Bookshelf
Image by Chicago GSB Publications
From Happiness to Hoaxes: What Faculty Are Reading
Faculty read more than research in their areas of expertise. Here’s a look at what two professors had on their bookshelves lately.
Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,
Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins, 2007)
“My wife and I read books to each other in the evening as a way to wind down and spend time together, the latter being all the more important now that we have two young sons. We are nearly finished with this and it comes with two thumbs up. The book raises awareness of a topic we tend to think very little about: where our food comes from. Kingsolver describes the first year of her family’s attempt to avoid the oil-hungry industrialized food chain by growing, raising, or buying their food from local sources. The book is entertaining, well written, and informative. It won’t make you follow her lead and dedicate your lives to organic farming (well, not many of you), but it will raise your awareness about the consequences of what you eat for dinner.”
The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2006)
“A book similar in spirit to the first but packed more heavily with data and evidence about the social and environmental consequences arising from a simple dilemma—what to eat for dinner when, as omnivores, we have so many different choices. Pollan takes four meals from three completely different food chains—industrialized agriculture, organic agriculture, and food we forage ourselves—and follows the ingredients back to their sources. This is the most enlightening book I have read in years. But buyer beware: this book (along with my older son’s enthusiasm for the project) inspired me to acquire a small flock of our very own laying hens. I can’t promise that it won’t inspire you to do something similarly unusual.”
Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert (Knopf, 2006)
“This book describes the psychological science behind a topic we tend to think a great deal about: how to be happy. The problem, however, is that we tend to make systematic mistakes when predicting what will make us happy and what will not. This makes happiness more of a state we stumble into than a future we thoughtfully create for ourselves. Gilbert’s amazing writing ability plus the content will surely make this among the best science books you will ever read.”
John P. and Lillian A. Gould Professor of Accounting
Two Years Before the Mast: A Personal Narrative of Life at Sea
Richard Henry Dana Jr. (various, 1840)
“This classic book is about the author’s experiences as a common sailor on a trading ship that traveled from Boston to California in the days when that journey involved traveling around Cape Horn. What’s fascinating is the author’s portrayal of everyday life in the 1830s, not only on the ships, but also in Boston and in California (largely undeveloped at the time and still a part of Mexico). In spite of the tremendous changes in the world since that time, one soon realizes that people are not so different now as they were back then.”
True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey (Knopf, 2001)
“Perhaps because he is, like me, an Australian, one of my favorite authors is Peter Carey, and I would recommend all of his novels. True History of the Kelly Gang is a largely factual account of the life and times of Ned Kelly, a legendary Australian bushranger from the mid-nineteenth century. The book tells the story of Kelly from both sides but is largely a sympathetic account of a man who, for better or worse, looms large in Australian history.
My Life As a Fake
Peter Carey (Vintage, 2005)
“My Life as a Fake is a highly intricate and entertaining tale of an elaborate hoax. Set in the 1940s, it tells the story of a conservative young poet who sets out to mock the literary establishment by writing and publishing the raw and sexually provocative work of an author of his own invention, Bob McCorkle. The story really begins when a man comes forward claiming to be McCorkle, who then pursues and torments his creator.”
