My Beloved World, by Sonia Sotomayor. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013, 315 pp., $27.95 hardbound: Horatio Alger with Affirmative Action

What gives it unusual interest is that the author is a Supreme Court justice of Puerto Rican descent who (by her own admission) has benefited from racial preferencesand it is published just as Sotomayor and her fellow justices are weighing a new constitutional challenge to racial preferences in college admissions in Fisher v. University of Texas. [...]Sotomayor graduates summa cum laude, is elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and goes on to Yale Law School. Does Sotomayor believe that look-wider, search-more affirmative action has served its purpose of opening doors to minority students who should now be treated like everyone else, or shall racial preferences become permanent? Liberal justices are praised in the prestige press and showered with honorary degrees and awards from bar associations and public organizations.