Five interesting books. Two are older books by authors whose other work I’ve liked – Badie and Birnbaum’s The Sociology of the State and Adriana Caverero, Relating Narratives – that I got for review work. I got hold of François Jacob, The Logic of Life because of Foucault’s review of it – I discuss this briefly here. Nur Masalha’s The Zionist Bible was sent to me by the publisher. I’ve read Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Land of Israel and Rachel Havrelock’s River Jordan recently, and this looks in a related vein.

The discovery was an affordable copy of Michel Foucault, Power, Truth, Strategy – long out of print and often on sale for $300 or more. This contains some translations of pieces by Foucault (many are in Power/Knowledge in different translations) and three pieces by Paul Patton, Meaghan Morris and Paul Foss on Foucault’s work. The volume is introduced by a piece by François Chatelet. There is a useful ‘Fiche Technique’ with suggested amendments to existing translations, focusing on Discipline and Punish and the Swyer translation of ‘Order of Discourse’. But the most interesting thing, and as far as I know unavailable elsewhere in English (or French, though there is a German version), is ‘Power and Norm’ – notes from a lecture by Foucault in 1973. This was part of his course La société punitive. Will be interesting to see how these match up to the forthcoming course.