A book by Gregory S. Alexander, Cornell professor of law, has been named one of the best scholarly works of 1997 by the Association of American Publishers.

Alexander's Commodity and Propriety: Competing Visions of Property in American Legal Thought, published by University of Chicago Press, was one of 31 titles recognized by the association at its annual meeting Feb. 10.

Alexander said his book is the "first intellectual history of property in American legal thought from the American Revolution to the present."

Alexander, who is currently a visiting professor of law at Harvard University, teaches courses on estates, trusts and theories of property.

"The basic thesis of the book is that American lawyers and judges have tended to think about property in market terms, primarily, but there has also been the notion of market purpose of property," he said, "and that purpose is to provide the material condition for creating proper social order."

Alexander is also author of a collection of essays, A Fourth Way (Routledge, 1992), which explores alternatives to neo-liberal conceptions of private property.

The Association of American Publishers annually names outstanding titles in a variety of categories from architecture to sociology.