|
|
|
Good Summer Reads
Compiled from Berkeley faculty by the library and the college writing program
The Armada
by Garrett Mattingly (Houghton Mifflin, 1959)
Have you ever wondered why Spanish is a second language in North America and not the first? Why the Protestant Reformation succeeded in northern Europe, why there are no crucifixes in our public school classrooms, and why Garrison Keillor can make Lutheran jokes about Minnesota? A watershed event occurred more than 400 years ago when Philip II of Spain, who lived in a monastery and ruled a world empire without telephone, radio, or the Internet, sent the greatest naval force in history to overthrow Elizabeth I and Catholicize what was then a much weaker and internally divided England, only to see his great ships straggle home defeated by a small navy that improvised a devastating victory.—Michael O’Hare, Professor, Public Policy
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond (Viking, 2005)
Diamond considers societies that have failed—Polynesians on Easter Island, the Norse in Greenland, the Anasazi in the southwestern United States, the Maya in Mesoamerica—and compares them with societies that prospered over long periods of time. In many cases, the failures resulted from environmental fragility combined with unwillingness of the society to recognize or adapt to the problems until it was too late. —Steven Beckendorf, Professor, Genetics and Development
The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition
by Caroline Alexander (Knopf, 1998)
This is the heroic story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s failed 1914 attempt, with a crew of 27, to be the first to cross the Antarctic on foot and reach the South Pole. Their ship was crushed in an ice floe, marooning them. They survived over 20 months in brutal Antarctic conditions. Not one person died, a testament to Shackleton’s judgment and leadership. The spectacular photographs, taken by Frank Hurley, are from glass plates that also survived the expedition, miraculously. —Philip Stark, Professor, Statistics
The Informant: A True Story
by Kurt Eichenwald (Broadway Books, 2000)
It’s an exciting story about an employee of ADM, a firm engaged in price fixing, who serves as an informant for the FBI. The book reads like a thriller. The informant is completely insane and the government agencies engage in extensive infighting.
—Jeff Perloff, Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics
The Gene Hunters: Biotechnology and the Scramble for Seeds by Calestous Juma (Princeton University Press, 1989)
This book is an excellent overview of the quest for new plant materials over the history of civilization and how this quest has affected the course of history. Reading this book, you will understand why Captain Bligh’s sailors were so unhappy, and how Thomas Jefferson became a smuggler. —Brian Wright, Professor, Agricultural and Resource Economics
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
by Peter Hessler (Perennial, 2001)
Hessler describes his experiences in Fuling, a town on China’s Yangtze River, in 1996 as a 26-year-old Peace Corps English teacher. He was the first foreigner to live in this part of Sichuan province in 50 years. —Marica C. Linn, Professor, School of Education
Voyage of the Beagle
by Charles Darwin (National Geographic Society, 2004)
An obvious choice: A young man signs on for a five-year cruise to “find himself ” and encounters the natural world in a way that leads to one of the most significant theories in the history of science. —Philip T. Spieth, Professor Emeritus, Environmental
Science, Policy, & Management
Pompeii
by Robert Harris (Random House, 2003)
This recent novel portrays the adventures of a Roman aqueduct engineer in the days leading up to the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum. It is a compelling story, well told, and is full of information about Roman civilization, about Roman engineering—especially the great aqueducts that made the cities possible—and about the geology of volcanoes and the threat they pose to people who live close to them. It is an unusual combination of history and geology in a fictional form. —Walter Alvarez, Professor, Geology
Gertrude Bell: The Arabian Diaries, 1913-1914
by Rosemary O’Brian (Syracuse University Press, 2000)
Bell’s diaries charted her expedition through partly unmapped areas of the inhospitable northern Arabian desert. The 45-year old Bell wrote the diaries for Major Charles Doughty-Wylie, with whom she was in love. Throughout the journey, she documented the lives of the Arab tribes and surveyed the land, providing valuable information for the British government on the eve of World War I. Bell has been called the most powerful woman in the British Empire during the first decades of the 20th century.
—Marian Feldman, Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Studies
And from the editors...
Descent: The Heroic Discovery of the Abyss
by Brad Matsen (Pantheon, 2005)
Thoroughly researched and brilliantly written, Descent captures captures the Depression-era voyages of the bickering pair who invented the first bathosphere and performed the first deep sea dives. Zoologist and bon vivant William Beebe, and wealthy engineer Otis Barton, who intensely disliked each other, nonetheless wiggled into a tiny space together for several dives off the Bermuda coast. In the process, they gained international fame.
War by Candlelight: Stories
by Daniel Alarcón (HarperCollins, 2005)
A young Peruvian raised in Alabama, Alarcón sets many stories in Lima, describing the city’s intensities, violences, absurdities, and tender-nesses in a voice that is confident and rich. He “joins an incisive new wave of literary border-crossers,” says Booklist. |
|
|
