Table of Contents
The Profs' Picks
Late last spring we asked the faculty to recommend some good reading from (or in the general vicinity of) their disciplines. With thanks to those who responded, here's what they suggested:
Donna Alvah Margaret Vilas Assistant Professor of History
Joseph S. Nye, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone (Oxford University Press, 2002). Nye advises American foreign policy-makers to place more emphasis on what he terms "soft power," and to develop more cooperative international relationships whenever possible. He doesn't reject the option of unilateralism, though he asserts that when the United States could pursue multilateral approaches yet exercises its power unilaterally it risks losing the good will of other nations--and this ultimately endangers American interests, including national security.Christian G. Appy, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides (Viking Press, 2003). As a professor of American history in the 20th century, I find the Vietnam War the most difficult subject to teach and to talk about with students. Everyone has such strong feelings about it--even students who were born years after the war. I'm excited about this book because Appy presents numerous perspectives to help us understand it more fully.
Thomas L. Berger Craig Professor of English
I recommend two biographies of William Shakespeare. The first, Ungentle Shakespeare by Katherine Duncan-Jones (Arden, 2001), is a tough and unsentimental biography, treating Shakespeare as every bit as much a businessman and entrepreneur as he was a playwright, a dramatic artist. The second is Robert Nye's fictional and often hilarious Mrs. Shakespeare (Penguin USA, 2001), the diary kept by that good woman when she visits her husband in London in the mid-1590s. Much about the dark lady, much more about the handsome young Earl of Southampton. Good fun, and an antidote to the darker Shakespeare of Duncan-Jones.Robert A. Blewett Professor and Chair of Economics
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics, by William Easterly (MIT Press, 2002). Why are a few nations rich and most others poor? For over 200 years this has remain-ed the most important question in economics. Growth is also an area of economics where so much nonsense is published, where many people's views are based on what are essentially 18th- and 19th-century ideas. Easterly provides a good-humored, honest, reader-friendly presentation of modern growth theory with real-world applications. If you think economic growth is about international capital flows, reading this book may help move your head out of the 19th and into the 21st century.Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets, by John McMillan (W.W. Norton, 2002). In principles of economics, and even intermediate theory, we seldom get very far beyond supply and demand to what really allows markets to work and to work well. A lot of things need to be in place before supply and demand can come together. This book brings some of the great advances in economic theory of the past 20 years to a lay audience using real-world examples and anecdotes.
A Fine Balance, by Rohinton Mistry (Vintage Books, 2001). No theory, no economics, just a wonderful novel. Despite its length, this Oprah selection is a great, can't-put-it-down-once-you-get-started novel. It is the compelling story of four individuals struggling to make it in India in the 1970s. Why am I recommending it? If you want to understand the problems of common people and their powerlessness in a corrupt and oppressive society, this should do it. Actually, I just want to recommend it because it is such a good book.
Robert M. DeGraaff Professor of English
I recommend two classics. The first is The Egoist (1879), by George Meredith, an amazingly insightful analysis of male possessiveness, which deserves a much more prominent position in the history of women's rights and the march toward gender equality than it has yet been given. The second, James Joyce's Ulysses (1922), gets my vote for the greatest novel ever written in English; its protagonist, a middle-aged, low-brow Jew in Dublin, has a humane sensibility of heroic proportions. Bloom's wanderings around the city are tracked for the single day of June 16, 1904, so reading the book in the next year would put you in the enviable position of being able to celebrate the centenary of Bloomsday with Joyce enthusiasts around the world.Steven Foulke Lecturer in Global Studies
The Great Plains of North America stretch from Manitoba, Saskatchewan and eastern Alberta south to eastern New Mexico and the panhandle of Texas. In the U.S. this region has seen an extended period of depopulation unmatched in the country's history. Some counties in the region have dwindled to the point where the population per square mile is a single person -- or less. Kathleen Norris' Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Ticknor & Fields, 1993) helps explain why people leave and why people choose to stay in this troubled region. Section 27: A Century on a Family Farm by Mil Penner (University Press of Kansas, 2002) shows how the roots run deep in this region, but not so deep that they can't be torn by the substantial economic challenges nearly everyone here faces.Mark Erickson Chapin Professor of Geology
Message on the Wind: A Spiritual Odyssey on the Northern Plains, by Clay Jenkinson (Marmarth Press, 2001), has obvious connections for me and the geology students who have worked in North Dakota with me because it covers terrain - both physical and philosophical - that we covered in those experiences. It will go down best with rural readers or those who wish they were. There is no doubt that it catches some mid-American attitudes that those of us in the East repeatedly fail to appreciate.Joseph Kling Associate Professor and Chair of Government
These five books are practically a course in themselves on the nature of American Democracy.
- Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Abridged edition: Richard Heffner, ed., Mentor Edition (Penguin, 1956). Complete edition: trans. and edited by Mansfield and Winthrop (University of Chicago Press, 2000).
- C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford University Press, 1956)
- Thomas Jefferson, Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Koch and Pedren (Modern Library, 1944).
- Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, innumerable editions.
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (Dover Publications, 1998).
David Lloyd Associate Professor of History
Lawrence W. Levine, The Opening of the American Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). Widely-acclaimed book from one of America's most accomplished historians on the national debates over education and ethnicity, from a long-range perspective.W. B. Carnochan, The Battleground of the Curriculum: Liberal Educa-tion and American Experience (Stanford University Press, 1993). Perceived by many academics and administrators as required reading for anyone seriously concerned about the role and challenges of higher education in a democratic society striving to become more inclusive.
M.L. Petty Vice President and Dean of Student Life and Co-Curricular Education, Assistant Professor of Education
Michelle LeBaron, Bridging Troubled Waters: Conflict Resolution from the Heart (Jossey Bass, 2002), moves away from the traditional view of resolving conflict (analytic and intellectual) and attempts to inject the very nature of relationships as a way to bridge understanding. LeBaron says, "from relationships come connection, meaning, and identity. It is through awareness of connection, shared meaning, and respect for identity that conflicts are transformed."Peter Gomes, The Good Life: Truths that Last in Times of Need (Harper Collins, 2003). Gomes, minister at Harvard University, reflects on the changes in the undergraduate world over 30 years and on the directions he sees undergraduates heading morally and spiritually.
Karl McKnight Associate Professor of Biology Director of Outdoor Studies, 2000-03
I think everyone in America needs to read The Ecology of Eden by Evan Eisenberg (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998). I would also recommend (but not everyone in America needs to read it) Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature by David Suzuki and Peter Knudtson (Bantam Books, 1993).We also received, without commentary, the following, from Professor of English and Chair of Global Studies Eve Stoddard: Martha Nussbaum, For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Beacon Press, 1996).