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In the end, the decision for the UK to formally withdraw its membership of the European Union passed with a reasonably comfortable majority in excess of 1¼ million votes. Every one of the 17.4 million people who voted Leave would have had their own reason for wanting to break with the status quo. However, not one of them had any idea as to what they were voting for next. It is one of the idiosyncrasies of an all-or-nothing referendum.

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The contemporary world features more than twenty thousand international NGOs in almost every field of human activity, including humanitarian assistance, environmental protection, human rights promotion, and technical standardization, amongst numerous other issues

The post A cautionary tale from the history of NGOs appeared first on OUPblog.

Populist angst and anger is running through the United States presidential campaign, but also through the Brexit debates, directed at the political establishment, and also at globalization (with the European Union standing in for the latter in the UK context). This anger has taken policy elites by surprise, throwing wrenches into the works of carefully planned political campaigns by mainstream Republican, Democratic, Conservative, and Labour parties on either side of the Atlantic.

The post Is globalization the problem? appeared first on OUPblog.

John Shropshire used to farm celery just in Poland. Why? Because celery production is labour intensive and Poland had abundant available labour. However, he now also farms in the Fens, Cambridgeshire. Why? Because the EU Single Market gives him access to the labour he needs. Not cheap labour – John pays the living wage to his workers – but available seasonal migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe – 2500 of them.The strawberries enjoyed at Wimbledon are picked by similar labour, so are the hops in our British brewed beer.

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In September 2013, during a visit to Central and Southeast Asia, Chinese President Xi Jinping first proposed the initiative of jointly building the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road. Consequently, the Collaborative Innovation Centre of Silk Road Economic Belt Studies has been established in Xi’an, China, which was the eastern starting point of the ancient road.

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You may know Christopher Marlowe and Richard Burbage, The Globe Theatre and The Swan, perhaps even The Lord Chamberlain's Men and The Admirals' Men. But what do you know of modern Shakespeare: new productions, new performances, and ongoing research in the late 20th and 21st centuries? Shakespeare has, in many ways, remained the same, but actors, directors, designers, and other artists have adapted his work to suit the needs of the world and audiences today.

The post How well do you know 21st-century Shakespeare? [quiz] appeared first on OUPblog.

What does international law truly mean in the world today? For the publication of Malcom Evans’s International Law, Fourth edition, we asked several leading figures that question. Ralph Zacklin, the former UN Assistant Secretary General for Legal Affairs, provides his personal perspective on international in the edited essay below. A full version of his essay can be found on the textbook’s Online Resource Centre, along with five other personal perspectives.

By Ralph Zacklin

I have been privileged to work for almost thirty years as an international lawyer in the United Nations and from this vantage point international law is neither the omnipotent solution to the world’s problems nor is it an illusion that only die-hard pacifists cling to. It is, in fact, for the practitioner a very real and pragmatic discipline. That it may be uncertain, incomplete, and difficult to enforce does not lessen the need for the rule of law on the international plane nor does it mean that the efforts to codify the law and develop its institutions should cease or be diminished.

At the core of contemporary international law is the Charter of the United Nations. It is a tribute to its drafters in the San Francisco Conference that this instrument has retained its essential validity as a set of fundamental principles which have guided the community of States for more than fifty years. It is the basis for the development of much of international law as we know it today in such key areas as human rights, the environment, and the law of the sea and outer space, not to mention the vast array of multilateral treaties in numerous technical, economic, and scientific areas.

International law provides a common legal vocabulary within which States and other actors operate. It provides a framework for conceptions of what is ‘legal’ or ‘right’. For the author personally, the most striking lesson of the last thirty years is not the quantitative qualitative development of international law which has been substantial but the degree to which States have come to accept the existence of international law as a standard that must be observed or by which their actions must be justified.

There is another dimension to international law which is sometimes overlooked in an era of globalization. International law, however inchoate it may be, represents the expectations and claims of substantial segments of humanity. It cannot be dismissed merely because of its perceived weakness. This dimension is of particular relevance to the member States of the United Nations, the overwhelming majority of whom rely on international law-making processes in international forums to weave together the fabric of the rule of law.

This accounts for the persistence of the United Nations in the holding of major conferences or summits––much derided in some quarters––which have produced soft law Declarations on the environment, human rights, advancement of women and a panoply of economic and social rights. These fora move from agenda-setting gradually towards normative outcomes and have undeniably altered the international legal landscape over the past twenty-five years.

Law, whether domestic or international, is by nature a conservative discipline. Its evolution is slow, even laborious. International law is not, nor should it be, viewed as an ideal state in which harmony prevails. Like any other system of law, its rules and institutions mature over time. When one compares the international law of today with that of a mere three decades ago, one cannot but marvel at the advances that have been made both normatively and institutionally. The path of advancement is by no means uneventful but it continues.

I have been fortunate in my own career to have had the opportunity to contribute to significant developments in international law, such as the establishment of ad hoc criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda as well as, more recently, the Special Court in Sierra Leone. Over the years I have provided legal advice which has helped to shape much of the contemporary law of UN peace-keeping and, like many of my colleagues, have rejoiced in the completion of UN mandates which have resulted in the independence of countries such as Namibia and Timor-Leste. There have also been tragic failures in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Somalia.

At the outset of my career I was motivated like many young people of the time by an idealistic determination to make the world a safer and a better place. Over the years my idealism has certainly been tested, but I believe that the role and impact of international law has grown, and it continues to grow.

Ralph Zacklin is the former UN Assistant Secretary General for Legal Affairs. Malcolm Evans is a Professor of Public International Law at the University of Bristol. Malcolm Evans is the editor of International Law, which provides wide-ranging analysis of all the key issues and themes in public international law and brings together an outstanding collection of interesting and diverse writings from the leading scholars in the field.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.

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Is the planet full? Can the world continue to support a growing population estimated to reach 10 billion people by the middle of the century? And how can we harness the benefits of a healthier, wealthier and longer-living population?

Professor Ian Golding, together with leading academics Professor Sarah Harper, Dr Toby Ord, Professor Robyn Norton, and Professor Charles Godfray, introduced this topical subject at the Oxford Literary Festival 2014. While it is common to hear about the problems of overpopulation, there might be unexplored benefits of increasing numbers of people in the world. Find out more about this intriguing themes watching the panel at the Oxford Martin School of academics debating the intended and unintended impacts of population and economic growth.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ian Goldin is the Director of the Oxford Martin School and Professor of Globalisation and Development at Oxford University. From 2001 to 2006 he was at the World Bank, first as Director of Policy and then as Vice President. Previously, he was advisor to President Mandela and Chief Executive of the Development Bank of Southern Africa. He has been knighted by the French Government. Professor Goldin has published over fifty articles and eighteen books, including Exceptional People: How Migration Shaped our World and Will Define our Future, Globalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges, Divided Nations: Why global governance is failing and what we can do about it. He is the editor of Is the Planet Full?.

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The post Is the planet full? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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The basic problem for anyone wanting to understand contemporary world politics is the amount of material that is out there. Where on earth would you start if you wanted to explain the most important political processes? How, for example, would you explain the reasons behind 9/11, the War in Iraq, the recent global financial crisis, or the ongoing Syrian Civil War?

Whether you are aware of it or not, whenever you are faced with such issues, you have to resort to theories. A theory is not just a formal model with hypotheses and assumptions, rather, it is a kind of simplifying device that allows you to decide what the most important factors are.

Students often feel that the theoretical side of international relations is daunting, but think of it this way: imagine you own several pairs of sunglasses with different-coloured lenses. Put on the red pair and the world looks red, put on a yellow pair and it looks yellow. The world is not any different, it just looks different. So it is with theories.

In the following video, Professor Sir Steve Smith, author of The Globalization of World Politics, discuss different theories behind the Syrian Civil War, how to interpret them, and how they are important.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sir Steve Smith is Vice-Chancellor of the University of Exeter. He was President of Universities UK from 2009 to 2011, and President of the International Studies Association for 2003-4. He is Editor of International Relations Theories: Discipline and Diversity (with Tim Dunne and Milja Kurk) and Foreign Policy: Theories, Actors, Cases (with Tim Dunne and Amelia Hadfield), as well as author of many academic papers and chapters in major international journals and edited collections.

Trusted by over 300,000 students in over 120 countries, The Globalization of World Politics is the most authoritative and complete introduction to international relations available, making it the go-to text for students of international relations. You can view more related videos at the Online Resource Centre.

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By Louis René Beres

Oddly, perhaps, there are striking similarities between Western Epicureanism and Eastern Buddhism. Even a cursory glance at Lucretius, On The Nature of Things, reveals a characteristically “Buddhist” position on human oneness and human transience. Greek and Roman Stoicism, too, share this animating concept, a revealing vision of both interpersonal connectedness and civilizational impermanence.

But what has this understanding to do with current world affairs, especially patterns of globalization and interdependence? Consider that in their common passage from the ethereal to the corporeal, Epicureanism, Stoicism and Buddhism all acknowledge one great and indissoluble bond of everlasting being, an essential and harmonious conflation of self and world. While each instructs that the death of self is meaningless, even a delusion, all also agree that the commonality of death can overcome corrosive divisions. This recognized commonality can provide humankind with authentically optimal sources of global cooperation. Whether or not we can ever get beyond our fear of death, it is only this commonality that can ultimately lift us above planetary fragmentation and explosive disunity.

For political scientists, economists, and other world affairs specialists, such a “molecular” view can open new opportunities for the expanding study of globalization and international relations. Rather than focus narrowly on more traditional institutions and norms, this neglected perspective can now offer scholars a chance to look more penetratingly behind the news. The outer world of politics and statecraft is often a reflection of our innermost private selves.

Virtually every species (more than ninety-nine percent, to be more exact) that once walked or crawled on this nearly-broken planet has already become extinct. Exeunt omnes? Where shall we go?

Even among the most sophisticated scholars of globalization and world politics, certain essential truths remain well hidden. As a species, whether openly or surreptitiously, we often take a more-or-less conspicuous delight in the suffering of others. Psychologists and writers call it schadenfreude.

What sort of species can tolerate or venerate such a hideous source of pleasure? To what extent, if any, is this venal quality related to our steadily-diminishing prospects for building modern civilizations upon ancient premises of human oneness?

“Our unconscious,” wrote Freud, “does not believe in its own death; it behaves as if it were immortal. “What we ordinarily describe as heroism may in some cases be no more than denial. Still, an expanded acceptance of personal mortality may represent the very last best chance we have to endure together.

Such acceptance can come from personal encounters with death. All things move in the midst of death, but what does it really feel like to almost die? What can we learn from experiencing near death (no one can “experience” death itself, an elementary insight shared famously by Lucretius, Schopenhauer, and Santayana), and then emerging, whole, to live again?

Can we learn something here that might benefit the wider human community, something that could even move us beyond schadenfreude to viable forms of cooperation and globalization?

Death happens to us all, but our awareness of this expectation is blunted by deception. To accept forthrightly that we are all flesh and blood creatures of biology is more than most humans can bear. Normally, there is even a peculiar embarrassment felt by the living in the presence of the dead and dying. It is almost as if death and dying were reserved only for others.

That we, as individuals, typically cling to sacred promises of redemption and immortality is not, by itself, a species-survival issue. It becomes an existential problem, one that we customarily call war, terrorism, or genocide, only when these assorted promises are forcibly limited to certain segments of humanity, but are then denied to other “less-worthy” segments.

In the end, we must learn to understand, all national and international politics are genuinely epiphenomenal, a symptomatic reflection of underlying and compelling private needs. The most pressing of these private needs is undoubtedly an avoidance of personal death.

It is generally not for us to choose when to die. Rather, our words, our faces, and our countenance, will sometime lie well beyond any considerations of conscious choice. But we can still choose to recognize our shared common fate, and therefore our critical interdependence. This incomparably powerful recognition could carry with it an equally significant collective promise.

Much as we might like to please ourselves with various qualitative presumptions of hierarchy and differentiation, we humans are pretty much the same. This is already abundantly clear to scientists and physicians. Whatever our divergent views on what  happens to us after death, the basic mortality that we share can represent the very last best chance we have to coexist and survive. This is the case only if we can first make the very difficult leap from a shared common fate, to more generalized feelings of empathy.

We can care for one another as humans, but only after we have first acknowledged that the judgment of a common fate will not be waived by any harms that are inflicted deliberately upon others, upon the “unworthy.” In essence, modern war, terror, and genocide are often disguised expressions of religious sacrifice. They may represent utterly desperate human hopes of overcoming private mortality through the killing of “outsiders.” Such sacrificial hopes are fundamentally and irremediably incompatible with the more cooperative forms of world politics.

A dual awareness of our common human destination and of the associated futility of sacrifice, offer medicine against endless torment in the global “state of nature.” Only such awareness can genuinely relieve an otherwise incessant war of all against all. Only a person who can feel deeply within himself or herself the unalterable fate and suffering of a broader humanity will ever be able to embrace genuine compassion, and thus to reject destructive spasms of collective violence.

There can be no private conquests of death through war, terror, or genocide. To cooperate and survive as a species, a uniquely courageous and worldwide embrace of mortality, empathy, and caring will first be needed. For students of globalization and world politics, this imperative can represent a timeless understanding of almost unimaginable potency. It’s time to think more about such primal unity, and its still-latent promise for humane globalization and interdependence.

Louis René Beres, Professor of Political Science and International Law at Purdue, was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971). He is currently examining previously unexplored connections between human death fears and world politics. Born in Zürich, Switzerland, at the end of World War II, Professor Beres is the author of ten books, and several hundred articles, on international relations and international law. He is a regular contributor to the OUPblog.

If you’re interested in this subject, you may be interested in Globalization for Development: Meeting New Challenges by Ian Goldin and Kenneth Reinert. Globalization and its relation to poverty reduction and development are not well understood. Goldin and Reinert explore the ways in which globalization can overcome poverty or make it worse, define the big historical trends, identify the main globalization processes (trade, finance, aid, migration, and ideas), and examine how each can contribute to economic development.

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By Grahame Thompson

Have we seen a potentially new form of global governance quietly emerging over the last decade or so, one that is establishing a surrogate and informal process of the constitutionalization of global economic and political relationships, something that is creeping up on us almost unnoticed?  This issue of ‘global constitutionalization’ has become an important topic of analysis over recent years. Its development is most obvious in the case of business and corporate activity but I suggest it has a much wider provenance and is threatening to encompass many other aspects of global governance like human rights, security and warfare, environmental regulation, and more besides. One difficulty in analyzing this trend is to define its characteristics and parameters since it represents a rather loose configuration, one that is not easy to pin down.

Quasi-constitutionalization is a surrogate process of constitutionalization, not a coherent program with a rounded set of outcomes but full of contradictory half-finished currents and projects: an ‘assemblage’ of many disparate advances and often directionless moves – almost an accidental coming together of elements. So it does not amount to a ‘system’ in any conventional sense. This means it marshals together a complex bricolage of resources: material techniques and devices like models, documents, court decisions, legal statutes and treaties; institutional orders like legal apparatuses, bodies  and governance organizations; and discursive expertise, theoretical knowledges and instruments. But it is a process nonetheless: it is building norms of conduct, rule-making, and a distribution of powers in a ‘global polity’.

I call this a quasi-constitutional process because while it resembles a constitution in many respects it is difficult to transpose constitutionality directly into an international environment where there is no single competent authority that might foster or enforce such a constitution.

In turn, this connects to various senses of the juridicalization of international corporate and other affairs, where new or revitalized types of law are increasingly being brought into play as the mechanisms for resolving disputes or organizing governance. This involves new forms of public law, private law, customary law, regulatory and administrative law, all of which are rapidly evolving in the international arena alongside traditional international law. Institutions that embody such a process are the WTO, various agencies of the UN, the OECD, Bilateral Trade and Investment treaties, and a huge number of standard setting and benchmarking organization many of which are private in character but which both claim and exercise a public power at the global level. This is the site of a reinvigorated private law and private authority operating in the international domain. In the case of companies, they are increasingly adopting the language of global corporate citizenship to characterize their activity as civic actors in this evolving quasi-constitutional environment, and they are being addressed as such by bodies like the World Economic Forum and the UN’s Global Compact. Bilateral trade and investment treaties have mushroomed over recent years. Investment treaties are an example of global private administrative law in action.

On the other hand we have the OECD in its capacity as sponsor of socially responsible conduct by multinational companies (Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises) which has become an instrument of global public administrative law. John Ruggie’s recent attempt to introduce a comprehensive regime of human rights into the business world (the UNs Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework) is another case in point of the creeping quasi-constitutionalizing process.

But a major issue of concern is whether quasi-constitutionalization leads to the Rule by Laws (RbLs) rather than the Rule of Law (RoL) in the international system? The RoL may be being given away as RbLs replace a comprehensive system of democratically constituted judicial review, which cannot happen in the case of global quasi-constitutionality.

Thus in this evolving environment, instead of the rule by elected and accountable political officials we are seeing the emergence of rule by lawyers and by aged judges and law professors in international commercial and other matters. These are the actors that are leading the process of institutional rule-making. Public and particularly private elites are making-up the rules as they go along, arbitrarily and on an ad hoc basis. I call this a rule by a new self-appointed Guild of Lawyers on the one hand and a new Clerisy of the Law on the other. In effect, we are giving up any form of democratic legitimacy and accountability with this introduction of global quasi-constitutionalization.

Grahame F. Thompson is Professor of Political Economy at the Copenhagen Business School (Denmark), and Emeritus Professor at the Open University (England). His research and teaching interests have been in international political economy matters, and globalization; with a recent focus on the role of business organization in the context of international economic matters. He is the author of The Constitutionalization of the Global Corporate Sphere? (OUP, 2012).

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Image credit: Cover of U.S. Constitution by giftlegacy via iStockphoto. 

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By Mark Bevir

Governance, governance everywhere – why has the word “governance” become so common? One reason is that many people believe that the state no longer matters, or at least the state matters far less than it used to. Even politicians often tell us that the state can’t do much. They say they have no choice about many policies. The global economy compels them to introduce austerity programs. The need for competitiveness requires them to contract-out public services, including some prisons in the US.

If the state isn’t ruling through government institutions, then presumably there is a more diffuse form of governance involving various actors. So, “governance” is a broader term than “state” or “government”. Governance refers to all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a government, market, or network, whether over a family, corporation, or territory, and whether by laws, norms, power, or language. Governance focuses not only on the state and its institutions but also on the creation of rule and order in social practices.

Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament

The rise of the word “governance” as an alternative to “government” reflects some of the most important social and political trends of recent times. Social scientists sometimes talk of the hollowing-out of the state. The state has been weakened from above by the rise of regional blocs like the European Union and by the global economy. The state has been weakened from below by the use of contracts and partnerships that involve other organizations in the delivery of public services. Globalization and the transformation of the public sector mean that the state cannot dictate or coordinate public policy. The state depends in part on global, transnational, private, and voluntary sector organizations to implement many of its policies. Further, the state is rarely able to control or command these other actors. The state has to negotiate with them as best it can, and often it has little bargaining power.

But, although the role of the state has changed, these changes do not necessarily mean that the state is less important. An alternative perspective might suggest that the state has simply changed the way it acts. From this viewpoint, the state has adopted more indirect tools of governing but these are just as effective – perhaps even more so – than the ones they replaced. Whereas the state used to govern directly through bureaucratic agencies, today it governs indirectly through, for example, contracts, regulations, and targets. Perhaps, therefore, the state has not been hollowed-out so much as come to focus on meta-governance, that is, the governance of the other organizations in the markets and networks that now seem to govern us.

The hollow state and meta-governance appear to be competing descriptions of today’s politics. If we say the state has been hollowed out, we seem to imply it no longer matters. If we say the state is the key to meta-governance, we seem to imply it retains the central role in deciding public policy. Perhaps, however, the two descriptions are compatible with one another. The real lesson of the rise of the word “governance” might be that there is something wrong with our very concept of the state.

All too often people evoke the state as if it were some kind of monolithic entity. They say that “the state did something” or that “state power lay behind something”. However, the state is not a person capable of acting; rather, the state consists of various people who do not always not act in a manner consistent with one another. “The state” contains a vast range of different people in various agencies, with various relationships acting in various ways for various purposes and in accord with various beliefs. Far from being a monolithic entity that acts with one mind, the state contains within it all kinds of contests and misunderstandings.

Descriptions of a hollow state tell us that policymakers have actively tried to replace bureaucracies with markets and networks. They evoke complex policy environments in which central government departments are not necessarily the most important actors let alone the only ones. Descriptions of meta-governance tell us that policymakers introduced markets and networks as tools by which they hoped to get certain ends. They evoke the ways central government departments act in complex policy environments.

When we see the word “governance”, it should remind us that the state is an abstraction based on diverse and contested patterns of concrete activity. State action and state power do not fit one neat pattern – neither that of hollowing-out or meta-governance. Presidents, prime ministers, legislators, civil servants, and street level bureaucrats can all sometimes make a difference, but the state is stateless, for it has no essence.

Mark Bevir is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of several books including Governance: A Very Short Introduction (2012) and  The State as Cultural Practice (2010). He is also the editor or co-editor of 10 books, including a two volume Encyclopaedia of Governance (2007). He founded the undergraduate course on ‘Theories of Governance’ at Berkeley and teaches a graduate course on ‘Strategies of Contemporary Governance’.

The Very Short Introductions (VSI) series combines a small format with authoritative analysis and big ideas for hundreds of topic areas. Written by our expert authors, these books can change the way you think about the things that interest you and are the perfect introduction to subjects you previously knew nothing about. Grow your knowledge with OUPblog and the VSI series every Friday!

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Image Credit: Martin Schulz during the election camapign in 2009. Creative Commons Licence – Mettmann. (via Wikimedia Commons)

The post Does the state still matter? appeared first on OUPblog.

Peter Spiro is Charles Weiner Professor of Law at Temple University. A former State Department lawyer, National Security Council staff member, and U.S. Supreme Court law clerk, he has written on international, immigration, and constitutional law for may of the nation’s top law reviews as well as such publications as Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic. In his book Beyond Citizenship: American Identity After Globalization Spiro examines how technology has forced many people to spend at least part of their careers overseas and the effect this has had on the concept of “citizenship.” Be sure to check out the round table discussion of Beyond Citizenship here. In the post below Spiro looks at how this is playing out currently.

Citizenship practice is an area of profound contemporary instability. Our conceptions of citizenship are being transformed, with the result that membership in the state no longer enjoys the primacy it once did. This will have pervasive implications for the nature of the state as a location of governance.

Citizenship policy isn’t often above the fold in the newspapers, but there is a lot going on. Here are three items from last week which give some taste of the new ways citizenship is being contested.

1. In Jamaica and several other smaller states, there are heated controversies surrounding the holding of political office by dual citizens (see this story, for example). Many dual citizens are voting in political elections. Why not take it to the next level? Some countries have constitutional bans on office-holding by dual citizens. Many others don’t, and there is pressure in countries such as Jamaica to shelve theirs. In a world in which old-fashioned notions of allegiance don’t stand for much, why disqualify individuals who would otherwise be chosen to serve.

2. The world soccer federation wants to clamp down on players who change their citizenship, with a special concern that Brazilians will otherwise come to dominate the World Cup, not just playing for Brazil (see the story here). The fact that there is a perception of a problem here shows that countries themselves don’t care if their teams actually consist of fellow national. They’re more interested in winning than in sticking to national solidarities.

3. In Australia there is pushback against a new test for naturalization applicants (see here). The test is incurring a 10% failure rate. How to justify depriving individuals of equal status because they can’t pass a test? That’s the dilemma of citizenship in the age of rights. Citizenship is inherently exclusionary, and that doesn’t sit well with contemporary rights sensibilities.

In my book Beyond Citizenship, I look at how globalization is overwhelming the institution of citizenship. There is a powerful nostalgia to defend and restore the state and its liberal virtues, but that won’t be enough.

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I didn't even know Ira Levin had died until my agent told me she was going to his service tomorrow. I guess he died Monday. He was 78. He wrote Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil. His first book, A Kiss Before Dying, was written when he was only 22. It won the Edgar.

I remember when I first got my agent. I was so excited to at the same agency as Ira Levin, JD Salinger, James Herriot (the vet guy, remember?), and the estates of Faulkner, Christie, and Fitzgerald. At one time, I lied and said I had lost the list, just so I could get a new one with my name on it. I imagined JD and me would end up on the same page. But they had enough clients that he was about three pages on.

My agent always said she liked Ira. She sold film rights to the remake of The Stepford Wives, which I think everyone admitted was pretty awful.