Explores how the legal profession has reached the point where an alarmingly low percentage of law graduates can land jobs in the field, citing such problems as the oversupply of lawyers and the implosions of prestigious law firms.

On a spring day in 1961, over-the-road trucker Jim Harper was en route from Mauston, Wisconsin, to his home in Minneapolis. At 70 miles per hour, with a combined 60,000 pounds of man, machine, and material, he approached a curve along the Great River Road and hit the brakes. The tractor-trailer didn't slow. Harper's brake lines had been cut. In preceding months, Harper had led an insurgency in his Teamsters' Local 544 to clean up corruption among its leaders. His efforts drew the attention of none other than Jimmy Hoffa, at the time focused on securing his right to lead the national Teamsters organization without government intervention. Jim Harper had his reasons for confronting his local's leadership--a hardscrabble childhood and a stint in Angola prison had left him seeking redemption, and Jimmy Hoffa had publicly called for union reform. But Hoffa, under federal investigation for questionable financial dealings, had deep, dark secrets; the last thing he needed was a spotlight on Minneapolis. Despite the increasing threats to his life and those of his young family, Harper continued to press his case. In this fascinating account, Harper's son traces the interwoven paths of these two men--a criminal icon and a determined vigilante--from their formative years through their unbelievable face-off.

Author Steven J. Harper pays tribute to a well-respected teacher with this biography of a distinguished William Smith Mason Professor of History at Northwestern University, Richard W. Leopold. Harper had maintained contact with his former professor, as had hundreds of other alumni, meeting with him in the apartment to which his age and health confined him. When Leopold invited him to review his biographical materials to prepare a New York Times obituary, Harper began to catch glimpses of a deeper history in Leopold’s life: that of Jews in America after the turn of the century. Across two years of Sundays, Leopold’s life came together and Harper began to notice parallels between the life of his professor and the life of his recently deceased father-in-law. Both grew up in less orthodox households but were still identified as Jewish by others; both attended Ivy League colleges, fighting (and beating) anti-Semitism there; and both served their country with distinction in World War II. The two men persevered through a twentieth century Jewish-American experience that they and many others shared, but rarely discussed. Steven Harper has caught them both on the page just in time to document their lives, their culture, and the nation that grew and changed alongside them.

Debut novel from the author of the true-crime award winner "Crossing Hoffa: A Teamster's Story" "The Partnership" opens a window into a secret world. A mysterious death, illicit romantic liaisons, courtroom drama, and crises of personal conscience frame a titanic struggle at the nation's most lucrative law firm. A twenty-first-century legal thriller with a twist, "The Partnership" reveals what happens to rich and powerful insiders as the business school mentality extends its tentacles across a once-noble profession. The themes resonate; "The Bonfire of the Vanities" still burns. Albert Knight has reached the pinnacle of power as one of the "magnificent seven"-leaders of the international legal powerhouse Michelman & Samson. Only one step remains: Knight and his archenemy Ronald Ratkin are front-runners to replace the Executive Committee's retiring chairman. Knight and Ratkin were once best friends, but that was long ago. Despite their twenty-year animosity, each has embraced the firm's transformation to a bottom-line business and the stunning wealth it produces. As the price of success, they endure and inflict profound personal damage along the way. When gifted trial lawyer Ronald Ratkin's $100 million client defies protocol by interrupting the sacrosanct Executive Committee meeting, all seven attorneys are suspicious. The news, Ratkin suspects, could upset his ongoing billion-dollar trial, send stocks plummeting, and destroy his client, his law firm, and his personal wealth. But the wily Ratkin has a foolproof plan. Or will his own greed and that of his fellow partners undo him? *** Praise for "Crossing Hoffa" "One of the Best Books of the Year" -Chicago Tribune "Gripping, tender, and intriguing" -Scott Turow "A tale of mystery and intrigue . . . unique and personal" -Booklist "Tightly woven and gritty . . . poignant and personal" -American Lawyer "Riveting eyewitness history . . . Bravo " -Charles Brandt "A must-read" -Prof. Steven Lubet

The presence of brown-headed cowbirds (BHCO) affects local songbird populations, including breeding populations of black-capped vireos (BCVI) and golden-cheeked warblers (GCWA), across large distances on Fort Hood, Texas. Due to the impact of BHCO parasitism on these two endangered species, Fort Hood personnel have conducted a BHCO control program since 1991, which includes live-trapping and shooting individual BHCO throughout the breeding season. The objective of this study was to develop a model that simulates BHCO breeding and feeding habitats across the Fort Hood landscape, daily BHCO movement behavior, and the placement and management of BHCO traps. The model generates predictions of sites most likely to receive frequent visitation by feeding BHCOs, and compares the capture success among different trapping strategies. Output suggests that the model is fairly stable to variation in several input variables, and the model accurately captures current knowledge about BHCO movement and locations on Fort Hood. Ongoing efforts will include improved mapping of nearby feeding habitat across the installation boundary, and validation of BCHO visitation output.

The U.S. Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratories (USACERL) has developed a series of models to study the processes involved with building dynamic landscape simulations (DLS). This DLS model applies to a desert tortoise population (a Federally listed threatened species) at Fort Irwin, CA, which has been the Army's National Training Center since 1979. This report demonstrates new methods available to assess the impacts of military training at Fort Irwin across time and space on desert tortoises and their habitat. Recently, efforts in computer-based simulation have been directed towards developing spatially explicit models, but the spatial distribution and complexity of land characteristics make it difficult to analyze and simulate a landscape as a whole. Partitioning a landscape into small but connected parcels makes it possible to work with patches of land that can be treated as homogeneous for certain analyses. This approach seems especially useful for developing spatially explicit models for endangered species on military lands. The results of this model demonstrate how to evaluate the potential effects of military training on desert tortoises and their habitat. These results are not expected to provide land managers with detailed predictions of specific impacts, but do demonstrate the feasibility of using this modeling approach to develop landscape-level simulations.