A concise, lively, and bracing exploration of an issue bedeviling our cultural landscape–plagiarism in literature, academia, music, art, and film–by one of our most influential and controversial legal scholars. Best-selling novelists J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown, popular historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, first novelist Kaavya Viswanathan: all have rightly or wrongly been accused of plagiarism–theft of intellectual property–provoking widespread media punditry. But what exactly is plagiarism? How has the meaning of this notoriously ambiguous term changed over time as a consequence of historical and cultural transformations? Is the practice on the rise, or just more easily detectable by technological advances? How does the current market for expressive goods inform our own understanding of plagiarism? Is there really such a thing as “cryptomnesia,” the unconscious, unintentional appropriation of another’s work? What are the mysterious motives and curious excuses of plagiarists? What forms of punishment and absolution does this “sin” elicit? What is the good in certain types of plagiarism?

Provocative, insightful, and extraordinary for its clarity and forthrightness, The Little Book of Plagiarism is an analytical tour de force in small, the work of “one of the top twenty legal thinkers in America” ( Legal Affairs ), a distinguished jurist renowned for his adventuresome intellect and daring iconoclasm.

理查德·波斯納，先後以最優生和年級第一名畢業於耶魯大學英文係(1959)和哈佛大學法學院(1962)。曾任美國聯邦最高法院大法官助理、聯邦政府律師、斯坦福大學法學院副教授(1968)、芝加哥大學法學院教授(1969)和講座教授。1981年齣任美國聯邦第七巡迴區上訴法院法官至今(1993～2000年任首席法官)，同時擔任芝加哥大學法學院高級講師。

波斯納是法律經濟學的主要創建者之一；同時也是“法律與文學”和實用主義法學的領軍人物。他的著作眾多，輻射廣泛，有所謂“一個人的智庫”之稱；他的法律學術和實踐重塑瞭美國的法學和法律。

“他是著述最豐的聯邦法官，前無古人。任職上訴法院、仍屬最高産的法學傢之列，同樣前無古人。如果以引證率測度影響力，那麼當仁不讓，波斯納是在世的最有影響的法學傢。”(勞倫斯·萊西格語)