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As passionate readers, many alumni are interested in knowing what books Dartmouth faculty are reading and enjoying. We check in with faculty twice a year, every winter and summer. Here are 22 recommendations sure to transport you this winter, even if you're only sitting in front of the fire. |
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John Wentworth Professor in the Social Sciences My recommendation this time is Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba by Tom Gjelten, which I’m reading these days in anticipation of joining an alumni trip to the island in February. The book weaves the story of generations of the Bacardi family, of rum-making fame, with the political history of Cuba. The Bacardis were leaders in the Cuban movement for independence from Spain in the late 19th century, then built one of the most successful export industries in the country during the first half of the 20th century. They opposed Batista, initially supported Castro’s revolution, and then felt betrayed when Castro nationalized their Cuban holdings. Through the years, however, the family had internationalized its production and distribution network. The company thrived even after the family left for exile, and eventually played a key role in the anti-Castro networks in Cuban-American Miami. Gjelten does a great job weaving the business history, political history, and family biography. Turns out there’s also more to making rum than I had thought. |
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This winter, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the novel Waiting for Robert Capa by Susana Fortes, translated beautifully from the Spanish by Adriana Lopez. This fictional account of the work and love story of Robert Capa and Gerda Taro during the Spanish Civil War is poetic and gripping. It serves as a worthy companion piece to the recent exhibition and catalogue from the International Center for Photography, The Mexican Suitcase, edited by Cynthia Young. The catalogue has a wealth of photographs from that war, including work by Capa and Taro, lost for decades and only recently recovered in a suitcase found in Mexico in 2007. |
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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is one of the best biographies/social history of this new century! Last Train to Paradise by Les Standiford chronicles the attempts of Henry Flagler to establish a deep-water port in Key West, Florida, and the many trials and tribulations of building a railroad in swamp- and disease-plagued 19th-century Florida. |
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A wonderful “crossover” book is a new history of the First Crusade by Jay Rubenstein called Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for the Apocalypse. This is a superb, utterly entertaining, thought-provoking, at times (rightly) disturbing, and thoroughly illuminating account of the First Crusade. It is written by an eminent historian, who has gone back to the primary sources and re-narrated the events of 1095 to 1099, when something on the order of 100,000 Christians marched across Europe, through Byzantium, Anatolia, and down to Palestine to retake the holy city of Jerusalem from Muslim control. Though eminently scholarly, it is pitched to a non-academic audience. Rubenstein tells a wonderful story and, although specialists will be able to identify his arguments and his engagement with historiographical disputes, his narrative is free of the kind of “inside-baseball” argumentation that can sometimes muddy the overall picture. This book conveys the excitement, anticipation, horror, and amazement at the extraordinary events that started one of the consequential phases of the history of the West and the history of the relationship between Christianity and Islam. Worth the read. |
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I was on sabbatical this fall and attended the Dublin Theater Festival. While there I read Sebastian Barry’s two novels, The Secret Scripture and On Caanan’s Side. Beautifully written, the stories focus on members of two families, the McNultys and the Dunnes, from Barry’s earlier novels and give a deeply personal look at 20th-century Irish history. |
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One of the best books that I have read in the past year is Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World by Liaquat Ahamed. This book tells the story of the interaction among the world’s top four central bankers (from the United States, Britain, France, and Germany) and how they coped with the aftermath of World War I during the 1920s—and made policy mistakes that eventually led to the Great Depression. Ahamed is a great writer with an eye for the arresting story or vignette, but at the same time bases his work on impressive scholarly research. On the economics of the Great Depression of the 1930s, a historical topic of unusual contemporary relevance, a good and short overview is Gene Smiley’s Rethinking the Great Depression. |
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A History of the World in 100 Objects by British Museum Director Neil MacGregor offers a sprawling, quirky survey of human history. The hefty book begins with a 1.5-million-year-old hand ax found at the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa and concludes with a plastic credit card issued in 2009 by the United Arab Emirates. The objects, all from the British Museum, range from the ordinary to the fancy; they span the globe and reflect not only human history but also the 250-year collecting history of an imperial nation. A great read — with great photos. My favorite is the Throne of Weapons, a chair made in 2001 by the Mozambican artist Kester of weapons parts from the civil war in his nation, a simple object that tells many stories of African and global history. |
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The “Dear Leader’s” death has made North Korea more interesting than ever, and literature is no exception. One of the books on my nightstand that I can’t wait to read is the well-reviewed novel The Orphan-Master’s Son by Adam Johnson. All the same I can’t imagine that it can possibly be as good as the mysteries of James Church (pseudonym), a former U.S. intelligence officer with decades of experience on the Korean peninsula. Church’s novels, also set in North Korea, are tense and gripping in the style of John Le Carré. His most recent (fourth) book, The Man with the Baltic Stare, follows unforgettable main character Inspector O through the byzantine world of politics in Pyongyang—and explores North Korea’s delicate relationships with South Korea and China. |
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Although tangentially, Italy is present in Jennifer Egan’s book A Visit from the Goon Squad, and I needed to pay attention to it. It is a great novel, but not really a novel, as it is made up of stories that are closely connected. The stories span a few decades, from the 1960s to today, and we follow the lives of an aging rock music executive, his secretary, and a number of their friends. The plot will take you to California, New York, Italy, and Africa. Jennifer Egan is a writer to follow: She won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2010 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2011. Enjoy! American Dervish is a beautiful first novel by Ayad Akhtar, an actor, playwright, and screenwriter you have probably seen in the HBO movie Too Big to Fail. He is a first-generation Pakistani-American, and some of his experiences filter through this coming-of-age novel. The story takes place in Milwaukee and narrates the life of a Pakistani family, in particular that of the young son. Although it is about a boy falling in love, the novel also touches on tensions within the Muslim community, the rediscovery of faith, and being a member of a minority in the 1980s. |
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I’ve been reading Wade Davis’ Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest, about British attempts in the early 1920s to reach the top of Mount Everest. Relying largely on the letters of the expeditions’ members, the book is vivid account of what climbing was like in the early 20th century, before modern climbing gear was available. The book also contains a wonderful tribute to Sir Charles Bell, the British local envoy and tibetologist whose friendship with the 13th Dalai Lama ensured British climbers’ access to Everest. I’ve also been reading The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit by Lucette Lagnado — a poignant memoir of Leon Lagnado and his family who, like thousands of others, had to flee Egypt when Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 revolution took place. For those who intimately know Cairo, the book contains wonderful vignettes of Groppi’s and a hundred similar places that were once de rigueur for any self-respecting, middle-class Cairene. |
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Bitter Winds by Harry Wu and Carolyn Wakeman is the memoir of a young man who is imprisoned during the Rightist Campaign of 1960 in China and spends the next 19 years in labor camps. As a reader, you get a glimpse both of the political turmoil that plagued China from 1960 to 1980 and of the human instinct for survival. In Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture, Christian Smith provides a refreshing critique of social theories that ignore the moral dimension to humans and fail to address basic notions such as motivation and belief. |
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Don’t let the slightly small font and 800 pages put you off The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker. Buy this book. This is required reading for anyone the slightest bit interested in why slavery, sadistic punishment, and public violence became taboo. It’s a fascinating study of the decline of violence over time. Stephen King’s Under the Dome is another long book, but another great read. It’s a sly political satire of tin-pot dictators and, yes, the violence they can still mete out. |
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Good Reads Summer 2011 | Winter 2011 | Summer 2010 | Winter 2010 | Summer 2009 |
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