A Summer Reading List

I particularly enjoyed Horse People by Michael Korda. It’s a story of the author’s lifelong fascination with horses and the people who associate with them. Descriptions of the characters, equine and human, are wonderful and insightful. This is a nice, light, relaxing, beautifully written book that is ideal for summer. If you have even a small inclination toward horses, you will be thrilled with this volume, and if horses are not in your life, who knows—after reading this, you may be tempted!

One of the more interesting books I’ve read recently is Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. It was written by a survivor of an ill-fated expedition up Mount Everest led by Rob Hall, who did not return. The account is a spellbinding thriller that is difficult to put down. The fact that it is true makes it all the more real to the reader.

I recommend The Progress of Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse by Gregg Easterbrook. Easterbrook, senior editor of The New Republic, responds to those who comment that “things are getting worse” by showing that in many aspects of social, economic, demographic, political, and environmental life, things were much worse in the recent past than they are today. Why, he then asks, does so much public discourse emphasize the negatives? It’s a thoughtful, balanced view of a position worth pondering.

My recommendation is China Mountain Zhang by Maureen McHugh. It’s a science fiction novel set in a future Earth, where communist China is the dominant economic, political, and ideological power. The protagonist, Zhang, is a gay part-Latino civil engineer who must pass as both Chinese and heterosexual—or risk disenfranchisement or death—as he seeks to find his way in life. In some ways, it’s a classic bildungsroman, the story of the construction and acquisition of a philosophy of—and purpose for—life. McHugh creates rich, complex, and believable characters and at the same time provides fantastic images of colonies on Mars and cyber-kite fliers. The students in my science fiction course last year enjoyed it very much.

My suggestion is Dispatches from a Not-So-Perfect Life by Faulkner Fox. It’s by a bright, young, professional woman who chronicles, with considerable candor and wit, the fears, tensions, confusion, and isolation experienced by a new mother as she enters uncharted terrain. The argument articulates the frustrations and joys of the redefinitions of personal constraints and understandings in her life as she attempts to balance changed domestic relationships with what she had deemed to be her life of intellectual integrity and privilege.

It’s so hard to pick just one! I like the novel The Game, by Laurie King, the latest in a series of detective novels that pair King’s character, Mary Russell, with Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. King’s series combines lush prose, a rich historical context, and a skeptical attitude toward the self-satisfaction of imperial England. I can’t wait to see how my childhood literary companions re-emerge as a result of her creative imagination. I’m also reading the history book The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America by Louis Menand. Menand grabbed my attention in the introduction, where he linked Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey as survivors of the American Civil War. Menand makes American history come alive by relating their individual biographies. I’m looking forward to finding out how they incorporated their war experiences both into their common conversations and into their lasting contributions to American law, philosophy, and letters.

Two books come to mind: River God, by Wilber Smith, and Aztec, by Gary Jennings. Both are fast-moving, well-written, historical fiction with colorful characters. River God is set in ancient Egypt. Aztec is set in Mexico just before that civilization’s “discovery” and virtual destruction by the Europeans.

Train, by Pete Dexter, is an intriguing murder mystery with provocative characters who intersect in ways that only Pete Dexter could fathom. A great summer read! The Known World, by Edward P. Jones, is a novel about a black slave owner in antebellum Virginia. It’s a complex, beautifully written work of historical fiction that explores this moral and historical quagmire.

For those of us who travel the world’s oceans for research, there are constant reminders of the age of exploration in the form of geographic names found on charts used for navigation. In the western Pacific Ocean, one finds the Magellan Seamounts and the Pigafetta Basin, which originate from Magellan’s famous voyage described in Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe by Laurence Bergreen. This account nicely highlights the role of Antonio Pigafetta who produced a chronicle of the expedition. The text would have benefited from continued (and substantial) editing and detailed maps. Nevertheless, I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about a time when our view of the world was transformed. Last summer while conducting field studies in Lesotho, we came upon a diamond mine that was not on our maps. Fortunately, it was not like those discussed in Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World’s Most Precious Stones, by Greg Campbell. Campbell describes the often horrific events in Sierra Leone associated with diamond mining and the complex series of wars that have ravaged the country. These events have spurred some geologists to seek ways to link diamonds to their source, but to date no efficient technique has been found. The chances are remote that anyone owns a “conflict diamond,” as gems from Sierra Leone (and a few other areas) are now known. But it certainly provides a thoughtful twist on a gemstone normally associated with much happier times.

Good to Great, by Jim Collins, is a look at companies that significantly outperformed both the market and their industry sector. Civil War, a three-volume set by Shelby Foote, provides great examples from history on what leaders either do right or wrong under pressure. It puts today’s problems into perspective while covering some enduring principles of leadership. Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography—one comes away from reading this book inspired by how an individual can suffer so much adversity and remain optimistically committed to the future. Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond, is a Pulitzer Prize–winning book on why civilization has advanced more quickly in certain parts of the globe than others.