Rakoff's argument makes sense. His book is a significant contribution to our understanding of community and solidarity in the modern world.
Edward L. Rubin
Rakoff's argument makes sense. His book is a significant contribution to our understanding of community and solidarity in the modern world.
Edward L. Rubin, University of Pennsylvania Law School
Martha Minow
Though we usually take time schedules, calendars, and even how we measure time as givens, Rakoff explores the variety of social choices involved in regulating time--and the risk that some choices will no longer be available, as 24/7 replaces the rhythms separating work and home, week and weekend, and secular and religious time. Crucially, this illuminating and original book demonstrates that the problem with time is not that there is not enough of it; but rather that there are not enough structures to permit coordination with others. The book thereby reveals the deep truth that collective rules, rather than individual license, construct the conditions of freedom. Make time to read it!
Martha Minow, author of Between Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass Violence
Eviatar Zerubavel
Examining the intricate relations between the laws of nature and society, A Time for Every Purpose helps shed some light on the legal (and therefore inevitably conventional) underpinnings of the way we structure time. A most welcome contribution of legal scholarship to the sociology of time.
Eviatar Zerubavel, author of The Seven-Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week and Time Maps: The Social Shape of the Past