Leonora Chu, Little Soldiers: An American Boy, a Chinese School, and the Global Race to Achieve: Lenora Chu and her husband, both American journalists, moved to Shanghai and were quickly faced with a complicated decision: What kind of school should they choose for their 5-year-old son Rainey? After weighing options, they chose a Chinese public school. What follows is a funny, perceptive comparison of the relative merits and pitfalls of both Chinese and American approaches to education. She digs deeply into some of the stereotypes of both cultures - individualism versus collectivism, talent versus work ethic—and charts her own family’s experiences with everything from homework to school lunches. She also brings her journalistic skills to bear and zooms out to look at wider trends in both countries. Chu, the child of Chinese immigrants, was raised in Texas and educated at Stanford and Columbia. She brings a unique bi-cultural lens to her storytelling as well as nuance, honesty, and humor. (Ms. Borman)
Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre: When the apprentices of a Paris printing shop in the 1730s held a series of mock trials and then hanged all the cats they could capture, why did they find it hilarious - so funny, in fact that they reenacted it in pantomime some twenty times? Why in the 18th century version of “Little Red Riding Hood” did the wolf eat the child in the end? What did the anonymous townsman of Montpellier have in mind when he kept an exhaustive dossier on all the activities of his native city? These are some of the provocative questions Robert Darnton answers in The Great Cat Massacre, a kaleidoscopic view of European culture during what we like to call the “Age of Enlightenment.” (Mr. Korta)
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend: The friendship at the center of My Brilliant Friend begins with a lost doll, when Lenù and Lila are ten years old, and continues through their teenage years—-but the word “friendship” is barely adequate to describe the contours of this life-long relationship (three novels follow this beginning of “The Neapolitan Quartet”). Elena Ferrante articulates things rarely put into words: how a relationship can fill, over years, with love and hatred, jealousy and idolotry, contempt and admiration; how “friends” might become points of origin and contrast for one another’s intellectual and emotional lives. Ferrante portrays Naples in the 1950s and ‘60s as a place of claustrophobic violence, the city as much a character as Lénu, Lila, or any of the people who fill their lives. Really, this is an incredible novel. (Ms. Eskelund)
Richard Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out: From the publisher: “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out is a magnificent treasury of the best short works of Richard P. Feynman-from interviews and speeches to lectures and printed articles. A sweeping, wide-ranging collection, it presents an intimate and fascinating view of a life in science-a life like no other. From his ruminations on science in our culture to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, this book will fascinate anyone interested in the world of ideas.” (Mr. Barsi)
Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go: From the publisher: “As children, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy were students at Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school secluded in the English countryside. It was a place of mercurial cliques and mysterious rules where teachers were constantly reminding their charges of how special they were. Now, years later, Kathy is a young woman. Ruth and Tommy have reentered her life. And for the first time she is beginning to look back at their shared past and understand just what it is that makes them special—and how that gift will shape the rest of their time together. Suspenseful, moving, beautifully atmospheric, Never Let Me Go is a modern classic.” (Ms. Tyson)
Daniel Kahneman, et al., Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment: The book discusses how and why irrelevant factors influence human decision-making. “The earth has been so fully explored that scientists can’t possibly discover a previously unknown mammal the size of an elephant. The same could be said about the landscape of decision-making, yet Kahneman, Sibony, and Sunstein have discovered a problem as large as an elephant: noise. In this important book they show us why noise matters, why there’s so much more of it than we realize, and how to reduce it. Implementing their advice would give us more profitable businesses, healthier citizens, a fairer legal system, and happier lives.” ― Jonathan Haidt, NYU Stern School of Business (Ms. Budding)
Michael Lewis, The Premonition: A Pandemic Story: In this narrative account of the why the government reacted to COVID-19 as it did, Michael Lewis has found a topic that makes sense with his three most famous books, Moneyball (about the use of data in baseball), The Big Short (about the global financial meltdown in 2008), and The Fifth Risk (about the importance of expertise in government). Global meltdown? Check! Was data important? Check! Did we need experts in government? Check! The book reads like a thriller with a rollicking narrative style and great characters—not to mention brain-eating amoebas and an autopsy conducted with garden shears. It also raises important questions about whether democracies can respond to disasters (including global warming!) and why outsiders and sometimes better than experts in diagnosing a situation. (Ms. Haber)
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North: Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih is widely considered one of the best Arabic novels of the twentieth century, and deals with the brutal and complex effects of colonialism on colonial subjects’ lives. It has been read, among other things, as a postcolonial response to Conrad's brilliant but controversial Heart of Darkness. (Mr. Pérez)
Claude M. Steele, Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do: Claude Steele, who first coined the term “stereotype threat,” walks us through how something seemingly minor such as bubbling in one’s gender before a math standardized test can affect performance. It is full of actionable insights relating to DEI. (Ms. Boppana)
