Could you live on $2 a day? Fox Business explores this question with Portfolios of the Poor author Jonathan Morduch:

In yesterday’s Washington Post Outlook, Christopher Eisgruber had a great article on the why the Supreme Court has become such a snooze. I am sure the Supreme Court Justices all have sparkling personalities — that’s not what he’s talking about. He’s questioning how the court came to be so “remarkably monochromatic — a bunch of career jurists, professional, polished and pedigreed.” The current justices have strikingly similar career paths, but this was not always the case as Eisgruber illustrates with historical examples. Click through to read more, but here’s a quick excerpt to get you going:

How did the Supreme Court get so boring?

Sonia Sotomayor probably won’t hear that question when she faces the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. In fact, her nomination has been hailed as a series of exciting firsts: first Latina, first to grow up in a public housing project, even first known Type 1 diabetic.

But she won’t be a first on every count: If confirmed as associate justice to the highest court in the land, Sotomayor will be the ninth federal appellate judge on the nine-member Supreme Court.

And the truth is, federal appeals court judges are not the most charismatic folks in the world. When they give public speeches, for instance, they are partial to discussing stuff like courtroom civility and docket congestion. (Snooze.) And despite Clarence Thomas‘s rags-to-robes story, Antonin Scalia‘s legendary wit and Ruth Bader Ginsburg‘s trail-brazing victories as a feminist litigator, the current high court is remarkably monochromatic — a bunch of career jurists, professional, polished and pedigreed.

The bench didn’t used to be this dull.

Princeton’s Annan Professor of English Susan Stewart is one of seven authors honored with a 2009 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Read the announcements from Princeton University and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Learn about Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alda Merini, translated by Susan Stewart.

We’ve finally jumped on the bandwagon and you can now become a fan of Princeton University Press via your facebook account. Search for our page there and fan us to receive notices of new blog posts, sales, PUP news.

On today’s Planet Money:

Economists at the World Bank calculate that 2.5 billion people live on $2 a day, but what exactly does that mean? In the developed world, living on so little would be almost unthinkable. For 40 percent of the global population, $2 a day is a reality that must, somehow, be made to work.

In Portfolios of the Poor, Daryl Collins and co-author Jonathan Morduch uncover the surprisingly complex financial lives of the most destitute people.

Over at Foreign Policy, Dan Drezner recently posted his favorites for the short list of the International Studies Best Book of the Decade Award. His top five included three Princeton titles: A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World by Gregory Clark; Saving Capitalism from the Capitalists: Unleashing the Power of Financial Markets to Create Wealth and Spread Opportunity by Raghuram G. Rajan and Luigi Zingales; and After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars by G. John Ikenberry.

You can see his entire list here. Which Princeton titles would make your top five?

Giusto Traina’s new book 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire takes a fresh approach to ancient history: instead of taking the reader through a chronology of earth-shattering events, he instead focuses his attention on the details of one seemingly ordinary year. However, it is really a year in which an entire civilization was about to change.

As Natalie Bennett writes in her review of the book on the Blogcritics site, “The “end of the Roman empire”: it is a popular topic, with some big questions around if: why? How? when? They’ve been some excellent, illuminated books written on it … but what tends to disappear in these accounts is the real lived experience of the people of the period. They can’t have been, in their own minds, living through the end of empire – they were living their lives, dealing with the local upsets, expecting the empire which in human timeframes had gone on ‘forever’, to continue. It’s to attempt to get at something of that lived reality that Giusto Traina has written 428AD: An Ordinary Year At The End of the Roman Empire.” Read the entire review here.

N.S. Gill, who writes about ancient history on the About.com site, also reviews the book, remarking: “The idea of covering a year intently is a great one. It’s on the order of television series that show the interconnection between myriad, seemingly unrelated events.” Read the entire review here.

On June 25th, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Horne v. Flores, the most important education case before the Supreme Court this year, in which, by a 5-4 vote, it reversed the lower court’s decision which had ordered the Arizona legislature to increase its funding for English as a second language programs.  An amicis (“friend of the court”) brief had been submitted which relied heavily on the newly published book, SCHOOLHOUSES, COURTHOUSES, AND STATEHOUSES by Eric Hanushek and Alfred Lindseth, even though it had not been published at the time.  The majority opinion cites the book, along with several other research articles written by Hanushek, in support of a key proposition in the case, namely, that court ordered funding mandates have not been that successful in improving achievement. Although this book has only been officially out for less than a week, it is already having a national impact. Cal Thomas agrees with the argument in the book and has written about it in his syndicated column, and Jim Wooten writes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Not bad to have a book published one week and be cited by the U.S. Supreme Court the next.” In addition, check out the blog Effective School Funding, which is updated regularly with news of the book and its impact on this important debate.

Judging for the 2009 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show took place January 22-23 at the AAUP Central Office in New York City. Approximately 289 books, 292 jacket and cover design entries, and 7 journals were entered. From this pool of excellent design, the jurors chose 53 books, 1 journal, and 36 jackets/covers as the very best examples. We are proud to announce that four Princeton University Press titles were among these winners. We salute our stellar design team (and special thanks to Jason Alejandro for providing these beautiful photographs to showcase their collective talents).

Princeton University Press had four AAUP Selected  Entries:

SCHOLARLY  TYPOGRAPHIC
Shakespeare by Johann Gottfried Herder
(Translated, Edited, and with an introduction by Gregory  Moore)
Designer: Pamela Schnitter
Production Coordinator: Betsy  Litz

TRADE TYPOGRAPHIC
Privacy: A Manifesto by Wolfgang  Sofsky
Designer: Pamela Schnitter
Production Coordinator: Sharyn  Zasada

[gallery = 10]

JACKETS  AND COVERS
A Pinnacle of Feeling: American Literature and  Presidential Government by Sean McCann
Designer/Art Director:  Marcella Roberts
Production Coordinator: Sharyn  Zasada

Swindled: The Dark History of Food Fraud, from Poisoned  Candy to Counterfeit Coffee by Bee Wilson
Designer/Art Director:  Lorraine Betz Doneker
Production Coordinator: Sharyn  Zasada

For more information visit the AAUP Web site.

Sharon Begley has a terrific piece on Newsweek.com about the just-published THE COLLECTED PAPERS OF ALBERT EINSTEIN, VOLUME 12, The Berlin Years: Correspondence: January-December 1921, edited by Diana Kormos Buchwald, Ze’ev Rosenkranz, Tilman Sauer, József Illy & Virginia Iris Holmes, and the Einstein Papers Project.  You can read this piece here.

Albert Einstein’s exploding global fame and budding Zionism came together in the spring of 1921 for an event that was unique in the history of science, and indeed remarkable for any realm: a grand two-month processional through the eastern and midwestern United States that evoked the sort of mass frenzy and press adulation that would thrill a touring rock star. The world had never before seen, and perhaps will never again, such a scientific celebrity superstar, one who also happened to be a gentle icon of humanist values and a living patron saint for Jews.

Princeton University Press, as volume 12 in its Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, is publishing his correspondence for this amazing and critical year of his life. It includes the full text of 169 letters he wrote this year along with 180 that he received. Also included is a detailed calendar of his year that draws on information from hundreds of other documents. All told, the volume presents an exquisite and rich tapestry of Einstein’s initial involvement with the Zionist movement and with the United States, which 12 years later would become his home.