Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2003
“I can’t write without a reader,” author John Cheever once said. “It’s precisely like a kiss — you can’t do it alone.” Lawrence alumni are serious readers. It’s something they picked up along with their liberal arts education. Accordingly, each year Lawrence Today helps its readers feed their book habit by canvassing the faculty for suggestions. Herewith, the 2003 installment, with thanks to the professors who did the picking.
Minoo Adenwalla
Professor emeritus of government
Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great About America (2002, Regnery Publishing, Inc.). D’Souza, the brilliant but controversial Indian (i.e., from India) commentator and critic on general matters of culture and politics, defends the U.S. against the intellectual denunciations of Islamic fundamentalism and the indigenous attacks of both the political Left, which claims that the nation is imperialistic, racist, and the oppressor of minorities, and the Right, which argues that “America is suffering a moral and cultural breakdown.”
A 1983 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Dartmouth College, D’Souza served as a senior domestic policy analyst at the Reagan White House from 1987 to1988. At the moment, he is the Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. His prior works include Illiberal Education (1991), Ronald Reagan: How an Ordinary Man Became an Extraordinary Leader (1997), and The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values in an Age of Techno Affluence (2000).
Dan Alger, ’72
Associate professor of economics
Mancur Olson, The Rise and Fall of Nations (1982, Yale University Press). Olson applies a relatively simple argument about the incentives of lobbying for legal or regulatory change that has tremendous implications for the economic development of nations. He then compares these implications against available empirical observations. It’s a powerful use of the scientific approach to political economy.
Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue (1996, Penguin). This is a well-written book for general audiences on the evolution of cooperation operating at the biological, rational, and cultural levels. Beach reading for Lawrence alums.
Marcia Bjørnerud
Professor of geology
Lester Brown, The Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (2001, W.W. Norton).
Mona Simpson, Off Keck Road (2000, Alfred Knopf; also as a Vintage paperback, 2001).
At any given time, I am typically part way through several books, a practice that allows me to read the genre (“serious” fiction, creative nonfiction, political tracts, literary trash) that may suit my mood on a particular day. Sometimes these randomly juxtaposed works resonate with each other in surprising ways.
In The Eco-Economy, Lester Brown, founder of Worldwatch Institute and now head of the Earth Policy Institute, presents a compelling vision of an environmentally sustainable world economy. The premise is that, for long-term stability, economic structures must be designed with a deep understanding of natural systems. At a time when it is all too easy to despair at the bleakness of the global environmental scene, the book offers cause for measured optimism. Through a mix of low and high technology, international agreements, and grassroots activism, Brown argues, it just may be possible to balance — and reconcile — the world’s ecological and economic budgets. Both of those “eco”-systems derive their names from the Greek word oikos, or household, and the global household has until now been divided against itself. By the end of the book, one is inspired to roll up one’s sleeves and help with the long-neglected housekeeping chores.
Mona Simpson’s novel Off Keck Road (a Pen-Faulkner award finalist) is domestic in the literal sense. The book is a quiet, Chekhovian masterpiece set in Green Bay, Wisconsin, from the mid-1950s to the near present. It traces the arc of a woman’s life from ebullient adolescence through complacent senescence, a life circumscribed at all stages by social convention, self-doubt, and inertia. We know this woman, Bea Maxwell (after all, she lived just down the river from us), and we understand the paralyzing immensity of the forces she would have had to overcome to live her life in any other way. Yet we long for more for her and feel that even the least word of affirmation might have given her the courage to live larger.
In reading these two books at the same time, Bea Maxwell and her unrealized life became conflated in my mind with our collective inability, as an affluent culture, to change, even when we know we could and should.
John Daniel
Associate professor of music
Erich Fromm, To Have or To Be (1996, Continuum) or Psychoanalysis and Religion (1959, Yale University Press). To Have or To Be is an indictment of the trends of western civilization prevalent in the 1950s. The rift between “having” and “being” seems to have grown since then. Psychoanalysis and Religion discusses the history and human impulse behind these two fields. Common ground is identified. Freud, Jung, James, and the like are the main cast of characters.
Any of the books by philosopher Paul Brunton published posthumously. The Ego/from Birth to Rebirth (1987, Larson Publishing) and Divine Mind, Enlightened Mind (1988, Larson) are examples. Paul Brunton (1898-1981) was a journalist who responded to an inner voice to travel the world in search of sages, mystics, and great philosophic minds. He wrote many books about his travels. In the early 1950s, he retired into seclusion in order to think, meditate, and write. To date, there have been 20 volumes of his notebooks published posthumously, covering every subject associated with the kingdom within. The clarity and nuance of thought is distinctive.
Dominique-René de Lerma
Visiting professor of music
Helen Walker-Hill, From Spirituals to Symphonies; African American Women Composers and Their Music (2002, Greenwood Publishing Group). The most data-filled book I have read recently, the work of a virtuoso scholar.
Elizabeth De Stasio, ’83
Associate professor of biology and Raymond H. Herzog Professor of Science
Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders (2002, Penguin). Because this is the current novel on my nightstand, I couldn’t reveal the ending if I wanted to. The setting is rural England 1665-1666, the years of the plague, and the main character is a determined and modest female. While the dust jacket may not intrigue you, the interplay of morality, courage, and faith against self-interest, fear, and faith is quite riveting. Brooks is a former Wall Street Journal correspondent and this, her first novel, is a terrific narrative.
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (2002 edition, Oxford University Press). Yes, I know this one has been around since 1949, but there is a terrific new coffee table edition that is simply gorgeous. You should still read and mark up the old paperback copy, as it is just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago (hence its inclusion this year in Freshman Studies). The new volume contains arresting photographs of the flora and fauna of the Sand County region of Wisconsin. Here you find familiar Canada geese and muskrat, columbine and trillium, along with the blackberry leaves that Leopold dubbed “red lanterns” and several great portraits of sandhill cranes. The expected photos of “the shack” in various seasons are here as well. In all, the volume is a reminder of the intimacy with which Leopold knew his farm, as well as a reminder of why conservation, and now restoration, are key to our continued existence within our environment.
Christian R. Grose
Assistant professor of government
Given the controversy that swirled around now-ex Senate Republican leader Trent Lott following his December 2002 remarks praising 100-year old Strom Thurmond, I am suggesting two books that examine the interplay of racial politics, U.S. politics, and the changing South:
Earl Black and Merle Black, The Rise of Southern Republicans (2002, Belknap/Harvard University Press). Identical twins and political scientists Earl and Merle Black open their book with an anecdote about Strom Thurmond’s final election night party in 1996, after having been elected to the Senate for an astonishing eighth term. Using the career of party-switching, formerly segregationist Thurmond as a foundation for a broader discussion of southern politics, they carefully detail the changing role of race, the rise of Republican support among conservative whites, and the importance of southern support in the elections of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. A fascinating read, chock full of great stories for political junkies from any region as well as detailed evidence about the rise of the Republicans in the South and the implications for the U.S. as a whole.
Carol Swain, The New White Nationalism in America (2002, Cambridge University Press). The author, a law and political science professor at Vanderbilt University, conducted numerous interviews with members of contemporary white supremacist organizations similar to the Council of Conservative Citizens with which Trent Lott has been associated, as well as more mainstream individuals in the Academy who have expressed Lott-like racial views. Difficult to pigeonhole ideologically, Swain is clearly critical of these “white nationalists” but then offers conservative policy prescriptions such as eliminating affirmative action so that white supremacist groups will not rely upon what she considers legitimate critiques of current policy in order to expand their membership. You may or may not agree with everything, but it’s an intriguing read. Also worth reading is her award-winning Black Faces, Black Interests: The Representation of Black Interests in Congress (1995, Harvard University Press), in which she interviewed both white and African American members of Congress to analyze who best represents the interests of African Americans.
Eilene Hoft-March
Associate professor of French
Michael Ondaatje, Anil’s Ghost (2001, Vintage Books). A forensic anthropologist returns to her native Sri Lanka to conduct research into human rights violations. In so doing, she becomes increasingly entangled in the very dangers that provoked her investigation. The book reads a bit like a thriller, but Ondaatje, author of The English Patient, displays an ability to capture human gesture in its ancientness and subtlety and meaning that makes this a particularly worthy read.
Two recommendations for readers of French: La Joueuse de Go (2002, Grasset), by Shan Sa, a young Chinese expatriate living and writing in France, and Le Non de Klara (2002, Maurice Nadeau), by Soazig Aaron, a former bookstore clerk.
La Joueuse takes place during the years of the Japanese occupation of China. The story progresses by the alternating narrations of a Manchurian schoolgirl and a young Japanese officer. The two characters are brought together eventually as adversaries in an ongoing series of “go” games, even as the atrocities of war threaten to engulf them. Sa writes with a deep sympathy for both characters as each struggles for — and against — an identity that is fundamentally cultural.
Le Non de Klara is a stunning first novel that made off with two coveted literary prizes in France. Set in Paris in the months following World War II, the story follows the attempted re-integration of a Holocaust survivor into what’s left of her family. Written as the journal of one of the family members, the novel emphasizes the incomprehensibility of Klara’s “history” and its incompatibility with the “normal” business of living. The difficult subject matter demands very careful treatment; fortunately, Aaron crafts her work without recourse to cheap dramatic tricks.
Carol Mason
Adjunct professor of anthropology
Janet Browne, Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (2001, Knopf). Six years after the publication of Janet Browne’s highly acclaimed first volume of her two-volume biography of Darwin, the second, eagerly awaited book has appeared. The incredible excitement of the young Darwin, hot on the intellectual trail of the species problem in Volume I (Voyaging), has given way to the later years, often cited as the time of the “recluse of Down House.” Browne has shown that, while ill much of the time, Darwin nevertheless was not a recluse and was at the center of biological thought during the late Victorian period. His engagement in research occupied him endlessly, using mail as a principal tool in his far-flung inquiries — he would have loved e-mail.
The social anthropology of the scientific establishment in supporting him is fascinating: Huxley, Hooker, Lyell all spring to life as part of the intellectual organization of the time. And, watching Darwin struggle with the problem of heredity and teeter on the brink of a solution makes the reader long to have given him a handful of green and yellow peas.
Browne’s beautifully written and meticulously researched biography has set a high standard — anyone who has not read Voyaging and its successor volume is missing a major treat.
Robert S. Weddle, The Wreck of the Belle, the Ruin of La Salle (2001, Texas A&M Press). Combining archaeology with history, Weddle covers the amazing underwater archaeological discovery of the wreck of the last of La Salle’s ships, sunk off the Texas coast in 1686. Weddle sets the wreck within the career of that strange and enigmatic personality, René-Robert, Sieur de La Salle, and brings alive the double tragedy of the aborted French settlement in Texas and the subsequent murder of La Salle at the hands of his own men.
Originally, the purpose of the La Salle voyage from France was to locate the mouth of the Mississippi River and ascend it with shiploads of men, women, and children, who were to form a new French settlement on the “Spanish Sea.” Step by misspent step, the voyage and settlement resulted in death, unspeakable hardship, and ultimate failure. The loss of the little ship Belle was the tipover point between survival and total ruin for all concerned.
Weddle’s account, based on ships’ logs, diaries, official reports, and the archaeological recovery of the Belle, is both scholarly and enormously gripping — history with the appeal of a novel.
Rex Myers
Lecturer in history and Freshman Studies
Jasper Fforde, The Eyre Affair: A Novel (2002, Viking Penguin). Time and the printed word are fluid in Fforde’s world. His heroine, Thursday Next, is a Literary Detective in the Special Operations Network (London), charged with preserving the integrity of classic literature in a world that cares. Someone steals the original manuscript of Jane Eyre with the power to change all extant printed copies by simply altering the manuscript. This premise makes for intriguing possibilities, a delightful story well told, and a refreshing perspective on literary analysis.
Bill Holm, Coming Home Crazy (2000, Milkweed Editions). Originally published (and originally read) in 1990, I purchased and reread the new edition in preparation for a Lawrence University Freeman Grant trip to Japan and China during the summer of 2002. Holm taught in Xian, China, for a year in the late 1980s and advances the premise that, once you live in another culture, your own doesn’t seem as rational. Holm’s perspective on craziness reads well and still rings true as a temple gong. It’s worth putting in your carry-on bag, wherever you’re headed.
Jerald Podair
Assistant professor of history
Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Biography of H. L. Mencken (2002, HarperCollins). Mencken showed America how to speak in its own voice. Few literary figures of the 20th century influenced our nation’s literature, criticism, and language more than this self-educated Baltimore journalist, and Teachout reminds us how much we owe him, despite his less-than-admirable personal traits.
Vincent Cannato, The Ungovernable City (2002, Basic Books). Young, charismatic, and arrogant, John Lindsay wrecked his political career trying to reform New York City during the 1960s. This book offers an object lesson in the perils of hubris, sanctimony, and moral hypocrisy for effective urban leadership.
Kiron Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson, eds., Reagan in His Own Hand (2001, Free Press). Ronnie? A policy wonk? Are you serious? Well, while this collection of Reagan’s radio broadcasts from the 1970s may not have earned him a chair at the Kennedy School of Government, they will go a long way toward dispelling the notion that he was a genial dim bulb. Agree with him or not, Reagan thought deeply about the issues of his day, and the jokes about the extent of his intellectual engagement should now stop.
Murray Sperber, Beer and Circus (2001, Owl Books). Boy, will you be glad you went to Lawrence after reading this. Sperber shows how big-time universities mask their failure to educate undergraduates by distracting them with alcohol and sports. A book that makes one cherish liberal arts education all the more.
Sam Roberts, The Brother (2001, Random House). What does it feel like to send your sister to the electric chair? David Greenglass’s testimony was at the center of the Rosenberg atomic spy trial of 1951 and resulted in a death sentence for his sister, Ethel. A stunning journalistic achievement (Greenglass had lived under an assumed identity for almost 40 years before New York Times reporter Roberts tracked him down), this is a poignant story of misplaced loyalties, both personal and ideological.
Jerald Podair, The Strike That Changed New York: Blacks, Whites, and the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Crisis (2003, Yale University Press). Thought I’d give the author a plug. How black and white New Yorkers during the 1960s came to view the same events in markedly different ways — and created a city of strangers.
Susan L. Richards
Director of the Seeley G. Mudd Library and associate professor
Isabel Allende, Daughter of Fortune (1999, HarperCollins) and Portrait in Sepia (2001, HarperCollins). I am a recent convert to the fiction of Isabel Allende. As many reviewers have noted, she is one of the most widely read Latin American novelists. Her books leap to the best seller list as soon as they are published — but the wonderful thing about reading books is that it doesn’t matter whether you “discover” an author when she first begins publishing or encounter her after her career is well established.
Best known for her 1987 House of the Spirits, Allende’s talent lies in her considerable ability to evoke place and create characters one wants to know. Daughter of Fortune follows Eliza Sommer, from her adoption in Chile as an infant to California during the middle of the 19th century. Sommer, raised with wealth and privilege, struggles to fit into the Victorian life her parents and society expect. She abandons Chilean society and as a pregnant, unmarried woman, stows away on a ship to California. This move gives Allende the opportunity to recreate California during the turbulent, exciting years of Gold Rush fever, something she does better than most other novelists.
Portrait in Sepia picks up the story of Eliza’s granddaughter, Aurora del Valle. Aurora, her first years spent in California, moves to Chile to live with her widowed paternal grandmother, Paulina del Valle, a powerful, eccentric businesswoman. Aurora does not know the details of her parentage — which, to make a good story, are complicated — and her grandmother Paulina is loath to answer her questions. These hidden complications are what motivate Aurora to discover the story of her past and the identity of her parents. Again, Allende creates the 19th-century worlds of San Francisco and Santiago vividly and powerfully. And, while Aurora is not as interesting as her two grandmothers, Paulina and Eliza provide plenty of character to keep you turning the pages. If you haven’t encountered Allende yet, try these two books. Next on my list is House of the Spirits, which traces the same family line into the 20th century.
[Ed. note: Isabel Allende received the honorary degree Doctor of Letters from Lawrence in 2000, when she addressed a university convocation.]
Daniel J. Taylor, ’63
Hiram A. Jones Professor of Classics
Ross King’s Ex-Libris (2002, Penguin) sets its readers down on London Bridge in 1660, and pretty soon we’re off in search of a missing manuscript. The tales of travel throughout the turmoil of 17th century Europe are told by the first-person narrator, Isaac Inchbold, a London bookseller and antiquarian. The novel breathes history and mystery on every page.
If the name Ross King sounds familiar, that’s because he is also the author of the best-selling Brunelleschi’s Dome (2001, Penguin). This slim volume chronicles Filippo Brunelleschi’s monumental achievement of figuring out how to build a dome for the magnificent cathedral that the Florentines had constructed. It was an historic Renaissance engineering feat patterned on ancient Roman building techniques as exemplified by the Pantheon in Rome. King is at his best here and writes a work of non-fiction that reads like a novel.
All roads lead to Rome, as we know, but those same roads also lead away from Rome. Route 66 A.D. by Tony Perrottet (2002, Random House) takes us armchair travelers to Troy, the Acropolis in Athens, the lost Colossus of Rhodes, and even the Pyramids of Egypt, but it does so with a marvelous twist. We experience the ancient grand tour of the Roman Empire through the eyes and writings of contemporary Roman tourists. Perrottet translates these ancient travelogues, but he also uses them as the itinerary for his own travels. For the record, lumpy beds and lousy food have been around for millennia. Route 66 A.D. is an informative and entertaining romp around the Mediterranean in both the past and the present.
Jane Parish Yang
Associate professor of East Asian languages and cultures
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto: A Novel (2002, Harper Perennial). South American terrorists storm a diplomatic reception and hold an opera star and opera lovers hostage. Fascinating peek into the worlds of diplomacy and music.
Jonathan Spence, The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution (1982, Viking Press). Spence presents the chaotic history of reform and revolution in China through the interconnected lives of intellectuals, revolutionaries, and traditionalists. Still as enthralling as when it was first published 20 years ago.
Richard Yatzeck
Professor of Russian
Since “war” seems to be the name of the present game, I would like to suggest two fine authors on the subject: Pat Barker and W. G. Sebald. Although I have found all of their works relevant to our present situation, I will name two: Barker’s Regeneration (1993, Plume) and Sebald’s Austerlitz (2002, Modern Library). If we are in no position to halt this foolish game, we may at least attempt to understand our situation. Barker and Sebald can help.