Lawrence R. Douglas (born October 18, 1959) is an American legal scholar. He teaches in the department of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he holds the James J. Grosfield Professorship.[1] He is an author of journalism, fiction, and nonfiction books.

Lawrence R. Douglas
Born (1959-10-18) October 18, 1959 (age 64)
Academic background
Alma mater
Academic work
Institutions

Education edit

Douglas received an A.B. from Brown University in 1982, a A.M. from Columbia University in 1986, and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1989.

Career edit

Much of Douglas's nonfiction has focused on legal responses to state-sponsored atrocities. His two novels have focused on the question of Jewish identity.

In 2013, Douglas wrote about Guantanamo Bay detainee Abd al-Nashiri for Harper's Magazine.[2] Douglas reviews books on legal topics for the Times Literary Supplement[3] and is a contributing writer for The Guardian.[4]

He has received fellowships[5] from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Institute for International Education, and the Carnegie Corporation.[6] In 2022, he was a Berlin Prize Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany.[7]

Douglas has appeared in several documentaries, including the The Accountant of Auschwitz (2018),[8] the TV mini-series The Devil Next Door (2019),[9] the National Geographic documentary Nazis at Nuremberg: The Lost Testimony (2023),[10] and the BBC's The Devil's Confession: the Lost Eichmann Tapes (2023).[11]

His book The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial was a New York Times Editors' Choice book for 2016.[12]

His 2020 book Will He Go?: Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020 predicted many of Donald Trump's strategies for attempting to hold onto power.[13][14]

Douglas lives in Sunderland, Massachusetts.[15]

Fiction Honors edit

Douglas has published two novels. The Catastrophist,[16] about a professor struggling with fatherhood, was listed on Kirkus Reviews' best books of 2006 and shared a Silver Prize in fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards.[17]

The Vices, about a troubled philosopher,[18] was listed as a best book of 2011 by New York Magazine[19] and the New Statesman.[20]

Works edit

  • Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020. Twelve Books. 2020. ISBN 978-1-5387-5187-9.
  • The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial. Princeton University Press. 2016. ISBN 978-1-4008-7315-9.
  • The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust. Yale University Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-300-10984-9.
  • Lawrence Douglas; Alexander George (2007). Sense and Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-4165-8482-7.
Editor
Novels

References edit

  1. ^ "Faculty & Staff - Douglas, Lawrence R. - Amherst College". www.amherst.edu.
  2. ^ Douglas, Lawrence (October 2013). "A Kangaroo in Obama's Court". Harper's. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
  3. ^ "Lawrence Douglas". Times Literary Supplement. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  4. ^ Douglas, Lawrence. "Contributor". The Guardian. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  5. ^ "Douglas, Lawrence R. | Faculty & Staff | Amherst College". www.amherst.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-09.
  6. ^ Ford, Celeste. "Announcing the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellows". Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  7. ^ Jay (12 May 2021). "The 2021-22 Berlin Prize Fellows". AmericanAcademy.de. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  8. ^ "Lawrence Douglas". IMDB. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  9. ^ "The Devil Next Door". Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  10. ^ "Nazis at Nuremberg". Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  11. ^ "The Devil's Confession". Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  12. ^ "Editors' Choice". The New York Times. 3 March 2016. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  13. ^ "Will He Go?". Goodreads.com. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  14. ^ "The Professor Who Nailed It". Amherst.edu. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  15. ^ "The Vices". Amherst.edu. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  16. ^ "The Catastrophist". Goodreads. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  17. ^ "Announcing 2007 Independent Publisher Book Awards Results". Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  18. ^ "The Vices". Goodreads. Retrieved 21 February 2024.
  19. ^ "The Years in Books". Retrieved 20 February 2024.
  20. ^ "New Statesman Best Books of 2011". Retrieved 20 February 2024.

External links edit