Howard Frumkin, dean of the UW School of Public Health, lists 10 great books for summer reading. Here's what he says about them:
I’ve found 2016 to be a great year for reading fiction, as many of my favorite writers have new books out.
Geraldine Brooks published The Secret Chord late last year; it’s a beautifully imagined and written recreation of the life of the Biblical King David. He emerges as deeply gifted and deeply flawed, and the voice of the narrator, David’s advisor, seer, and conscience, is unforgettable.
I’m halfway through Annie Proulx’s new novel, Barkskins, an epic that begins in 17th century French Canada and continues, through twists and turns of history, down to the present. Her writing is luminous, as usual.
Next on my list is The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen, this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction—a strongly reviewed tragicomedy with strong moral overtones on the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, written by a Vietnamese-American.
And my final fiction treat will be For a Little While, a collection of short stories by Rick Bass, one of our finest writers of environmentally themed fiction.
But mostly I read nonfiction. I just finished Roger Thurow’s new book, The First 1,000 Days: A Crucial Time for Mothers and Children—and the World, a highly readable account of the effects of deprivation, especially malnutrition, in early life, with case studies from Chicago, Guatemala, India, and Uganda.
I’m a dedicated urbanist, and my favorite new book in this category is Street Fight, by Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s Transportation Commissioner under Mayor Bloomberg, and Seth Solomonow. It features down-to-earth writing, great illustrations, and plenty of useful examples from New York.
The Birth of the Anthropocene, by Jeremy Davies, places modern environmental crises in the context of geological time; it’s guaranteed to stretch your thinking about history (unless you already think in geological time!).
My book club selection for July is Martin Ford’s Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, a cautionary book about the disruptive effects of machine intelligence and robotics on blue and white collar employment.
I’m going to follow that with The New Grand Strategy: Restoring America’s Prosperity, Security, and Sustainability in the 21st Century, by Mykleby, Doherty, and Makower, of Case Western’s Strategic Innovation Lab. This book grew out of a 2009 white paper written for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a remarkable document that synthesized security strategy, sustainability, and economics. Timed for the election season, it offers a compelling suite of solutions, ranging from walkable communities to regenerative agriculture to a new “investment hypothesis.”
Finally, I can’t wait to get to one of my favorite nature writers, Terry Tempest Williams, whose new book, The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America’s National Parks, celebrates a dozen of our national parks. I’ve only visited five of the ones she covers—Grand Teton, Acadia, Gettysburg, Canyonlands, and Glacier—but I’ll get to the others this summer as an armchair traveler, thanks to writing that perches somewhere between poetry and prose, but is never over the top.
Notice the arc toward optimism, from hunger, climate change, and unemployment, to sustainable solutions and inspiring national parks. If all goes well, I’ll end the summer as upbeat as ever!
-June 2016