Once a week we would get the sticker picture dictionary out and "read and stick" the pages that corresponded with the letter we were studying that week. It was just a fun little thing that both my 3 and 5 year old looked forward to each week.

The book has 2 to 3 pages for each letter. In the upper corner of the first page, you stick on a sticker with both the upper and lower case letter. Then, there are 4 or 5 other stickers of pictures that start with that letter to stick onto a scene of colorful animals doing all sorts of fun things like going camping, going to the circus, etc. The following 1 or 2 pages are filled with pictures and words used in sentences that start with the letter on the first page.

I bought this at a local ... store 3 years ago, so was glad to find it at ... now that my third child is 3 and biting at the bit to do school.

I like sticker books because it gives them something to "do" while reading and learning.

The bottom line on this book is clear: our governance of risk to the public tends to be managed by political gut reaction rather than informed investigation; there is no clear doctrine for studying and articulating risk (for example, distinguishing between high risks to a few and low but sustained risks to the many, or between three levels of cost-benefit analysis so that choices can be made); and the best form of risk management may be through the effective communication of risk information to the public rather than imposed costs on private sector enterprises.

As reasoned as the book is, it also constitutes a direct attack on all those who expouse the "precautionary principle." While I do not agree completely with the author, who seems to feel that rational study allows for the discounting of any risk to the point where it can be economically and politically managed at an affordable cost, he certainly take the debate to an entirely new level and his book is--quite literally--worth tens of billions of dollars in potential regulatory risk savings.

Most compelling is his methodical aggregation of data from several sources to show that the cost of saving one life (he notes that we fail to distinguish adequately between a life saved for a few years and a life saved for many years, or between young lives saved for a lifetime and old lives saved for a brief span of time). Table 2.1 on page 30 is quite astonishing--of 45 major regulated risks, one (drinking water) costs over $92 billion per premature death averted; eight including asbestos cost between $50 million and $4 billion; seven including arsenic and copper cost between $13 million and $45 million; 14 including various electrical standards cost between $1 million and $10 million per death averted; and 15 cost less than $1 million per death averted.

What cost human life? Even on this there is no standard, and even within a single regulatory agency (e.g. the Environmental Protection Agency) there are different calculations used in relation to different risks being regulated. The author does a really fine job of comparing the public perception of the value of a life saved ($1.3 million for automobile-related risks, $103 million for aviation-related risks) with the values used by the government and the courts, which vary widely (into the billions) but seem to hover between $10 million and $30 million per life saved and without regard the the number of life-years actually involved.

The heart of the book is in its conclusion, where the author proposes a four-part strategy for dramatically reducing the cost of regulatory risk management, suggesting that we focus on 1) disclosure of information to the public; 2) economic incentives; 3) risk reduction contracts; and 4) free market environmentalism. With respect to the latter, he is strongly supportive of allowing the "sale" of pollution privileges between nations and industries and companies.

For additional observations on reducing risk to the future of life see my reviews of Joe Thorton on "Pandora's Poison," Raffensperger and Tickner on "Protecting Public Health & The Environment," Novacek on "The Biodiversity Crisis," Czech on "Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train," Lomberg on "The Skeptical Environmentalist," Helvarg on "Blue Frontier," and Wilson's "The Future of Life."

Cass Sunstein and Lawrence Lessig join Jerry Berman and Marc Rotenberg and Mike Godwin as America's "top guns" in responsible law-making. This book makes a great deal of sense, is worth a great deal of money, and should guide the future evolution of regulatory and information-driven risk management.

This series is about a Legal Aid attorney named Cass Jameson. As such, it introduces fascinating glimpses into seldom-seen areas of the legal system -- along with providing excellent mysteries. This is one series I buy in hardcover as soon as each book is published.

The books are all very well-written, fast-moving, and entertaining. I cannot sufficiently recommend them. IMHO, this is the best mystery series available.

The first synthesis of law and economics took place several decades ago, based on the seminal work of Nobel prize winning Chicago economist Ronald Coase. The synthesis was based on the so-called "rational actor model" (often called homo Economicus) that can be derived from certain axiomatic, mathematics-like principles, based on the notion of self-interest and utility maximization. This was a major breakthrough in social theory and policy.

But the "rational actor model" has been shown to be systematically violated by real human beings, and behavioral economics arose to ammend the "rational actor model" to fit the reality. It's not that people are irrational, but rather the concept of rationality used in the traditional theory is seriously wanting. If you're interested in this larger backdrop to the present book, there is a marvelous new book on the subject edited by its creators, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, called "Choices, Values, and Frames."

The introductory chapters of Behavioral Law and Economics are refreshingly clear and free of jargon. These are followed by some of the most important articles that have been written on the topic over the past several years.

Behavioral law and economics is not just some academic field. It is absolutely, front and center, critical to political philosophy and the policy sciences in general. This book is for both expert and layperson alike---a real tour de force.