The Lawrence Today reading list, Spring 2006
Columnist Anna Quindlen once wrote: “I would be most content if my
children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly
of building enough bookshelves.” That’s our kind of people, too.
Lawrentians are readers. Whether that is an attribute or an affliction, we
leave up to you. In any event, it is encouraged each year by the faculty
members who take the time to recommend books for Lawrence Today readers.
Our thanks
to them — and to you, the readers.
Minoo Adenwalla, professor emeritus of government
Strobe Talbot, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy, and the Bomb (2004,
Brookings Institution Press).
On May 11, 1998, India exploded three nuclear devices under the Thar desert.
Pakistan responded with a test of its own. This plunged Indo-U.S. relations,
never very strong or stable, into an even deeper crisis.
The book deals with the most-extensive-ever negotiations between India and
the U.S., conducted between the book’s author, Strobe Talbot, Deputy
Secretary of State in the Clinton administration, and Minister of External
Affairs for India Jaswant Singh. As the negotiations progressed over controversial
disputes, the personal relationship between the two developed into trust and
friendship. Eventually, though it did not resolve every problem between India
and the U.S., it laid the groundwork for President Clinton’s transformational
visit to India and the opening of a new chapter in the stormy relationship
between the two democracies.
Dan Alger, ’72, associate professor of economics
Game
theory (the mathematics of interdependent behavior) has been a common thread
for all of my career. In the same vein that The Selfish Gene by
Richard Dawkins (now read in Freshman
Studies) was an eye-opener for me decades
ago,
as it applies game theory to biological evolution, Daniel Dennett’s Darwin’s
Dangerous Idea (1996, Simon & Schuster) is an eye-opener today,
as it applies evolutionary thinking (and game theory) to cultural evolution
and the development of morality. Powerful stuff from
a
well-known philosopher.
The Origin and Evolution of Cultures (2005, Oxford University
Press), by Robert Boyd and Peter Richerson, uses game theory even more
directly in
thinking about
cultural evolution, especially of cultural norms that promote cooperation.
Good stuff from two anthropologists.
A powerful book in economics and political science that I’ve enjoyed
recently is The Rise and Decline of Nations (1984, Yale University
Press), by Mancur Olson,
an economist. He takes a common concept in economics, what we call public
goods, and applies it to lobbying and political participation. He can then
explain
when special interests form and how political systems develop over time.
Add a few
more observations, and Olson predicts some really strong conclusions about
developing economies, some of which are counterintuitive to many people.
Really good work
accessible to any of us.
All three of these books have recently kept me up past my bedtime.
Peter Gilbert, director of the Seeley G. Mudd Library and associate professor
Siva Vaidhyanathan, Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual
Property and How It Threatens Creativity (2001, NYU Press). Thinking
clearly about copyright is one of the great challenges of the digital age.
In this reasoned and compelling book, Vaidhyanathan, a cultural historian
and media
scholar at New York University, takes us through the history of U.S. copyright
from the
Constitution to Mark Twain to Napster. Corporate interests, he argues,
have used copyright law, technology, and contract law to control intellectual
output. But copyright law was meant to be flexible — a flexibility
that is essential for cultural expression. If you’re interested in
these issues — and
even if you’re not — Copyrights and Copywrongs is well worth
the read.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind (2004, Penguin
Press); translated by Lucia Graves. Daniel Sempere is ten when his widowed
father brings him to The Cemetery of Forgotten Books. There he
discovers a novel, The Shadow of the Wind, by the mysterious Julian
Carax. Daniel is entranced by the book but learns that Carax’s
works are virtually impossible to find; rumor has it that a dark figure
with a limp has bought or stolen every Carax available and that all the
copies have been burned.
The man
with the limp is said to go by the name of Lain Coubert — the name
in The Shadow of the Wind used by the devil. And it just gets more mysterious
and convoluted
from there — if you can imagine.
Bertrand Goldgar, professor of English and John N. Bergstrom Professor of
Humanities
I can recommend some books that I happen to have read recently, a few of
which first appeared some time ago.
First, a 20th-century classic, Russell Hoban’s Riddley Walker (Indiana
University Press), which was re-published in 1998 in a revised, expanded
edition. It’s a post-apocalyptic fable in a wildly clever and
imaginative language that will tax you slightly at first, but no more
than Clockwork Orange — and this is a much greater book. (Burgess himself
said of Walker, “This
is what literature is meant to be.”)
I also enjoyed Kate Atkinson’s Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Picador),
which won the Whitbread Prize as the best first novel of 1995. It’s about
a young girl growing up in a flat behind a pet shop in an old street near York
Minster, but her story manages to turn into a compelling, extended family history
covering more than a century.
Finally, just published recently, Untold Stories (2005, Gardners
Books), by the playwright and man of letters Alan Bennett, author of The
Lady in the Van,
The
Madness of King George, The History Boys, and other notable plays.
This is a collection of his prose of the past ten years, including diaries
and reviews;
its autobiographical title piece is a moving, candid, and disturbing
account of his parents, especially of his depressed mother. Bennett’s
prose should be a model for us all.
Eilene Hoft-March, professor of French
Jody Shields’ The Fig Eater (2001, Back Bay Books) is a richly detailed
mystery set in turn-of-the-century (that is, 19th to 20th century) Vienna.
A police detective and his Hungarian wife become obsessed by the murder of
a young
woman in a city park. Each spouse pieces together a version of the story independently,
he with the aid of the new science of forensics and she with the use of charm,
intuition, and dark arts from her native Hungary.
The Final Solution (2004, Fourth Estate), by Michael Chabon,
features a decrepit sleuth, vaguely Holmes-like and long past his powers
of
detection, though
not beyond compassionate insight. He helps solve the mysteries of one
last theft and one last murder without quite understanding the significance
of
his solution.
In The Year of Magical Thinking (2005, Knopf), Joan Didion recounts
the double
catastrophes of losing her husband of 40 years at the very moment that
their only child is lying in a hospital bed in a coma. As she puts
it, “you
sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.” The book is
a meditation on the stunning relentlessness of bereavement and the
human mind’s equally stunning resistance to loss.
For readers of French, I recommend Une Vie Française (2004,
Olivier), by Jean-Paul Dubois (merci, Katie!) The life in question
is that of a disillusioned
leftist who threads his way through the Algerian war, the May ’68
demonstrations, the rose revolution of Mitterand, and the blander era
of Chirac.
Carol Mason, adjunct professor of anthropology
James Shapiro, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare: 1599 (2005,
HarperCollins).
Gimmicky title aside, this is a splendid book, not to be missed.
Shapiro rightly sees Shakespeare as part of his own place and time
and gives
the reader a wonderfully
intricate view of the politics, religion, economics, and daily life
bearing on the playwright and his contemporaries. In short, he is
holding a mirror
up to
one year, showing the reader the very age and body of the time. One
can almost smell Elizabethan England.
Lawrence Clayton, Vernon Knight, and Edward Moore, eds., The De Soto
Chronicles: The Expedition of Hernando de Soto to North America in
1539-1543 (two vols.,
1995, University of Alabama Press). This is the latest translation
and scholarly examination of some of the most astonishing documents
surviving from the 16th century.
The
context
is as
if beings from another galaxy dropped “plunk” into the
world of Southeastern Indians without warning and without understanding
what they saw. How they interpreted
and reported what they experienced is of signal interest: sometimes
informative, often insightful, too frequently terrible in the casual
inhumanity of the times. It is a shivering picture of what might
happen to Earth should that Inter-Galactic
Empire really
exist and
the flying saucers actually land.
Erik Larson, The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at
the Fair that Changed America (2003, Vintage). The Chicago World’s
Fair of 1893 had an incalculable effect on the developing field of anthropology;
linguistics, ethnography, art, and physical anthropology
were stimulated by the immediate presence of so much human and cultural
diversity all in one place. This book joins a horrific mystery (the “Devil” of
the title) with the absolutely heroic tale of the mounting of the
fair: the White City. How it all happened is fascinating, complex, and filled
with crosscurrents of politics, architecture, and the amazing excesses of
the Gilded
Age. It all comes
alive in that city on Lake Michigan, a city that owes some of its
modern beauty to the work of the fair builders.
Jon Katz, A Dog Year: Twelve Months, Four Dogs, and Me (2003, Random
House) and The Dogs of Bedlam Farm: An Adventure with Sixteen
Sheep, Three Dogs,
Two Donkeys,
and Me (2004, Villard). For anyone interested in the peculiar
bond between people and dogs, these two books make engrossing reading.
The dog/human relationship is an often-explored phenomenon,
but the mystery remains. These are entertaining and informative
studies of one man’s
exploration of the world of border collies, labs, sheep, and humans.
Well-written and at times touching, funny, maddening, and tender,
these two little books are truly jewels in the literature of dogs.
Besides,
any book
about border
collies has to be special.
Jerald Podair, associate professor of history and the Robert S.
French Professor of American Studies
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood. You saw the movie, now (re)read
the book. Capote’s
1965 classic is more than a gripping story of crime and character. A journalist
with a novelist’s imagination, Capote blurred the line between
fiction and nonfiction to achieve a greater truth, changing the
way we read and write
today.
Edmund Morgan, Benjamin Franklin (2002, Yale University Press).
It’s Ben’s
300th birthday, and “The First American” has inspired a shelf of
new biographies. Morgan, academic history’s preeminent stylist (and the
recipient of a Lawrence
honorary degree in 2003), has written one of the best.
Long before the advent of Madonna, Franklin perfected the art of personal reinvention,
and Morgan’s spare, clear prose takes his measure in about half the number
of pages chewed up by the “doorstop” biographies.
Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy (2005, W.W. Norton).
Speaking of doorstop books, here’s one that’s
actually worth reading. A magisterial narrative of American history
from the early republic to the Civil War, it goes a long way toward
rectifying the bias against “top-down” political
history that has developed in the academy in recent decades.
For Wilentz, political heavyweights like Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln
drove the history of the period;
that they are dead white males does not make them any less significant.
He shows us that people matter in history and that their stories are America’s
story.
Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan (2001,
Harper Perennial). Japan’s Emperor Hirohito (1901-1989) was a passive, peace-loving monarch
unable to stop his nation’s headlong rush into militarism and war. Yeah,
right. Bix’s devastating counterhistory utilizes new sources to portray
Hirohito as the architect of Japan’s aggressive foreign policy,
responsible for the disaster of World War II. A reminder that,
in history, as in life,
appearances often deceive.
Vince Lombardi, with W.C. Heinz, Run to Daylight! (1963, Prentice
Hall Trade). A week in the life of America’s greatest coach. This pioneering first-person
account of preparation for a big game offers us an appealingly human Lombardi,
who daydreams in traffic just like the rest of us and suffers the same doubts
and insecurities as mere mortals. He even cries in front of his players — after
he wins on Sunday.
Gervais Reed, professor emeritus of French
Paul Auster, Oracle Night (2003, Henry Holt and Co.). Auster
has always been fascinated by the mysteries that connect us.
His protagonist,
Sidney, buys
a notebook in which to write, the stationer from whom he bought
it closes his shop,
Sidney’s wife weeps in a taxi, etc. These events and other mysteries in
this novel are connected to Dashiell Hammet’s The
Maltese Falcon of 1930.
Auster is the author of many previous works of fiction, among them The
New York Trilogy (City of Glass, Ghosts, The Locked
Room), as well as nonfiction like
The Invasion of Solitude; he also was the director of National Public Radio’s
National Story Project.
Haruki Murikami, after the quake (2002, Knopf). Six short stories
connected one way or another to the Kobe earthquake in 1995
but perhaps joined
especially by
the idea of storytelling itself. Murikami’s unforgettable
Super Frog saves Tokyo. Frank Galati adapted two of these stories
for stage
performance
at Steppenwolf
Theatre in 2005-06.
Marilynne Robinson, Gilead (2004, Farrar, Straus and Giroux).
A 76-year-old preacher writes a farewell to his son in which
he recounts
his life
in Gilead, Iowa. It
sounds like treacle, but anyone who has read her highly acclaimed
Housekeeping (1980) or dipped into the essays titled The
Death of Adam knows that
Robinson is a tough-minded thinker who writes elegant prose.
Richard Yatzeck, professor of Russian
This
year I would like to suggest Pat Barker’s World War I trilogy: Regeneration,
The Eye in the Door, and The Ghost Road (1996,
Viking Books). To this I would add, again, J.L. Carr’s A
Month in the Country (2001, New York Review of
Books). A politically active friend attacks such reading
as a betrayal of “the
real world.” I can only say that I believe good fiction
to be a revelation of reality much deeper than today’s
headlines and much more formative of a humane spirit.
Books by Lawrence alumni
Compact discs by alumni and conservatory
faculty and ensembles