Commander Lawrence's Bookshelf

Commander Lawrence's Bookshelf
Bookshelf where June fetches Charles Darwin’s "The Descent of Man"
Description	Commander Lawrence's Bookshelf

Commander Lawrence's Bookshelf is briefly seen in Useful when June fetches him a book from it, allowing the audience a view on the titles of his past publications and thus a deeper insight in his and Gileadean politics.

Shelf with books written by Lawrence

Shelf with more Lawrence books

Mention in the Show

Season 3, Useful

When June enters Commander Lawrence's study, which is now full of Commanders, the men are discussing a "shipment" of females from Chicago bound for the Colonies. As a discussion about the difference in gender abilities comes up, Lawrence mocks June's former profession as book editor and then commands her to fetch Charles Darwin’s "The Descent of Man" from his bookshelf. She retrieves the book in question and kneels to give it to him, and he dismisses her remarking "Women can be useful".

Visible Book Titles

"Women can be useful"
 (Relationships/Joseph and June)

Darwin Bookshelf

• "Svenska Folkets Underbara Öden" - Carl Grimberg (A novel-like recap through Sweden's history).
• "The Descent of Man" - Charles Darwin  (Literary Works).
• "The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking and the Future of the Global Economy" - by Mervyn King.
• "Altered States", a 1996 novel by Anita Brookner

Bookshelves with Lawrence's works

• "Problematic Populism: Upheaval During the Fertility Crisis and the Long-Term Effects on American Prosperity" - Joseph Lawrence
• "The Case for Relaunching the Mercantile Economy in Developing Nations" - Joseph Lawrence
• "The Religious Genealogy of Western Economies" - ???
• "Brink of Extinction" - Joseph Lawrence
• "Economic Contexts"
• "The Power to Compete" - Ryoichi and Hiroshi Mikitani
• "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" - Thomas Piketty
• "Economic Effects of the Religious Revival During the Fertility Crisis"
• "Women's Work and Coffee Spoons: Empirical Model of Women's Hours of Work" - Joseph Lawrence
• "American Prosperity in a Warming World"
• "...of Social Class and the Emerging Power of Religion"

Trivia

• Lawrence used to worry about the prosperity of his country in the face of global warming, fertility crisis and populist upheavals.
• According to Aunt Lydia, Lawrence is responsible for the establishment of Gilead's economy.
• Some of Lawrence's works cover the impact of religion on national economy since he sees a positive "economic effect" by religiousness and its "emerging power".
• The Boston Globe stated earlier that the Sons of Jacob as a nation-wide religious association "raises new hopes".
• Lawrence sees mercantilism as a way for an underdeveloped nation to become competitive.
• Lawrence is interested in numbers of female work performance. Women in Gilead aren't allowed to hold down a remunerated job. According to Mrs. Eleanor Lawrence, her husband devised the systematic force labor in the Colonies.
• "Altered States" by Anita Brookner can be seen next to the Darwin stack, suggesting some books written by women may have survived. This novel, the only work of fiction visible in these shots, is described by Publisher's Weekly as "a stunning study of obsessive passion and of the ways one man's promising life is irrevocably altered by an unwise but irresistible attraction".  (Literary Works)