. At a few points one can tell he leans against more conservative views such as originalism and law & economics, but he does not seem to let this influence his judgments.

I suppose one could criticize that the book could have been more ambitious theoretically, but given that so much legal scholarship these days is failed theory, I am glad it is pitched as it is. The book weighs in at 230+ pages, but would be longer than that in print you could read without glasses. The Kindle edition does not have an active TOC which is unfortunate.

The narrative qualities of the book make it a good read. I think the story it tells is almost tragic, but it is compelling. I wish there had been a book like this to read 25 years ago when I was in law school. It would have made the theoretical muddle I found so frustrating then more understandable, at least in the sense I would have understood how things got to be the mess they were. Very highly recommended.

我是一个对这个领域感兴趣的法律学者，尽管我通常的领域是公司法和商业法。这是一本非常好的书。虽然我知道BT在写完这本书后对他的观点进行了一些改进，但我认为这是对美国法学发展历程的一种非常有用和新鲜的观察方式，而且根据我所做的其他研究，这本书也是准确的。BT的写作风格简洁明了，他的论点也很直白。我还没有完全读完这本书，但根据前2/3的内容，我已经非常高兴我拿起了这本书。他是令人钦佩的持平者。在一些地方，人们可以看出他倾向于反对更保守的观点，如原始主义和法律与经济学，但他似乎并没有让这影响他的判断。

我想人们可以批评说，这本书在理论上可以更加雄心勃勃，但考虑到这些天有那么多的法律学术研究是失败的理论，我很高兴它的定位是这样的。该书重达230多页，但如果是印刷品，你不戴眼镜也能读到，比这还长。Kindle版没有一个有效的TOC，这很不幸。

这本书的叙事性使它成为一本好书。我认为它所讲述的故事几乎是悲剧性的，但它是引人注目的。我希望25年前我在法学院读书时有这样一本书可以读。它将使我当时发现的令人沮丧的理论泥潭变得更容易理解，至少在这个意义上，我将理解事情是如何变成现在这样的。非常强烈推荐。