| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 94.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

The Trial in American Life. By Robert A. Ferguson. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. xiv, 400 pp. $29.00, ISBN 978-0-226-24325-2.)
The Trial in American Life, in the words of the author Robert A. Ferguson, is intended for "every person who has fallen under the spell of a courtroom trial or worried about its verdict" (p. xi). Ferguson, a distinguished professor of law, literature, and criticism at Columbia University, has essentially presented fragments of three books between a single cover.	1
Part 1 offers an anthropological examination of what takes place in a public trial involving hot-button issues and/or celebrities. Ferguson serves up a thoughtful commentary on proceedings in American courts, combining frequent allusions to famous trials with references to social scientific and literary theory.	. . .

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