David Bellos

Jul 1, 2024 | theguardian.com | David Bellos

Ismail Kadare, who has died aged 88, was the best known Albanian writer of his own generation and all others, and one of the most remarkable European novelists of our age. He leaves a body of work as immense as Balzac’s Human Comedy, as unrelenting in its critique of dictatorship as Orwell’s, and as disturbing as that of Kafka.

May 7, 2024 | lawliberty.org | David Bellos |Richard Smith |David Schaefer |Adam White

Thirty years ago, give or take, I sauntered into class as a lowly “2L” law student, sat down, and opened the textbook for my first day of studying copyrights and trademarks. One hour later, I walked out of that classroom—utterly confused—and proceeded to drop the course and sign up for something a bit less arcane. (Immigration law, if I recall correctly.)I never did go back to re-take that course in copyright law.

Jan 23, 2024 | kirkusreviews.com | David Bellos |David Grann |Elie Wiesel |Marion Wiesel

A gimlet-eyed analysis of a system that protects a corporate status quo at the expense of independent invention. “Most copyrights of commercial value now belong not to artists, but to corporations,” write Princeton literature professor Bellos, author of Is That a Fish in Your Ear?, and lawyer Montagu. A case in point is the catalog of Bruce Springsteen, which he sold for $550 million to the Sony Music Group at the end of 2021.