For 350 years Governor John Winthrop's journal has been recognized as the central source for the history of Massachusetts in the 1630s and 1640s. Winthrop reported events--especially religious and political events--more fully and more candidly than any other contemporary observer.

The governor's journal has been edited and published three times since 1790, but these editions are long outmoded. Richard Dunn and Laetitia Yeandle have now prepared a long-awaited scholarly edition, complete with introduction, notes, and appendices. This full-scale, unabridged edition uses the manuscript volumes of the first and third notebooks (both carefully preserved at the Massachusetts Historical Society), retaining their spelling and punctuation, and James Savage's transcription of the middle notebook (accidentally destroyed in 1825).

Winthrop's narrative began as a journal and evolved into a history. As a dedicated Puritan convert, Winthrop decided to emigrate to America in 1630 with members of the Massachusetts Bay Company, who had chosen him as their governor. Just before sailing, he began a day-to-day account of his voyage. He continued his journal when he reached Massachusetts, at first making brief and irregular entries, followed by more frequent writing sessions and contemporaneous reporting, and finally, from 1643 onward, engaging in only irregular writing sessions and retrospective reporting. Naturally he found little good to say about such outright adversaries as Thomas Morton, Roger Williams, and Anne Hutchinson. Yet he was also adept at thrusting barbs at most of the other prominent players: John Endecott, Henry Vane, and Richard Saltonstall, among others.

Winthrop built lasting significance into the seemingly small-scale actions of a few thousand colonists in early New England, which is why his journal will remain an important historical source.

Co-published by the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School and Harvard University Press, the JLA is a faculty-refereed, peer-reviewed publication on law. It aspires to be broad in coverage, including doctrinal legal analysis and interdisciplinary scholarship. JLA articles are free online and available for sale in bound issues.

Volume 1, Issue 1 contains contributions from Adrian Vermeule (Many-Minds Arguments in Legal Theory), Stephen J. Choi, G. Mitu Gulati, and Eric A. Posner (Are Judges Overpaid? A Skeptical Response to the Judicial Salary Debate), James Q. Whitman (Equality in Criminal Law: The Two Divergent Western Roads), Jonathan R. Macey and Geoffrey P. Miller (Judicial Review of Class Action Settlements), Melvin A. Eisenberg (Impossibility, Impracticability, and Frustration), Edward L. Glaeser, Cass R. Sunstein (Extremism and Social Learning), R. H. Helmholz (Bonham's Case, Judicial Review, and the Law of Nature), and David A. Hyman, Bernard Black, Charles Silver, and William M. Sage (Estimating the Effect of Damages Caps in Medical Malpractice Cases).

http://jla.hup.harvard.edu

Co-published by the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School and Harvard University Press, the JLA is a faculty-refereed, peer-reviewed publication on law. It aspires to be broad in coverage, including doctrinal legal analysis and interdisciplinary scholarship. JLA articles are free online and available for sale in bound issues.

Volume 1, Issue 2 contains contributions from Tonja Jacobi (Competing Models of Judicial Coalition Formation and Case Outcome Determination), Thomas W. Merrill (Accession and Original Ownership), Kenneth M. Ayotte and Edward R. Morrison,(Creditor Control and Conflict in Chapter 11), Jonathan Baron and Ilana Ritov (The Role of Probability of Detection in Judgments of Punishment), John C. Coates (Reforming the Taxation and Regulation of Mutual Funds: A Comparative Legal and Economic Analysis), Adriaan Lanni (Social Norms in the Courts of Ancient Athens), Oren Bar-Gill and Omri Ben-Shahar (The Prisoners' (Plea Bargain) Dilemma), and William M. Landes and Richard A. Posner (Rational Judicial Behavior: A Statistical Study).

http://jla.hup.harvard.edu

Co-published by the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School and Harvard University Press, the JLA is a peer-reviewed publication on law. It aspires to be broad in coverage, including doctrinal legal analysis and interdisciplinary scholarship. JLA articles are free online and available for sale in bound issues.

Volume 2, Issue 1 contains contributions from Einer R. Elhauge, Daniel E. Ho, Kevin M. Quinn, Gabriella Blum, Andrew T. Guzman, Timothy L. Meyer, Alon Harel, Tsvi Kahana, Anup Malani, Ward Fransworth, Dustin Guzior, Steven Shavell, Victor P. Goldberg, and Melvin A. Eisenberg.

http://jla.hup.harvard.edu

Co-published by the John M. Olin Center for Law, Economics, and Business at Harvard Law School and Harvard University Press, the JLA is a peer-reviewed publication on law. It aspires to be broad in coverage, including doctrinal legal analysis and interdisciplinary scholarship. JLA articles are free online and available for sale in bound issues.

Volume 2, Issue 2 contains contributions from Yair Listokin, Eric Posner, Kathryn Spier, Adrian Vermeule, Alan Sykes, Benito Arruñada, Theodore Eisenberg, Michael Heise, Ncole Waters & Martin Wells, J. Mark Ramseyer, and Jonathan Masur.

http://jla.hup.harvard.edu