Heather Duong, a third-year psychology major from Oakland, checks out books written by UC Davis faculty and alumni writers. (Karin Higgins/UC Davis photo)
Faculty and alumni challenge the intellect, tickle the mind
Summertime and reading is a pleasure, especially on campus — in between those intensive summer sessions, planning for fall quarter and making your deadlines.
If you’d like to stretch your mind on topics however peripherially connected to your favorite campus, we’ve got 10 titles by UC Davis authors—faculty and alumni—for you to toss in the beach bag for a little reading on the Quad or at your favorite vacation get-away. Most of them can be found at the UC Davis Bookstore.
All published in 2006 or 2007, they cover everything from spies to seashells. Some, like political scientist Larry Berman’s Perfect Spy, is an exciting, fast-paced read that offers an empathetic look at the double life of a Vietnamese patriot. Eric Rauchway’s Blessed Among Nations is notable for strong writing and intellectual muscle as the UC Davis historian builds his case. Both books are making waves among the nation’s top newspapers and journalists.
A common theme is challenging assumptions. Anthropologist Jack Forbes disputes who really discovered "the New World" in the 15th century, while sociologist Diane Wolf questions common wisdom about Anne Frank's story.
We invite you to dive into fiction, thanks to alum Tony Swofford's first novel, or enjoy a colorful field guide on seashells by geologist Sandy Carlson.
Whet your appetite
Perfect Spy by Larry Berman
"The month of April had been full of anxiety for An as he worried about the safety of his family and friends. He knew time was running short…" [more…]
Blessed Among Nations by Eric Rauchway
"Sometime during the 1470s a group of Native Americans followed the Gulf Stream from the Americas to Ireland…" [more…]
The American Discovery of Europe by Jack D. Forbes
"The United States is today the world's largest economy and the world's greatest producer and consumer of energy resources, yet it depends on…" [more…]
Perfect Spy by Larry Berman
One book generating national buzz this year is political science professor Larry Berman’s new work, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent. It tells the true story of one of modern history’s most sympathetic, clever and luckiest intelligence agents, tracing his early journalism training at the Sacramento Bee through his successful career as a reporter for Reuters and Time. Washington Post associate editor and senior correspondent Robert Kaiser interviewed Berman about the book on C-SPAN-2’s Book TV July 21-22.
Blessed Among Nations by Eric Rauchway
Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America, by history professor Eric Rauchway, is one of three titles that PBS correspondent Bill Moyers recommends in a June 22 “recommended reading” post on his Bill Moyers Journal blog. (Look for it On the bookshelf). In the book, Rauchway argues the nation may be headed for global economic disaster unless its leaders assume their share of responsibility for righting, regulating and maintaining the world economy. But first they will have to stop thinking America owes its privileged status to God’s approval.
The American Discovery of Europe by Jack D. Forbes
Summer is as good a time as any to unlearn what you thought you knew about early America. In The American Discovery of Europe, Emeritus Professor Jack D. Forbes lays out evidence that Christopher Columbus met an indigenous American man and woman in Galway, Ireland, some 15 years before Columbus’ famous 1492 voyage. Forbes, a member of the Native American Studies faculty, spent more than 20 years conducting research in libraries throughout Europe and the United States to make his case that Native Americans engaged in a thriving maritime trade and exploration that took them to the British Isles as early as the mid-15th century.
Exit A by Anthony Swofford
UC Davis English department graduate Anthony Swofford catapulted to fame with his 2003 book Jarhead, based on his experiences as a Marine in the first Gulf War. The memoir was made into a film in 2005. Swofford’s latest work and first novel, Exit A, takes place in the late 1980s at a U.S. Air Force base in Tokyo, where a teenage American football star falls for the rebellious, half-Japanese daughter of the American base commander. As Swofford traces the young couple’s disparate fates throughout the next 16 years, he explores what it means to be a man and how war and military life affect the children of the men who fight.
Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite by Michael Ghiglieri
Hiking, climbing and camping in Yosemite National Park may be safer if you read alumnus Michael Ghiglieri’s latest book, Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite. A wilderness river and trekking guide who earned a doctorate in ecology at UC Davis in 1979, Ghiglieri wrote the book with veteran park ranger Charles Farabee. Illustrated by Jim Myers, it chronicles the 900 fatalities that have occurred in the park’s 156 years. “This book is much, much more than a simple accounting on tragedy,” longtime Yosemite superintendent Michael Finley writes in a review. “It is rich in historical context and … provides valuable lessons to be learned and to be re-learned and reinforced.”
Beyond Anne Frank by Diane Wolf
While not classified as your typical summer "easy reading," sociology professor Diane Wolf’s new book Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland is a fascinating example of scholarly work by UC Davis faculty members. Through interviews with nearly 70 Jewish children hidden by gentile families during World War II, Wolf illuminates the unique suffering of a little-studied group of Holocaust survivors. “Beyond Anne Frank: Hidden Children and Postwar Families in Holland” also chronicles Dutch complicity with the Nazis and indifference to Jewish suffering after the war, countering popular perceptions of Dutch religious tolerance and wartime resistance. Reviewers have unanimously hailed the book as an important contribution to Holocaust scholarship.
Ecology Without Nature by Timothy Morton
Amid allusions to Byron and Baudelaire, Whitman and Wilde, English professor Timothy Morton tosses around terms like "eco-phenomenology," "ecorhapsody" and "ecologocentrism" in his new book, Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. He also writes sentences like these: “On some days, environmentalist writing seems like patching up the void with duct tape.” If you want to think about global warming, ecosystem mortality and environmental politics in a fresh way, add this intellectual heavyweight to the beach bag.
The Better World Handbook by Ellis Jones
Where Morton’s book is cerebral, sociology lecturer Ellis Jones’ is practical. Jones wrote his bestseller, The Better World Handbook: Small Changes That Make a Big Difference, to convince us that individual actions count. Newly revised, the book has updated information on global problems, additional resources and new recommendations for making a difference in such arenas as saving, investing, shopping and travel.
American Furies by Sasha Abramsky
Want to worry about something other than the environment? Pick up a copy of Sasha Abramsky’s latest book, American Furies: Crime, Punishment and Vengeance in an Age of Mass Imprisonment.” Abramsky, a lecturer in the University Writing Program, draws on statistics and interviews with prisoners, corrections officials and scholars to point out the failures of the American prison system and to argue that punishment has replaced rehabilitation as the goal.
Seashells by Sandy Carlson
Or, perhaps you would prefer to pass a summer afternoon pondering why clamshells, barnacles and tropical corals look the way they do. Seashells, written by geology professor Sandy Carlson with color photographs by Josie Iselin, is part art book, part field guide. And the full-color, hard-cover volume will look good on your coffee table for many summers to come.