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What Are You Reading This Summer?
Posted 6/29/2005
From light fiction to scholarly tomes, members of the university community are immersing themselves in a wide variety of books this summer, as they hit the beach, travel, or relax in the backyard.
We asked faculty and staff from across the university to share their summer reading lists with us. Over the next few weeks, we will publish their responses in a series of installments in UNotes.
We’d love to know what’s on your summer reading list! If you would like to share it, please write to unotes@hartford.edu, and tell us what you’re reading this summer, and why.
In the meantime, if you’d like to know what some of your colleagues are reading, or if you’re looking for some recommendations to take to your local library or bookstore, read on.
Walter Harrison, University President and Baseball Scholar
Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld
I am reading this novel by a wonderful new voice in American fiction. Sittenfeld explores the anguishes and joys of adolescence and the sociology of privilege in a classic New England prep school. Sittenfeld is senstive and funny, but above all, she is a good writer.
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig
Lou Gehrig's story is not only a great baseball tale; it's also a fascinating look at the experience of an immigrant family in America in the early part of the 20th century and an heroic story of a courageous fight against a fatal disease. This new biography unearths some of Gehrig's previously unknown letters to his doctors.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi
I'm leading a discussion of this book at the Hartford Public Library this fall. It's a very unusual memoir of a teacher in Iran who led a group of seven women students in reading forbidden classics of Western literature during the fundamentalist wave of the 1990s. It is said to be a wonderful celebration of the liberating power of literature.
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman
I find Friedman's writing in book length a little dense (he is better in his New York Times columns), but his insights into technology and affluence in the modern world are persuasive and troubling.
Pat Meiser-McKnett, Director of Athletics
I intend to read Closing the Leadership Gap by Marie C. Wilson (I heard her speak this past year, and she was terrific). I have already read Understanding Nanotechnology by the editors of Scientific American, and will also read Investor's Guide to Nanotechnology and Micromachines by Glenn Fishbine. My son-in-law just got his Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley, and I am fascinated by his field of study and career aspirations. It is cutting edge and our future.
Richard Freund, Director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies
(Note: Freund left this week to lead excavations at Bethsaida, Israel; Mary's Well in Nazareth, Israel; Yavne, Israel; and Burgos, Spain. He will return on Aug. 1.)
Four weeks of excavations, four books. I was attracted to these books because of what everyone has said about them:
Philip Roth's The Plot Against America
The idea of this work of fiction based upon history is chilling but is the stuff of much of what I teach. It asks the question “What if?” – What if history were slightly changed by plausible events that happened just before and during WWII?
Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is about the power of thinking without thinking – The idea of how we make determinations about people before we know factual information about them and how accurate those "intuitions" or "insights" are.
Caleb Carr's The Alienist is a work that combines fiction and history (again, something that fascinates me) related to the events of the end of the 19th century. It involves the earliest form of modern CSI-type techniques in New York City, employed to catch a ruthless killer and involving Theodore Roosevelt.
Steve Allen's Dumbth is this comedian/social analyst's take on the lost art of thinking and ways to reason better and improve your mind through simple methods. Never a lost art when you make your living from teaching people to think!
Fred Sweitzer, Associate Dean of the College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions
(Note: Sweitzer will serve as Acting Dean beginning July 6)
I am currently reading The Kite Runner, a novel about Afghanistan before and after the revolution, and then I have on tap The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, a mystery.
In the non-fiction arena I am reading William Sullivan’s Work and Integrity, Howard Gardner’s Changing Minds, and Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness. These are all authors whose work I find interesting and inspiring.
Paul Siegel, Director of the School of Communication
My summer reading, beyond work-related materials, is mostly plays – and mostly the plays that the various southeastern Connecticut professional theatre companies are doing in the coming year. (I have been asked to serve as Connecticut Life newspaper's new drama critic.) These include A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams, and A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill.
John Kniering, Director of Career Services
The Fabric of Reality, by David Deutsch
More reflections on the Double Slit Experiment; or, physical reality is oxymoronic until you consider multiple universes.
The Web of Life, by Fritjof Capra
A synthesis of dynamic systems theory, network theory, and recent work in physics, applied to living systems. Maybe Shakespeare had it right – "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections, by Charles Pellegrino
How a culture that had refined steam power in 79 A.D. was destined not to land a human on the moon a century later. The culprits? You'll have to read the book.
Look for more summer reading lists in next Wednesday’s issue of UNotes!
We asked faculty and staff from across the university to share their summer reading lists with us. Over the next few weeks, we will publish their responses in a series of installments in UNotes.
We’d love to know what’s on your summer reading list! If you would like to share it, please write to unotes@hartford.edu, and tell us what you’re reading this summer, and why.
In the meantime, if you’d like to know what some of your colleagues are reading, or if you’re looking for some recommendations to take to your local library or bookstore, read on.
Walter Harrison, University President and Baseball Scholar
Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld
I am reading this novel by a wonderful new voice in American fiction. Sittenfeld explores the anguishes and joys of adolescence and the sociology of privilege in a classic New England prep school. Sittenfeld is senstive and funny, but above all, she is a good writer.
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig, by Jonathan Eig
Lou Gehrig's story is not only a great baseball tale; it's also a fascinating look at the experience of an immigrant family in America in the early part of the 20th century and an heroic story of a courageous fight against a fatal disease. This new biography unearths some of Gehrig's previously unknown letters to his doctors.
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, by Azar Nafisi
I'm leading a discussion of this book at the Hartford Public Library this fall. It's a very unusual memoir of a teacher in Iran who led a group of seven women students in reading forbidden classics of Western literature during the fundamentalist wave of the 1990s. It is said to be a wonderful celebration of the liberating power of literature.
The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman
I find Friedman's writing in book length a little dense (he is better in his New York Times columns), but his insights into technology and affluence in the modern world are persuasive and troubling.
Pat Meiser-McKnett, Director of Athletics
I intend to read Closing the Leadership Gap by Marie C. Wilson (I heard her speak this past year, and she was terrific). I have already read Understanding Nanotechnology by the editors of Scientific American, and will also read Investor's Guide to Nanotechnology and Micromachines by Glenn Fishbine. My son-in-law just got his Ph.D. in chemistry from UC Berkeley, and I am fascinated by his field of study and career aspirations. It is cutting edge and our future.
Richard Freund, Director of the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies
(Note: Freund left this week to lead excavations at Bethsaida, Israel; Mary's Well in Nazareth, Israel; Yavne, Israel; and Burgos, Spain. He will return on Aug. 1.)
Four weeks of excavations, four books. I was attracted to these books because of what everyone has said about them:
Philip Roth's The Plot Against America
The idea of this work of fiction based upon history is chilling but is the stuff of much of what I teach. It asks the question “What if?” – What if history were slightly changed by plausible events that happened just before and during WWII?
Malcolm Gladwell's Blink is about the power of thinking without thinking – The idea of how we make determinations about people before we know factual information about them and how accurate those "intuitions" or "insights" are.
Caleb Carr's The Alienist is a work that combines fiction and history (again, something that fascinates me) related to the events of the end of the 19th century. It involves the earliest form of modern CSI-type techniques in New York City, employed to catch a ruthless killer and involving Theodore Roosevelt.
Steve Allen's Dumbth is this comedian/social analyst's take on the lost art of thinking and ways to reason better and improve your mind through simple methods. Never a lost art when you make your living from teaching people to think!
Fred Sweitzer, Associate Dean of the College of Education, Nursing and Health Professions
(Note: Sweitzer will serve as Acting Dean beginning July 6)
I am currently reading The Kite Runner, a novel about Afghanistan before and after the revolution, and then I have on tap The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, a mystery.
In the non-fiction arena I am reading William Sullivan’s Work and Integrity, Howard Gardner’s Changing Minds, and Parker Palmer’s A Hidden Wholeness. These are all authors whose work I find interesting and inspiring.
Paul Siegel, Director of the School of Communication
My summer reading, beyond work-related materials, is mostly plays – and mostly the plays that the various southeastern Connecticut professional theatre companies are doing in the coming year. (I have been asked to serve as Connecticut Life newspaper's new drama critic.) These include A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur by Tennessee Williams, and A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O'Neill.
John Kniering, Director of Career Services
The Fabric of Reality, by David Deutsch
More reflections on the Double Slit Experiment; or, physical reality is oxymoronic until you consider multiple universes.
The Web of Life, by Fritjof Capra
A synthesis of dynamic systems theory, network theory, and recent work in physics, applied to living systems. Maybe Shakespeare had it right – "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."
Ghosts of Vesuvius: A New Look at the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections, by Charles Pellegrino
How a culture that had refined steam power in 79 A.D. was destined not to land a human on the moon a century later. The culprits? You'll have to read the book.
Look for more summer reading lists in next Wednesday’s issue of UNotes!
