Lawrence University faculty members offer suggestions for your recreational reading.
Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2003
Charles S. Ahlgren
Stephen Edward Scarff Memorial Visiting Professor of Government
Ryszard Kapuscinski, The Shadow of the Sun. This is a collection of brilliant essays depicting the author's grassroots experiences in post-colonial Africa over a 40-year period. Great writing. Drenched with similitude for the old African hand, a highly informative eye-opener for the newcomer to the region.
Peter Hessler, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze. The memoir of a young Peace Corps volunteer's two-year stint teaching English in Fuling, a small industrial town in Sichuan province, in the heart of China. A beautifully written, poignant, and insightful portrait of life in China today.
Marcia Bjørnerud
Associate professor of geology
Lucy Jago, The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis. As charismatic as they may be, geoscientists are not often selected to appear on coins and currency. An exception is the Norwegian 200 kroner note, which honors Kristian Birkeland, the person credited with understanding the physics behind the northern lights in the early part of the 20th century. Jago's book is an expertly woven story of Birkeland's life: his brilliance, single-mindedness, social naïveté, and physical stamina, all ultimately undermined by the corrosive effects of decades of malign treatment by scientific counterparts outside Norway.
The story includes blizzards, epiphanies, romance, triumph, and tragedy as it follows Birkeland's peregrinations all over the world, from the Scandinavian arctic to Russia, Egypt, and Japan. Sadly, many of Birkeland's theories were not appreciated by the scientific community until decades after his death. Even if you have never heard of the ionosphere or magnetotail, this book will engage you. It illumines an ephemeral human life spent in conversation with Nature.
Peter A. Blitstein
Assistant professor of history
Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin. Humorous, thought-provoking, and absurd novel of how people survive in a society collapsed. The action takes place in post-communist Kiev, but it could just as easily be Moscow or St. Petersburg. An out-of-work writer finds employment writing obituaries about Kiev's still-living elite while caring for a penguin the financially strapped zoo cannot afford. What then ensues involves murder, organized crime, and political corruption.
Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post-Communist Russia. In a series of columns originally published in the 1990s and updated to the present day, Cohen demolishes the assumptions behind America's policies toward post-Soviet Russia. Policies designed to remake Russia in our own image will never work, he argues, and will only cause a backlash against us. Whether or not one agrees with all of his conclusions, Cohen is one of our most incisive Russia-watchers; his views are worth considering.
Mark Mazower, The Balkans: A Short History. In about 150 pages, Mazower overviews the grand sweep of Balkan history. He is especially critical of what has become the standard interpretation of the post-Yugoslav wars -- that they were caused by ancient hatreds. History is more complicated than that, and Mazower surveys that complexity with style.
Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. A short and gripping account of the events in one Polish town under German occupation during the Second World War. Gross challenges the view that the Jews of the town were murdered by the Germans; he finds that their Polish neighbors were responsible. The book caused an outcry in Poland because of this conclusion. Whether Gross proves his case is less important, perhaps, than the questions he raises about responsibility and guilt.
Dominique-René de Lerma
Visiting professor of music
Andrew Ward, Dark Midnight When I Rise: The Story of The Fisk Jubilee Singers. In an effort to raise money for young Fisk University in Nashville, not properly endowed when it was founded just after the Civil War, a group of students were taken on tours, first in the U.S. and then in Europe, singing America's most precious musical legacy -- the spiritual. This was a milestone in American music history and one that had a strong influence on aspects of European music. Ward, although not a musician, has provided a most dramatic account.
Rainer E. Lotz, Black People: Entertainers of African Descent in Europe and Germany. I have been a guest in the Lotz home several times and, to me, they are exemplars of the German genius for scholarship. By profession, he is a banker, but this accounting of Black American musicians in Europe before the First World War is a virtuosic display of musicological research. Included in the volume (published by Frau Lotz) is a CD of performances one would never have expected to hear.
Elizabeth DeStasio, '83
Associate professor of biology and Raymond H. Herzog Professor of Science
Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World. This is an entertaining and informative mixture of the history, ecology, and economics of the entire cod industry, with a few recipes thrown in for good measure. The interweaving of history of the countries surrounding the Atlantic with humans' ability to extract cod from the sea makes fascinating reading. Kurlansky argues that, without cod, the Americas would have remained undiscovered by Europeans for much longer and certainly cities such as Boston would not have grown and prospered as quickly. No wonder a replica of a cod hangs in the Massachusetts Statehouse to this day.
Dava Sobel, Longitude: The True Story Of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. I knew nothing about the rather fascinating problem of knowing one's longitude, especially when at sea. Sobel's book is a very accessible and interesting account of the debate between those favoring an astronomical vs. a time-keeping solution to the problem. Sobel documents the eventual success of John Harrison, who was never fully acknowledged for his contribution. Alumni who read Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions in Freshman Studies will understand why Harrison's approach was not favored. Remember the term paradigm?
Matt Ridley, Genome. Ridley is a first-rate science journalist. In this text he describes our knowledge of the content of the human genome, one chromosome at a time. For each of the 23 human chromosomes, Ridley chooses to focus on one aspect of human genetics related to that chromosome. For example, chromosome 7 includes a gene whose product is involved in language development, giving Ridley an excuse to talk about the interplay of language acquisition and instinct. Since chromosome 10 includes the CYP17 gene (which encodes an enzyme that converts cholesterol to cortisol and sex hormones), Ridley can discuss both sex determination and human response to stress, including the two-way interplay of environment and genes. Intertwined with discussions of the content of our genome are examples of the methods of genome research as well as the implications of our findings.
If you are interested in learning more about discoveries in the field of cancer research, hear about it from one of the main players in Racing to the Beginning of the Road by Robert Weinberg, or turn to Natalie Angier's Natiural Obsession: Striving to Unlock the Deepest Secrets of the Cancer Cell. Angier, a science journalist, spent a year in Weinberg's lab; thus hers is an outsider's view of the inner workings of a high-powered lab at the Weismann Center in Cambridge. Weinberg takes a larger-scale view of the "War on Cancer," describing the competing camps of researchers: one group convinced that cancer was induced by viruses, another that set out to prove that cancer was environmentally induced, and a third group who saw that some cancers were the product of in-born genetic defects. Weinberg does a great job describing the basic science involved and how the competing hypotheses were eventually sorted out. Of course, the contributions of the Weinberg lab are not left out!
Peter J. Gilbert
Associate professor, library
Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America. Menand, professor of literature, journalist, and critic, examines the development and influence of pragmatism in American culture by examining the lives, writings, and influence of four men: Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., psychologist William James, philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and John Dewey, "America's first public intellectual." An erudite and engrossing exploration of American intellectual history.
Bertrand A. Goldgar
Professor of English and John N. Bergstrom Professor of Humanities
Philip Roth, The Human Stain. He didn't win the Pulitzer for this one, but it's much better than his American Pastoral, which did win it. I think this is one of the best novels I've read in many years.
Dwight Allen, '74, The Green Suit. Allen is a Lawrence graduate, and this novel, or group of interconnected stories-which-develop, is very fine, very subtle, very amusing. It's been well received and highly praised.
Eilene Hoft-March
Associate professor of French
Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse. In this novel, a nun turned farmer's wife turned crime victim turned Catholic priest -- don't ask; just read -- becomes an integral part of the tight weave of lives on an Ojibwe reservation. While the story of the priest's struggle to hold her community together is most touching, I think I preferred the colorful stories of the priest's parishioners, a cast of several dozen characters -- helpfully catalogued in the genealogy on the inside cover. Among the many rich and daring stories that embellish the novel, my all-time favorite is Nanapush's wild moose ride to his eternal rest.
Amélie Nothomb, Stupeur et tremblements (for readers of French). This was last summer's hottest-selling novel in Paris. A young Belgian woman encounters racism and patriarchal corporate culture in the Japanese firm where she is employed. The book is full of dark and scathing humor, not to mention blatant stereotypes, but through all of this one can occasionally glimpse a muted admiration for Japanese reserve and dignity. Outrageous, funny, and sad all at once.
Carol Mason
Adjunct professor of anthropology
E.O. Wilson, Consilience. This is an almost lyrical defense of the scientific approach to understanding nature by one of the most eminent natural historians of this and the last century. Wilson is, of course, well-known for his contributions in defining sociobiology as a field of inquiry and for his monumental studies of the natural history of ants.
Rebecca Epstein Matveyev
Assistant professor of Russian
Mary M. Leder, My Life in Stalinist Russia: An American Woman Looks Back. This is a recently published set of memoirs about the experiences of an American who spent a number of years living in Russia in the 1930s and 1940s.
Margaret Winchell, Armed with Patience: Daily Life in Post-Soviet Russia. This book makes an interesting counterpart to the previous title. By comparison to many books written by Westerners living in Soviet or post-Soviet Russia, this one takes a balanced view -- one that is neither overly negative nor overly idealistic.
W. Bruce Lincoln, Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia. This work does a remarkably good job of fulfilling the extremely ambitious task that its title poses. A historical overview is interwoven with discussions of literature, music, the decorative arts, architecture, and painting.
W. Bruce Lincoln, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. In this final work, published shortly after his death, Lincoln again demonstrates his ability to make Russian cultural history accessible to a wide audience.
Rex C. Myers
Lecturer in History and Freshman Studies
Food, fact, and fiction combine in two works focusing on Southwest cuisine. Sam'l P. Arnold (owner of Denver's famous "Fort" restaurant) has reissued his 1990 publication Eating Up the Santa Fe Trail. Historically accurate and fun to read, Arnold provides narrative and actual recipes from the 1821-1846 Santa Fe Trail era: buffalo tongue and campfire coffee, for example.
A modern culinary delight is Thomas Fox Averill's novel Secrets of the Tsil Cafe. This fine coming-of age story takes place between the father's Tsil Cafe (where he uses only ingredients found in the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere) and the mother's Italian catering service. Averill spices his protagonist's growing up with actual recipes. If Arnold's buffalo tongue and campfire coffee are too bland, try Averill's buffalo tongue with chipotle barbecue sauce and mescal (eat the worm).
Alan Parks
Associate professor of mathematics
W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. A very concise but accurate history of the oldest academic subject. Under $14 from Dover; you can't go wrong.
C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man. An older work that some of us re-discovered in a discussion group. The beginnings of what could be a long study concerning the problems of determinism as applied to modern education. A slow read, but worth it.
Peter N. Peregrine
Associate professor of anthropology
Marvin T. Smith, Coosa: The Rise and Fall of a Southeastern Mississippian Chiefdom. In this brief book, Smith accomplishes several remarkable feats: He brings to life a prehistoric Native American polity, he links the historic past with the prehistoric (a gap that is surprisingly difficult to bridge in eastern North America), and he provides a case study of the effect European contact had on a Native American culture. The Coosa chiefdom itself was a remarkable entity. It emerged around 1350 and by 1540 had developed into the paramount chiefdom in the southern Appalachian ridge and valley province. Dozens of other chiefdoms were, according to Spanish accounts, "subject" to Coosa, perhaps some 50,000 people in all. The lands controlled by Coosa were described as among the richest and most densely populated that the Spanish had encountered, and the chief of Coosa himself was described as the powerful ruler of a vast territory. By 1560 Coosa was in decline. Population had fallen dramatically, and the chiefdom itself was no longer a unified political entity. What happened between 1540 and 1560? The search for an answer to that question is at the heart of the book.
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. Physiologist Diamond made scores of anthropologists jealous with the publication of Guns, Germs, and Steel. In it he asks the question: Why did Western culture end up spreading across the globe? His answer rests only in part on the title's triumvirate of guns (which allowed conquest of otherwise powerful military states), germs (which aided conquest by killing off millions before the guns were ever in range), and steel (which in part is a metaphor for industrial technology). The other part of his answer is an ecological one -- Western Europe was beneficially located. Phrased in this way, Diamond's argument seems passÚ, almost quaint, but in Diamond's capable hands the argument gains sophistication and power (which is what makes anthropologists jealous, as few of us can write as well as Diamond, even though most of us feel we have better answers to his questions). Whether or not one accepts Diamond's answers, one cannot avoid the fact that his writing is compelling and that he has the rare ability to present a wealth of information in a lucid and readable style. It's no surprise Guns, Germs, and Steel won the Pulitzer Prize.
Jerald E. Podair
Assistant professor of history
Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America. Imagine if the Confederate Army, instead of laying down its arms at Appomattox, had taken to the hills and fought a guerrilla war that didn't end until, say, 1880. Could America have ever recovered? Probably not, and Winik shows us how close we came to this awful outcome. Only the generosity and forbearance of three great American heroes -- Lincoln, Grant, and Lee -- saved the nation as we know it.
Richard Reeves, President Nixon: Alone in the White House. Just another Nixon bio, right? Wrong. Reeves employs a wealth of new material, notably the contents of the legal pads onto which Nixon poured his deepest emotions, to paint a memorable portrait of a deeply disturbed, yet brilliant president, a man whose personal flaws altered the course of American history.
Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor, American Pharaoh. Another biography of a flawed political giant. Richard Daley created Chicago as a modern city but, in the process, reinforced some of urban America's worst attributes -- bossism, racism, and graft. Cohen and Taylor (no, not that Taylor) argue that Daley "may have saved Chicago," then go on to show us who got what, in a quintessentially American story of power, pride, and prejudice.
Phillip Lopate, ed., Writing New York: A Literary Anthology. What better time for a literary celebration of the world's bravest city? It's all here, an incomparable feast for the mind and soul -- from Whitman to Runyan to Ginsberg to Wolfe (both of them), across almost two centuries of Gotham's life and times. No need to read its 1,023 pages start to finish; stroll through it as if you were in New York on a lazy summer afternoon.
Robert Cowley, ed., What If?: The World's Foremost Military Historians Imagine What Might Have Been. Wish I had thought of this one. Twenty historians, including James McPherson, Stephen Ambrose, and David McCullough, ponder the way things might have been if even one detail had changed. A book that illustrates one of history's most important lessons: No outcome is inevitable.
Susan Richards
University librarian and associate professor
Zadie Smith, White Teeth. A first novel by a very talented writer, it is part comedy, part tragedy, with a strong dose of irony throughout. The main characters are Archie, a white, working-class Englishman, and Samad, a Muslim from Bangladesh, who had fought together in the British Army during the Second World War. Archie's Jamaican wife and Samad's Bengal spouse also become unlikely cohorts. The adventures and misadventures of these four friends (and sometimes foes), their multiracial children, and their friends in North London provide a springboard for author Smith to explore the religious and cultural directions taken by children of immigrants. This novel got rave reviews, and it deserves them. Smith is an eloquent writer who captures the immigrant experience and generational conflict with convincing realism and much sympathy.
Donnie Sendelbach
Lecturer in Russian
Alexander Pasternak, A Vanished Present: The Memoirs of Alexander Pasternak. This insightful account of Russian middle-class life at the turn of the last century also presents an intimate look at one of Russia's most talented families. While Boris Pasternak, Alexander's brother, received worldwide acclaim with a Nobel Prize, Alexander found his own niche as an architect, who helped design Lenin's mausoleum. Their father and mother were, moreover, a well-known painter and accomplished pianist, respectively. The fact that political circumstances later led to the physical separation of the family make these memoirs bittersweet. Personal accounts of events, such as the 1905 Revolution, provide the reader with a unique view of history.
Victor Pelevin, The Life of Insects. Pelevin creates a quirky, Kafkaesque world in which beings are both insects and humans at the same time. While sharply critiquing post-Soviet life, the author ponders existential questions shared across cultural and political divides. This novel is a fun but not light read.
Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, Immortal Love. Petrushevskaya has often been compared with Chekhov because of her accurate insight into the human psyche, as demonstrated in this collection of short stories. Modern life appears stark in her works, each of which contains a character or characters who elicit some degree of sympathy. My personal favorite is "Our Circle," whose protagonist appears to be an oddly abrasive woman. Although not in this collection, I also highly recommend her "Medea."
Claudena Skran
Associate professor of government
Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone. Putnam is a Harvard political scientist who has tracked the decline of civic engagement since 1945. According to Putnam, people born since 1945 bowl alone more, join the PTA less, and are less socially active than people born before the Second World War. He looks at several explanations for this decline, including the impact of education, television, the women's movement, and suburbanization. He also offers suggestions about how to revive civic participation in the U.S.
Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. This is one of the better popular books on globalization and its causes. It is especially good at showing how technological achievements and nationalistic attachments go hand in hand. Friedman is a Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times.
Ahmed Rashid, Taliban. This book gives a thorough account of the Taliban. It does an especially good job of explaining how the warrior culture of the Taliban shaped their view of women.
Jane Parish Yang
Associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures
Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Ledderose argues that the unique modular system of radical and phonetic parts devised for written Chinese characters carried over to modular systems for mass production of art objects, most notably the huge cache of underground terra cotta soldiers near Xian. This is the most original book on traditional China I have read in years.
Richard L. Yatzeck
Professor of Russian
J. L. Carr, A Month in the Country. Genuine love and honor, even in Yorkshire.
Marta Morazzoni, The Invention of Truth. Some particular human uses of art.
Tracy Chevalier, Girl With a Pearl Earring. For Vermeer fanciers only.
Dunnett, Dorothy, The King's Game. Sheer escape into Scottish history