All posts filed under: Recommended Readings

What if Everybody Squeezed the Cat?

Twelve influential books (and a few more thrown in for fun)

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Since  I left Facebook about 18 months ago, I miss 99.5% of the silly contests, lists, and challenges that clog the social media world.  And even when I was on FB, I would occasionally take one of their lists — such as the five albums I’d most want on a desert island — and expand that into blog posts (as in album #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5). But the other day, my sister Debbie put up a list of ten influential books in her life, and asked Candice to do the same.  The challenge was to come up with the list quickly.  Both Debbie and Candice had great lists, and that made me think about what my list would look like. So…here is my off the cuff list of twelve books that I’ve read (and usually re-read, and re-read).  Since this is my blog, I’m not going to be bound by the FB convention of ten.  And, in fact, you’ll see I’ve thrown in a bonus book or two along the way. Through the …

Writer's Block

Wise women writers you probably don’t know (but should)

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(Note:  This post was updated on March 10, 2018 and again on June 27, 2021. I would never write a post this long today, but consider this a creature of its time.) I came to a realization last evening that the writers I most enjoy reading on the web are (almost) all women. And once I came to that realization, I began thinking about my favorite writers you probably don’t know, but should.  Five names quickly popped into my head and just like that, this blog post was born. These women are very different, but there is wisdom to be found in each one’s work.  I have regular communication and interaction with three but have met all five. Three are teachers (and one of the three teaches writing in Hawaii, Havana, Paris, and Washington — I’m assuming she doesn’t get paid much, but there are other benefits!). One is a former colleague at work who is still early in her craft. The other is my former Rector.  All five make a living — one way …

From the Bookshelf

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Despite a busy fall schedule of work and travel, I’ve managed to finish several books that have sat on my bookshelf for various periods of time. Some are hot off the press, others have been waiting for me to pick them  up for more months than I care to admit. All were worth reading, and two were terrific finds.  So here are a few thoughts on a season’s worth of reading – beginning with the one I finished earlier this week, and working backwards from there. Lawrence in Arabia:  War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Scott Anderson. This new work on the Middle East of World War I falls in the “terrific finds” category. Obviously much has been written about the exploits of T.E. Lawrence – the famous “Lawrence of Arabia.” In this book, however, the veteran war correspondent Scott Anderson weaves in Lawrence’s story with those of three spies from the era (German Curt Prüfer, American – and Standard Oil employee – William Yale, and Zionist Aaron …

Summer Reading 2013, Continued: The Unwinding

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American journalist, novelist, and playwright George Packer wrote one of the most insightful works about America’s invasion and occupation of Iraq in his 2005 book The Assassins’ Gate:  America in Iraq. So when I heard that Packer had a new work out on the demise of the American social contract, I quickly picked it up and added it to my summer reading pile. The Unwinding:  An Inner History of the New America is a very important work by a gifted observer and interpreter of American life.  It is not light summer reading.  Packer’s work can be hard to read – not because it is dense (it is anything but).  The Unwinding is difficult because almost any reader of this work is likely to find someone captured on its pages who represents his or her way of thinking and his or her life, and realizes the sad place we all find ourselves in today. Packer’s work follows about ten individuals – most not well-known – over the course of the last 30 years, during the time …

Summer Reading 2013, Part II: Or How the Nats Lost Their Way

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Technically, I read Shawn Green’s unique little memoir/meditation The Way of Baseball before summer began, but after a night at the ballpark watching our Nats utterly fold in a three-game series sweep by the division leading Braves and reading Tom Boswell’s insightful (as always) column about how this year’s season went so wrong, I was reminded of how much I enjoyed this book. Let’s begin with Boswell and the Nats. For two-thirds of a season we’ve been told that the Nats had “too much talent” to keep playing this poorly, and that they would switch it on in time to get back in the pennant race.  But the Braves put an end to that kind of talk, with as utterly dominating a three-game series as you could have where the total run differential was only 5 runs for the three games.  Boswell put it best when he described the sweep as “an execution by proper execution.” Amen. The Nats played so effortlessly last year that it is easy to forget how difficult baseball can be …

Summer Reading 2013: Part 1

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It is that time of year again, dear readers, where I have finished a couple of books on my summer reading list and pass along thoughts and recommendations. First up is the best natural history/science book I’ve read in years.  Now that’s a low bar, because I don’t usually read natural history/science books.  But in this case, with the reviews in, my reading habits don’t really matter as others use the same accolades. A colleague, who also happens to be an alumnus of The University of the South,  recommended Sewanee professor David George Haskell’s The Forest Unseen:  A Year’s Watch in Nature. Ever since I finished the book I’ve been meaning to thank George for the suggestion.  This is a gem of a little book. Haskell’s work is a meditation of a year’s worth of observation on a small patch of old growth forest near Sewanee in Tennessee.  Several reviewers commented that the book is both very modern and very old-fashioned, and I had the same reactions.  As a modern-trained biologist, Haskell’s knowledge of science touches …

Begin the New Year

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  For many Americans, the Labor Day weekend — not January 1st — is really the beginning of the new year. School years begin in late August and early September. Some parents — like us — have just dropped off one or more children at college this weekend. (In Claire’s case, she flew off to California on her own, but we did physically deposit Andrew in his dorm room for his sophomore year.) The somewhat slower rhythms of July and August at work, coupled with vacations, seem to be a bigger break in anticipation of starting over than the December break provides before January 1st. And this year, many Americans are just beginning to focus on the presidential race and the choice facing our country. So while Candice, the twins and I took a two-week family trip in mid-August to visit with our parents and siblings, we took the advice of those who said family trips don’t equal vacations and decided to tack on four days around the college drop-off to make sure our batteries …

Baseball in America (Academic Edition)

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I have found a place in America where February baseball lives! For the Presidents Day holiday, I’m in Southern California for Family Weekend at Claire’s college.  We’re new to this whole Parents/Family Weekend deal, but if today is any indication I could definitely get use to these trips! This morning, I visited two political science classes that were very interesting.  One compared the works of Luther and Calvin; the other focused on the U.S. Congress.  Claire joined me for lunch at her favorite dining hall  (most of her classes – of the science variety – weren’t open to parents).  But as she prepares for the conference championships this weekend for her swim team, I’ve found myself with choices for how to spend my time that are entirely up to me. Which takes me to Baseball in America. That’s the title of the class I attended after lunch.  It was a synopsis of a fall semester interdisciplinary class that was designed to introduce freshmen to the rigors of college-level writing.  Taught by a life-long Dodgers fan …

Wrestling With Edward Glaeser

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I have finished two books in the past couple of weeks that are about the same general topic: the future of our cities.  These works, however, come to strikingly different conclusions.  Triumph of the City is a 2011 work by Harvard economist Edward Glaeser.  In a burst of amazing publicity, Glaeser has been all over the media touting his ideas of more density, more density, and – did I say – more density as the prescription for our cities and the planet.  In contrast, my son passed along his copy of the 2009 book by former Boston Globe reporter Anthony Flint, Wrestling With Moses:  How Jane Jacobs Took on New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City which I finished last week.  This small yet eloquent tale reads like a novel and carries the punch of the biblical story of David vs. Goliath. In Triumph of the City, Glaeser makes a compelling overall argument:  that cities are efficient, inherently environmental, and healthful for the future of the planet.   I agree with that general thesis.  …