Mark D. White

My 2023 in review, and looking ahead to 2024...

I'm pleased to have more to report this year than the last several, not necessarily because I did more—although I suspect I did—but because what I've been doing has begun to appear in the world.

First of all, as I've been banging on about for the last several weeks, A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Daredevil: From the Beginning to Born Again (the third in the series) was published on December 21 by Ockham Publishing. You can see more details about it here, and I posted a few times at Psychology Today (mostly drawn from the last two chapters focusing on his mental state, not the earlier ethics material):

• How Much Should You Question the Value of What You Do?
• Why You Should Be Careful How Much Responsibility You Take
• Matt Murdock's Identity Crisis: To Be or Not To Be Daredevil
• Even a Superhero Can Cycle Between Delirium and Despair

Also, my friends at the Seize the Moment Podcast had me on once again, and we covered a lot (with most of the good points made by the guys who weren't me, of course):

Second, Rights versus Antitrust: Challenging the Ethics of Competition Law will be published by Agenda Publishing in February—a book I've been trying to write for years but it took the right approach together with the right publisher to make it happen. Expect to hear much more about this after the new year, but in the meantime you can see more details about it here.

Third, I have all but finished work on the second edition of The Virtues of Captain America: I submitted the corrected proofs and revised index just before Christmas, and the book is scheduled to be published next summer (just a few months over ten years after the first edition). Not only did I revise the entire manuscript, adding new examples where useful, but I also added two new substantial sections on the recent "Secret Empire" episode—one of how Steve Rogers's moral character was affected by the Hydra brainwashing and the other on how "Hydra-Cap" illustrates various aspects of fascism—and a new half-chapter on Sam Wilson's time so far as Captain America, examining how his approach to the job compares to Steve's.

On a related note, I also resumed work on The Virtues of Captain America Blog in late September, after putting it on hold a year ago to work on the book, posting weekly since. (This is a more manageable pace, I've found, allowing me to comfortably get ahead of schedule and not feel rushed.)

In terms of shorter work, I was also happy to see a handbook chapter published—“A Kantian Perspective on Teaching Ethics to Economists,” in Ioana Negru, Craig Duckworth, and Imko Meyenburg (eds), Handbook of Teaching Ethics to Economists: A Plurality of Perspectives (Edward Elgar)—as well as my review of Samuel Hollander's Immanuel Kant and Utilitarian Ethics in The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

In terms of the day job, the less said the better: I have three more semesters to go as department chair and then three more years as a full-time teacher until my retirement in 2028 (thirty years after I began).

In cheerier academic news, I was honored to be invited back to my undergraduate alma mater, Ohio Northern University (class of '93), to give two lectures in March (thanks to my former professor and dean Rich Meininger who whispered about me in the organizers' ears after hearing they wanted someone interdisciplinary).

As 2024 begins, I move on to other projects full-time. (If any of my very patient editors are reading this, I assure you that yours is my top priority!) Whatever your 2024 plans are, I wish you well in their pursuit, and I'll have more updates as more of my work sees the light of day.

My 2022 in review, and looking ahead to 2023 (and beyond)...

Christmas Eve in the park near where I live...

Another year's round-up, this one rather short... Perhaps that's simply because I'm becoming more focused? (No, I didn't think so either, sigh.)

First, my job situation, which hasn't changed much: As I reported earlier (and despite what I said in my end-of-2021 post), I did remain as department chair, which at least is a familiar burden, but also a growing one, as the fiscal environment of public higher education continues to erode. On the bright side, it was terrific to return to (masked) in-person teaching this past semester; my students were impressively enthusiastic and engaged, especially compared to the general (and understandable) burnout, anxiety, and grief among students (and everyone else). I also gave my first invited talk in several years, on Batman and ethics at York College of Pennsylvania, where I'd last spoken in 2015—that too was a welcome return, in more ways than one.

My primary published output this year was A Philosopher Reads... Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy, for which I wrote a few Psychology Today posts and appeared on a handful of podcasts with friends both old and new. (See my webpage for the book for more.) In addition, my chapter "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa" was published this year in Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, and I wrote a chapter on punishment and resources for The Oxford Handbook of Punishment Theory and Philosophy, edited by Jesper Ryberg, to be published in the near future.

As far as online writing is concerned, aside from a handful posts at Economics and Ethics and The Comics Professor, my main output was my continued work on The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which, after 4½ years and 460 posts covering over a thousand comics, is now on hiatus until next summer so I can focus on the revised and updated second edition of the book (plans for which I discussed last month on the Captain America Comic Book Fans podcast).

Looking ahead: In addition to the Cap revision, I have several other projects to complete over the year (or two), some of which I've mentioned before (and others that I'm more reticent about). I've never been a good scheduler, but I can't afford not to be now; I am relieved, however, that the projects are conveniently spaced out in time, assuming I can work on writing one while reading ancd researching for another (as well as teaching, chairing, and so on).

In the meantime, I wish all of you a happy New Year, whatever that means to you (and however you may find it), and I hope to have some news to report in a few months.

My 2021 in review, and looking ahead to 2022...

At the end of this dizzying year, and on the occasion of my fiftieth birthday, I offer my reflections on the last twelve months in terms of work—reflections that, to quote Rick Blaine, "don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world," where matters of much greater importance are going on. <gestures wildly at everything> Nevertheless...

I went into my work frustrations in my update last month, so I won't belabor the point here. Suffice it to say that this is my eleventh and final year as department chair, and I'm very much looking forward to returning to full-time teaching and writing as of next July 1. This year I designed a new introductory/survey course in legal philosophy, and I hope that it, together with the upper-level legal philosophy course I regularly teach—retitled "Jurisprudence" to reflect how I've been teaching it for years—will become part of my regular teaching rotation, along with other courses in philosophy and economics. (I taught law-and-economics this semester for the first time in years and enjoyed it, despite the Zoom setting, and I'm hoping to continue teaching that, and resume the economics-and-philosophy course I introduced 20+ years ago, more regularly going forward.)

Although everything that happened in 2021 made it very difficult to write, I did manage to get more done than last year; what's more, I became more productive as the year progressed, which leaves me cautiously optimistic heading into 2022.

1. I wrote two chapters for edited volumes coming out next year and welcomed the publication of one written last year, for which I thank all the editors who invited me to contribute.

• I wrote "Panther Virtue: The Many Roles of T’Challa” for Black Panther and Philosophy, edited by Edwardo Pérez and Timothy E. Brown, coming out in February 2022 from Wiley-Blackwell.
• I also wrote "A Kantian Perspective on Teaching Ethics to Economists" for Handbook of Teaching Ethics to Economists: A Plurality of Perspectives, edited by Craig Duckworth, Ioana Negru, and Imko Meyenburg, coming out from Edward Elgar later in 2022 (I believe).
• My chapter "Reflections on the State of Economics and Ethics" was published last month in The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Economics, edited by Conrad Heinmann and Julian Reiss.

2. I was much more active in what we olds used to call "the blogosphere," especially in the second half of the year:

• In August, I resumed blogging for Psychology Today, including a very widely read post earlier this month on Cecily Whiteley's provocative work on depression as a unique state of consciousness.
• In September, Jonathan Wight and I revived the Economics and Ethics blog, which has since highlighted new developments in the area, usually at least once a week.
• Earlier this month I started blogging at The Comics Professor again on interesting ethics-related content in current superhero comics (and I hope to blog there weekly going forward).
• And all year long I maintained twice-weekly posts at The Virtues of Captain America Blog, which is now halfway through Cap's 1990 appearances after 3½ years of blogging, resulting in 364 posts so far.

3. My signal achievement this year was finishing A Philosopher Reads Marvel Comics' Thor: If They Be Worthy, which will be released in 2022 ahead of next summer's Thor: Love and Thunder film. (UPDATE: It's now available.) It's an exploration of the seven years of Thor comics written by Jason Aaron and drawn by Esad Ribić, Russell Dauterman, and others, in which the original Thor suddenly finds himself unworthy of wielding his mighty hammer Mjolnir, only to see a new Thor emerge, eventually revealed to be Jane Foster, who must struggle with her own unique issues while saving the universe (and dealing with Odin). In this short volume, I use this fascinating tale to discuss the various meanings of worthiness, how it feels to lose it, and how one can reclaim it—which requires a more nuanced and somewhat paradoxical understanding of worthiness, suggested by the comics themselves. (See more about this book here.)

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Thinking ahead to 2022: I look forward to finishing my current book project—an introductory ethics textbook using superhero examples—as well as a handbook chapter on the philosophy of punishment. Then I will pick up work on two other book projects: a long-delayed discussion of antitrust, which is even more relevant these days than when I started it, and a deep dive into the Fant... well, perhaps I should hold off on talking about that for a while.

(Sorry, Ben—got carried away.)

My 2020 in review, and looking ahead to 2021...

Warning: This is gonna be short.

If you read my last two posts (here and here), both titled "Work in a pandemic," there won't be any surprises here. It was more than enough to keep up with teaching* and my duties as department chair during a constant panic mode at my college, while trying to cope emotionally during a worldwide pandemic and national political crisis. Both of these are, I hope, winding down, and we'll see a gradual return to some sense of normalcy in which the number of new cases and lives lost each day start to decline and heart-stopping political news doesn't break around the clock.

* Let me just say here that my students were incredible this semester, despite many of them enduring devastating personal losses and hardships that would test the strongest of us.

Like last year, this year I continued to work on several projects, at various stages of development, without making significant progress on most of them. I am thankful to my patient editors for tolerating this, and I hope to get back on track in the new year. As it happens, this year will be my 50th, having turned 49 yesterday, and it would be welcome for that to provide some motivation to make it a better year than the last two. (Who does anything in their 48th and 49th years anyway, right?)

Through it all, at least I managed to keep up with twice-weekly posts at my Virtues of Captain America blog, which this week covered the last issue of 1984, and will start 1985 issues on New Year's Day. On the other hand, however, I took a break from regular blogging at Psychology Today, at which I last posted in late March (excerpted in the October 2020 issue of the print magazine). Until I have new ideas worthy of posting there, I'm giving it a rest, but hopefully not for long.

So here's to a better, brighter, and calmer year ahead, when we can move ahead with our lives, while remembering those we've lost—and what we've lost—as well as reflecting long and hard on how we got here so it never happens again.

My 2019 in review, and looking ahead to 2020...

This was a difficult year's-end review to write. 2019 was not a good year for me, neither professionally nor personally, and although I did have a good number of things come out, based on past efforts, I produced very little new material over the last twelve months.

I had two books published this year, Batman and Ethics (Wiley Blackwell) and my edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics (Oxford University Press), and five articles and book chapters:

• “With All Due Respect: A Kantian Approach to Economics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, pp. 54-76
• “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics,” in Wilfred Dolfsma and Ioana Negru (eds), The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge), pp. 71-91
• “Nudging – Ethical and Political Dimensions of Choice Architectures,” in Holger Strassheim and Silke Beck (eds), Handbook of Behavioural Change and Public Policy (Edward Elgar), pp. 319-331
• “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight,” in Damien Picariello (ed.), Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 123-140
• “The Neglect of Rights in Law and Economics,” GNLU Journal of Law & Economics, vol. II, pp. 22-39

The final piece above was written this year, as was a book review for a journal and a very short piece on nudge for an online site (both forthcoming next year, perhaps). In terms of blogs, I wrote my usual complement of posts for Psychology Today, including a post based on my Batman book originally posted at The Comics Professor, and kept up with my Virtues of Captain America blog (although my backlog is not what it used to be). Finally, I wrote a nudge paper for a special journal issue that didn't work for the reviewers and a few chapters for the antitrust book I worked on in the spring but set aside (twice), and I finished the background reading for the first of two superhero books I am writing for Ockham Publishing (who published my Civil War book in 2016).

Looking ahead to next year, I plan to write the superhero book mentioned above (and start background work on the second), finalize plans for an academic trade book on economics and ethics (and write an invited handbook chapter on same), and continue to work on the antitrust book (which I've begun to refer to as my "white whale").

My 2018 in review, and looking ahead to 2019...

I'm feeling rather ambivalent about my life these days (see here) — which is not unusual for me the last ten years or so, but still. I have, however, come to some realizations of late that may suggest a corner is about to be turned. We'll get to that in due time... in the meantime, let's see what I managed to do this year nonetheless (in addition to my duties as a mild-mannered professor for a metropolitan university).

In terms of things that were published this year (but finished earlier), I had one new edited book out this year, Doctor Strange and Philosophy, which included one chapter I wrote, and one journal article that was posted online in 2016 (and written much earlier) but was not slotted into an issue until this year (this month, actually). (A chapter on nudge that I wrote even earlier, that I thought would be in a book published this year, will be out next year.)

Much of what I actually did this year (which involved more editing than writing) will appear in 2019:

• I did most of my work on The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and Economics, including writing the introduction and my chapter, editing the other 26 chapters, and overseeing the review of copyedits and proofs (the last one still ongoing). This should be out next summer.
• Even though it was written in 2017, I wrapped up work on Batman and Ethics this year, including making final revisions, reviewing copyedits and proofs, and compiling the index. This should be out next April.

I did write several shorter pieces that should be out next year as well...

• “On the Relationship Between Economics and Ethics,” forthcoming in a symposium on the interdisciplinary potential of economics (with a response by John B. Davis) in Annals of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi, 52(2), Winter 2018
• “More Harm Than Benefit: The Ramifications of the Neglect of Rights in Economics,” forthcoming in Ioana Negru and Wilfred Dolfsma (eds), The Ethical Formation of Economists (Routledge, 2019)
• “Criminal Justice in Gotham: The Role of the Dark Knight,” forthcoming in Damien Picariello (ed.), Politics in Gotham: The Batman Universe and Political Thought (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019)

...as well as several shorter pieces that appeared this year (as well as the normal assortment of blog posts at Psychology Today and several at The Comics Professor):

• “How to Live a More Authentic Life in Both Markets and Morals,” a commentary on William Irwin's The Free Market Existentialist (in Reason Papers, 40(1), Summer 2018, pp. 59-63)
• “Restoring Social Responsibility to Inner Freedom, with Help from Immanuel Kant” and "Inner Freedom Is Consistent with Family (and Social Ties in General)," as part of the conversation on inner and outer freedom at Cato Unbound (October 2018)

Finally, I wrote a review of Eugene Heath and Byron Kaldis (eds), Wealth, Commerce & Philosophy: Foundational Thinkers and Business Ethics, which should appear eventually in the Journal of the History of Economic Thought.

On a different tack, this past summer I launched The Virtues of Captain America blog, which just celebrated its 50th post this month, and will keep me busy for many years to come (seeing that the 50th post brought us into the 1970s, and the 100th, which I will be writing soon, will only find me in 1974).

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Looking forward, I've begun a book on antitrust, which I hope to finish next spring and should be out next fall from Rowman and Littlefield International. I'm also crafting a proposal for a short academic trade on a topic I've discussed a bit at Psychology Today, which, if accepted by the press I've discussed it with, I would write next summer. Besides that, I have a couple other academic projects in mind, but no firm plans beyond some preliminary discussions with presses.

Those projects notwithstanding, in the coming year I hope to devote myself more to writing about superheroes, not just on the Cap blog but new projects as well. Yes, I realize I said much the same thing last year, but I'm even more convinced now that this is the way to go for me, given additional feedback I've gotten from fans and friends over the past year, as well as my experience at San Diego Comic-Con this past summer. I'm hesitant to leave academic writing entirely, because it seems to be a part of my professional identity with which I have a strange push-pull relationship. I've never felt like a "serious academic," and I'm increasingly uncertain I ever could be one, but at the same time I feel I "should" keep trying to be one, even though my particular talents, such as they are, seem to be of more value elsewhere. (Let's not go down that particular rabbit-hole just yet, but my latest Psychology Today post alludes to it.)

I'll leave you with something that's been a balm to my soul lately... let's hope for a brighter year ahead!

 

My 2015 in review, and looking forward to 2016...

I started doing end-of-the-year wrap-up last year: as I said then, it's

a nice exercise to remind me of what I accomplished over this year. (Reminding yourself of accomplishments is often recommended for people who only seem to remember what they didn't do.)

That certainly still applies, so here we go, summarizing my writing and speaking activities over the year, as well as some other pursuits I enjoyed and personal thoughts regarding the future.

BOOKS

I had one book out early this year, the edited collection Law and Social Economics: Essays in Ethical Values for Theory, Practice, and Policy from Palgrave Macmillan, and completed three more that will be out next year: Economics and the Virtues: Building a New Moral Foundation, co-edited with Jennifer A. Baker for Oxford University Press; Social Economics (Critical Concepts in Economics), a four-volume collection of social economics literature co-edited with Wilfred Dolfsma, Deborah Figart, Robert McMaster, and Ellen Mutari for Routledge (I was responsible for editing the volume on philosophy); and a sole-authored (and as-yet-untitled) book on Marvel Comics' Civil War that I will self-publish on Amazon in the spring (after a disagreement with the original publisher that originally contracted it).

I also worked on the edited book The Insanity Defense: Multidisciplinary Views on Its History, Trends, and Controversies, scheduled to come out late next year from Praeger, and I have a proposal for another edited book that will be presented to the publishers' delegates in January. Finally, I did a lot of background reading for the book on superheroes and philosophy I'll be writing in the spring, and I still have plans for books on individualism, moral judgment, and law-and-economics, one of which I hope to start later next year.

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

In terms of shorter pieces, I wrote seven new ones (and successfully revised three written last year):

• An article on externalities (revised and published in Oeconomia)
• A chapter on nudges in health care (revised and forthcoming in a John Hopkins University Press volume)
• An article on the ethics of antitrust law (revised and forthcoming in Antitrust Bulletin along with a reply to critics)

1. My presidential address to the Association for Social Economics (ASE) on judgment (published in Review of Social Economy)
2. A chapter on the crucial importance of interests in libertarian paternalism (forthcoming in a Springer volume)
3. A chapter on the basic arguments against nudges (forthcoming in a Palgrave volume)
4. A chapter on Kant, virtue, and economics (forthcoming in Economics and the Virtues)
5. An article on Beccaria for a law-and-economics journal (under review)
6. A chapter on happiness policy for a positive psychology handbook (under review)
7. An article on merit goods and nudges (under review)

I also started writing a paper for the Mercatus Center on patient autonomy and a chapter on the ethics and economics of work. Looking ahead to 2016, I've agreed to write three pieces on various aspects of behavioral economics and nudge; other than that, I plan to focus on books (about which more below).

PRESENTATIONS/LECTURES

This year it seems I gave a smaller number but wider variety of talks:

• Two presentations at the ASSA meetings in January: one on inequality at a session of the International Network for Economic Method and my presidential address for the ASE (available on YouTube on the new ASE channel).
• A similar presentation on inequality for the Young Scholars Initiative at the Institute for New Economic Thinking in February.
• A presentation on the role of interests in nudges, given at a conference on nudges in Lucerne, Switzerland, in April.
• A presentation on the ethics and economics of work at a conference in San Diego in May.
• Finally, a pubic lecture on superheroes and philosophy at York College of Pennsylvania in October (described in an earlier post).

BLOGGING

I blogged even less this year than the last: an even dozen posts at Psychology Today and a handful at Economics and Ethics and The Comics Professor, as well as here (on "Why I Edit Books"). Notably, Jennifer Baker and I had a blog post at OUPblog, discussing the movie "The Big Short" in relation to virtue (and our co-edited book), and I was honored to contribute a guest post to the Cultural Gutter about my year reading the Fantastic Four. I always mean to blog more—who doesn't?—but working on books and paper has always seemed more important, and leaves less time for blog posts. (And I'm not totally convinced that's a bad thing.) When I am moved to blog, it's usually about some issue related to work, writing, or life, and seems too self-indulgent; see below on how I'm thinking of dealing with that.

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE

In 2015 I watched a lot of classic films (mostly from the 30s and 40s) and fell in love with Barbara Stanwyck as well as the films of Frank Capra. (Can you imagine if Capra had directed a Captain America film? Of course, you could argue that he directed several about Steve Rogers.) I also caught up with more shows on Netflix that I missed the first time around, like How I Met Your Mother and One Tree Hill. In terms of music, I enjoyed many fantastic new albums in metal and jazz; reveled in Bing, Louis, and Judy as much as ever; and discovered some second-tier Southern rock bands I had missed, such as the Outlaws and the Marshall Tucker Band (the latter due, of all things, to the prominent placement of "Can't You See" in the One Hill Tree season 6 finale). As always, I would love to write about music, the true center of my life, but I find it very difficult, so I just listen, explore, and listen some more.

Comics marched on, with the bright lights showing themselves mainly in Marvel Comics' more lighthearted titles, such as Howard the Duck, The Astonishing Ant-Man, Ms. Marvel, and Spider-Woman, and also in a welcome revival of several of the solo Avengers books, such as Captain America: Sam Wilson, The Invincible Iron Man, and The Mighty Thor (although the Avengers books themselves are largely disappointing). On the DC Comics side, the weekly Batman and Robin Eternal was a surprising pleasure, introducing a much-beloved character from the pre-Flashpoint days into the New 52 in a way fairly consistent with earlier characterization. Overall, however, I am growing more disenchanted with newer superhero comics, and spending more time reading and rereading the classics from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, whether for a book project or simply for fun. (Someday I'll try to expand on this at The Comics Professor.)

LOOKING FORWARD

In the next year I plan to do just as much writing, but in a different way. As I mentioned above, as far as scholarly writing in concerned I want to focus even more on books than articles and chapters. Looking back on 2015, though, working on the Civil War book was easily the highlight in terms of writing; and following the ordeal with the original publisher, I've enjoyed working with my copyeditor and cover artist to get it ready for self-publication on Amazon's Kindle Direct Program in the spring. After I finish my next superhero-and-philosophy book for Wiley Blackwell, I'm going to consider writing more on comics for self-publication, where I will have more freedom to write on the characters and stories I want to without being concerned with which books a commercial press (with understandable commercial pressures) will be willing to publish. I will always work with traditional publishers to publish some of my superhero work, but having both avenues to travel down will allow to explore book projects focused on characters who might not have the larger exposure in the popular media (as well as those that did but had lousy movies made based on them).

I also want to move into fiction—or, I should say, back into it. My father regularly asks me when I'll write fiction again, because he was the biggest fan of the stories and short books I wrote in junior high and high school. I've long wanted to write fiction again, albeit much more personal and emotional stories than the science fiction adventure I wrote when I was younger. (Ha, I said "younger.") In particular, the ideas I'm tempted to discuss on my Psychology Today blog these days are too personal, and the resulting blog posts would be so self-indulgent, that I think fiction is the best outlet for them.

Why haven't I started writing fiction yet? Fear of failure, of course. I know I'm a decent scholarly and popular philosophy writer, but I don't know if I'm a decent fiction writer, so it's easier to keep writing what I've proven to be decent at than take a risk on something that I haven't. Of course, the rational side of me knows that whether I succeed or fail isn't the most important thing; the intrinsic rewards of writing what I want to write, and expressing the ideas and feelings I can't express otherwise, are much more important. As with so many things, however, knowing something and feeling it are two very different things, and continuing to focus on what you know you're decent at is a very comfortable thing to do.

Nonetheless, in 2016 I hope to move forward with writing fiction, even if it means scaling back on my nonfiction writing—as well as on my addiction to email and Twitter, which may be more difficult! (And don't get me started on making music too... one creative leap of faith at a time, please.) Hopefully, this time next year, I'll be able to write a year-end update more like this one from Jim C. Hines, a fantastic writer (and all-around swell guy) I follow on Twitter, who maintains a pace throughout the entire year that I managed to keep up only for two months while writing the Civil War book. Maybe then, I'll feel comfortable calling myself a writer, but regardless, I think I'll enjoy my time more that way.

And 44 years into this life, that sounds like a nice thing to do.

All the cool kids are doing it, so... my 2014 in review

I've seen a lot of other people (mainly writers I follow on Twitter) doing this, and I thought it might be a nice exercise to remind me of what I accomplished over this year. (Reminding yourself of accomplishments is often recommended for people who only seem to remember what they didn't do.) I'll abstain from linking to everything (besides the books), if only because I've mentioned most everything here in earlier updates.

BOOKS

I had two books out this year (one of which was written this year), The Virtues of Captain America: Modern-Day Lessons on Character from a World War II Superhero in February from Wiley Blackwell and The Illusion of Well-Being: Economic Policymaking Based on Respect and Responsiveness in September from Palgrave Macmillan, along with the normal assortment of affiliated blog posts (and a few radio interviews for the Cap book).

For next year, I signed a contract with Wiley Blackwell for a new book on superheroes and philosophy, and I'm pursuing a chance to write another. Meanwhile, I have plans to write books on individualism for Palgrave and judgment for Stanford sometime later. Also, I postponed my contracted book on law and social economics for Palgrave that was due this year; I plan to return to that once the books above are completed (by the kind graces of my editor!).

This year I put together an edited book, Law and Social Economics: Essays in Ethical Values for Theory, Practice, and Policy, from papers presented at the Association of Social Economics sessions at the ASSA conference in January as well as the Law and Society Association meetings in May, which will be published next March in my "Perspectives from Social Economics" series from Palgrave.

I also worked on three other edited books: one on economics and the virtues (co-edited with Jennifer A. Baker for Oxford); a two-volume set on the insanity defense for Praeger; and a co-edited four-volume collection of essential literature in social economics for Routledge (for which I'm curating the volume on philosophy).

Finally, I signed on to edit a new book series from Rowman & Littlefield International on ethics and economics, for which I plan to edit the first book (on ethical issues with economic policy and regulation). More on that soon...

ARTICLES AND CHAPTERS

In terms of shorter articles and chapters, I seem to have written ten (or eleven):

1. A journal article on Cesare Beccaria and law-and-economics (published)
2. A policy paper for the Mercatus Center on happiness measures (published)
3. A chapter on retributivism and law-and-economics (forthcoming)
4. A chapter on teaching ethics using Marvel's Civil War storyline (forthcoming)
5. A revised chapter on law-and-economics for a companion to social economics (forthcoming)
6. Encyclopedia articles on retributivism and the lex talionis (forthcoming)
7. A comment on a journal article about consent in libertarian paternalism (forthcoming)
8. A chapter on nudges in health care (under revision, tentatively included)
9. An article on the ethics of antitrust law (planned for a symposium)
10. An article on externalities (submitted for a special journal issue).

I also started writing a chapter on Kant and virtue in economics for the book I'm co-editing for OUP and an article on judgment (my presidential address for the Association of Social Economics, given at the ASSA meetings in January and normally published in one of the association journals later that year).

So far, I've agreed to write four new book chapters next year—one on the ethics of work, one on positive psychology and policy, and two on libertarian paternalism—and one article for special issue of a law-and-economics journal on Beccaria.

PRESENTATIONS/LECTURES

I gave a number of talks this year, including the Law and Society Association in Minneapolis, the American Philosophical Association (Eastern Division) in Philadelphia, the Petrie-Flom Center at Harvard University, an antitrust symposium at Philadephia University, an invited talk on Captain America at Wagner College on Staten Island, and two invited talks on Kant and economics in Norway.

I also withdrew from two conferences: the Law, Culture, and Humanities conference in Virginia and the "Oneself and the Other" conference in economics and philosophy in Strasbourg. I had my reasons; nonetheless, I regretted both.

For next year, so far I am giving two talks at the ASSA meetings in early January, and I've agreed to speak on nudges in Switzerland in April, well-being policy in England in July, and (tentatively) the ethics of work in San Diego in May.

BLOGGING

Once again, this past year I didn't blog as much as I wanted to. I had eighteen posts at Psychology Today, including some very successful ones on dating, adultery, and sexless marriage (the last of which was the subject of a featured collection headlined by four of my posts). I blogged less at Economics and Ethics and The Comics Professor, although I did contribute several posts of substance at both.

Outside my own blogs, I had several blog posts stemming from The Illusion of Well-Being hosted at the LSE British Politics and Policy blog, as well as an op-ed post on happiness policy, based on my Mercatus article, at U.S. News & World Report's Economic Intelligence blog. Finally, I was involved in launching and editing the new blog for the Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture series (though I've yet to write for it).

ON A MORE PERSONAL NOTE

I still managed to watch a lot of movies (mostly classic films from the 1930s and 40s) and TV on DVD (including the whole runs of Friday Night Lights and Grey's Anatomy), read quite a few books, and kept up with my regular comics (about 15 per week).

Finally, just today I reached a milestone in my comics fandom: I finished reading every issue of Fantastic Four from 1961 to today—and I can't wait to do it again. If only one of my planned superhero-and-philosophy books were about them! But I will do something, sometime... or it'll be clobberin' time for sure.