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Web Exclusives: PawPlus July 7, 2004: Professors'
Picks CLICK HERE to read Professors' Picks from the July 7, 2004 printed issue.
D. GRAHAM BURNETT, assistant professor of history: The Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens (Vintage, 1990). A book to take to the beach, yes, and then to keep with you when you come back: He brushed away the thunder, then the clouds, Then the colossal illusion of heaven. Yet still The sky was blue... Click here to read this professor's other recommendations.
LAWRENCE DANSON, professor of English: The Age of Shakespeare, by Frank Kermode (Modern Library Chronicles, 2004). It’s no news that some of the criticism written by professors of English is unreadable by the general public. (News-worthier is the fact that many professors of English can’t read it either.) Publishers are filling the gap by creating series of brief, accessibly well-written books aimed at the nonprofessional audience. Readers looking for a single volume to brush up their Shakespeare won’t do better than this book, barely 200 small pages. For more than 50 years Kermode has been among the critics most respected by scholars and general readers alike. His new book makes no grand claims, and deserves none. It’s better on the historical background than on the plays themselves, though it’s good on those as well. It covers much fascinating territory with a pro’s fine-tuned skill. The Amateur Marriage, by Anne Tyler (Knopf, 2004). You keep waiting for the characters in this book to become adorable, but their author won’t allow it: She keeps them exactly as prickly, annoying, and odd as she knows they really are. Michael, the uptight son of a Polish grocer, and Pauline, the impetuous girl with a will of iron, meet just as cutely as Hollywood could want, and seem destined to grow into a version of Beatrice and Benedick [Much Ado About Nothing], or at least Hepburn and Tracy. But Tyler invokes the convention only to tear it open and reveal the unhappiness it hides. The pain in this bad marriage never dulls. Divorce would be a blessing but it comes too late, when the personalities of Michael and Pauline have hardened. Tyler works on a longer scale here (three generations) than she usually does, but as in all her best work she makes us care, unexpectedly, more than we thought we could, for her desperately plucky characters. Click here to read this professor's other recommendations.
CARYL EMERSON, A. Watson Armour III University Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures: Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000, by Stephen Kotkin (Oxford, 2001). Kotkin argues that the very fact that a catastrophic end was averted is something of a miracle, given this heavily armed state with its inept leadership and blustering ideology. He describes the Soviet collapse as a national state progressively “dissolved by its own ideals and elite.” The lingering, mesmerizing effect of those moribund ideals amid growing economic crisis had prompted Gorbachev to fatal reform and then, at the end, to fatal delay. By the turn of the decade, his feeble and inebriated enemies had nothing to offer but unfeasible backward-looking restoration – or betrayal. SOLOVKI: The Story of Russia Told Through its Most Remarkable Islands, by Roy R. Robson (Yale, 2004). An account of some tiny islands near the Arctic Ocean that have served Russia as monastery, military fortress, and prison camp – the three invariants of Russian architectural history, and perhaps of Russian history. ROBERT GEORGE, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence: The Vicar of Christ, by Walter Murphy (Macmillan, 1979). Pope John Paul II, at 84, and ailing, is now the third-longest-serving pope in history. It is natural that people are beginning to speculate about who will be the next vicar of Christ. What a good time to return to this best-selling novel by Princeton’s McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence emeritus. In the Vicar, an American marine becomes chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, before giving up public affairs for the life of a monk. Sure enough, the poor fellow ends up becoming pope and bearing the weight of the church and world on his shoulders. Implausible? Sure. But it’s also deeply engaging and illuminating of profound questions of religion and politics. Click here to read this professor's other recommendations.
PETER SINGER, Ira W. Decamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Center for Human Values: Descartes’ Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human, by Paul Bloom (Basic Books, 2004). The subtitle says it all – except that this book does the explaining better than many other recent efforts. I found the discussion of the development of morality particularly good. His Brother’s Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine, by Jonathan Weiner (Ecco, 2004). How far can we push experimental medical techniques? Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jonathan Weiner tells a fascinating tale of what one man tried to do for his brother. Middlemarch, by George Eliot (Penguin USA paperback, 2003). If you’ve never read this, it’s a must. For richness of character and acute moral insight, it leaves most novels published today far behind. Click here to read this professor's other recommendations.
VALERIE SMITH, Woodrow Wilson Professor of Literature and director of the Program in African-American Studies: Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood, by June Jordan (Basic Civitas, 2000). In this finely wrought autobiography, June Jordan, the daughter of Caribbean immigrants, describes her childhood and early adolescence in Harlem and Brooklyn from the late 1930s until the early 1950s. Best known as a distinguished poet and essayist, Jordan here renders the perspective of a remarkably observant, sensitive, and inquisitive child in language that is lyrical and deeply evocative. With her extraordinary gift for narrative, Jordan draws her readers into her passionate, often terrifying relationships with her parents. Through her ability to render even the most painful experiences in exquisitely compressed language, she captures her own emerging poetic imagination. Click here to read this professor's other recommendations.
DAVID SPERGEL ’82, professor of astrophysical sciences: Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, by Richard A. Clarke (Free Press, 2004). Though my initial foray into this book was motivated by the media frenzy, I found it to be a fascinating description of the inner workings of our government through four administrations, and an insightful discussion of the war on terror. Click here to read this professor's other recommendations.
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