141 BOOK REVIEW TWO BOOKS ON THE TOP SHELF By Maria Zakharova Author PhD (Law), Kutafi n Moscow State Law University, 2005 Head of a research center, Kutafi n Moscow State Law University and Associate Member, University of Bordeaux E-mail: avis_777@mail.ru Abstract Each new shooting star in the sky, each sound of a clock striking midnight on New Year’s Eve, and even each shrill ring of a morning alarm clock, gives birth to one, or even two, new law books. <...> Legal literature intended to be strictly professional helps to properly divide an inheritance, decrease the tax burden, or accomplish other useful and important things. <...> Although this type of literature is a necessity recognized by the chaotic courts of justice, the so-called upper shelves of the bookcase often remain unattended because of lack of time and physical strength. <...> In this review the author draws attention to books occupying the upper shelves of a legal bookcase representing two classical legal traditions – the Continental European and the Anglo-Saxon – respectively. <...> Each book mentioned in this review investigates the correlations between the animate and the inanimate and between the animate and the animate. <...> Keywords Law, freedom, legal system, Russia, France On the top shelf can be found books of honor, valuable and worthy. <...> Volume 1 September 2014 Issue 1 www.kulawr.ru 142 KUTAFIN UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW Close at hand and within easy reach are books that are useful in everyday life; for example, those concerning tax optimization, refi nancing programs, and court practice. <...> Of course, there is also – old and totally worn out, with lots of bookmarks, and full of comments made by others or sometimes by your own hand – the “comrade-in-arms” since student days: the Civil Code. <...> Further on, looking at us from behind the placid glass of the bookcase, stern in content and reserved in form, is the Criminal Code and, of course, the book of occasionally failed hopes, the Constitution. <...> One of those books in question is “Tolstoп et le Droit. ”1 It was published a short time ago and received the award of the French Academy of Moral and Political Sciences [ l’Acadйmie des sciences morales et politiques] just in a month after its publication. <...> The author <...>