It might as well be spring... (A personal update)

It's been a strange year so far in terms of work (both writing and school), so the true updates in this post will be few, and instead I'll focus on things coming out in the near future.

My main project since the beginning of the year has been my antitrust book, but I did not make as much progress on it as I'd hoped, so after some hiccups (and thanks to the patience of my editor), I will be taking the summer to finish it. (Speaking of antitrust, I had the pleasure recently of attending a talk by Jonathan B. Baker, whose new book, The Antitrust Paradigm, I'm eagerly awaiting.) I did, however, manage to write an invited essay for a new law-and-economics journal (tentatively out this fall) and a short book review for another journal, and I have started working on an invited symposium paper on nudge (specifically, proposed ethical guidelines for their use) for a political science journal.

The academic trade book proposal I mentioned in my last post—which would have collected and elaborated on my thoughts about adultery based on my Psychology Today posts on the topic—didn't get picked up, but I plan to write something longer on the topic nonetheless. As far another book in the works, I'll save that until the end...

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I have a few things coming out this year, one of which (as you can see above) showed up on my doorstep the morning of the day before Easter: Batman and Ethics, which is available now as an ebook and will be released in US in paperback in early May (the 6th or the 13th, depending on what site you're looking at), earlier some other places (26 April in the UK, apparently). There is now a dedicated page for it here, which explains what I'm on about, and includes a quote from an early review by Armond Boudreaux at his great blog A Clash of Heroes.

Although I do not yet have a copy in my hands, this summer will see the release of The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, involving several dozen brilliant scholars over 27 chapters (including mine, “With All Due Respect: A Kantian Approach to Economics"), all of which I was honored to edit. I also have a dedicated page for this here, and my introduction is available at SSRN.

I also have several chapters coming out this spring in other people's books:

• Available now is Damien Picariello's edited volume, Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave), including my chapter “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight."
• Coming at the end of May is Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru's edited volume, The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge), including my chapter “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics."
• Also out at the end of May is Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck's Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy (Elgar), including my chapter “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures.”

Also out since my last post is “On the Relationship Between Economics and Ethics,” in Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi (available at SSRN), followed in the same issue by a response from John B. Davis, who contributed to the Oxford handbook as well. (Speaking of contributors to the Oxford handbook, Virgil Storr and Ginny Choi have a book coming this summer titled Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals? that I strongly encourage you to check out, and which may or may not carry a blurb from yours truly.)

I also had my customary posts at Psychology Today and my ongoing efforts at my blog The Virtues of Captain America, which is steadily approaching its 100th post. And finally, appropriate given the impending release of Avengers: Endgame, I recently found the Chinese edition of The Avengers and Philosophy, which I didn't think was due until 2020 but seems to have appeared early. (Keeping my eye open for the planned Chinese edition of Iron Man and Philosophy too.)

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Going forward, while I wrap up the antitrust book and the nudge paper, I will be starting the "arduous" task of re-reading and note-taking for my next superhero-and-ethics book, a long-term project with no firm completion date (on agreement with the publisher). This will be a true labor of love, and my dream project since I started doing this sort of thing. I'm keeping the details tight to my vest for the time being, but if I do my job right, it should be fantastic.