Summer 2017 Recommended Reading
Faculty + Deans at The New School tell you what they’d “take to the beach” and beyond.
Whether you’re getting ready to move to NYC for the first time, or you’re a returning New School Pro, this summer reading list, with contributions by Deans and Faculty alike, will have you running to your local library (or, our favorite nearby independent bookstore, The Strand.)
Stephanie Browner, Dean, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts
“I just finished The Dog Stars — I’m a sucker for great dog books, and this is one! Can’t claim it offers any great political insight, but it is a post-apocalyptic novel that considers what it means to live with an ever present awareness of death and loss, which is, in truth, what it means to live with your eyes wide open. And I’m reading Jane Meyer’s Dark Money — follow the money and then you will know how politics work in the U.S. Next up for summer reading: Exit West. I read Moshin Hamid’s early book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, and couldn’t put it down. I hear this is even better, and even more essential for understanding exile, migration, loss, dislocation, making new homes.”
William Milburg, Professor of Economics and Dean, The New School for Social Research
“Three books that I recently read or am reading and that I would recommend highly: Hisham Matar’s The Return, a riveting page-turner of a memoir about his search for his political prisoner father in Lybia. Anthony Appiah (currently teaching in our Institute for Critical Social Inquiry) short treatment of a concept of deep contemporary relevance: Cosmopolitanism. A very readable history of Cuba told with a focus on the rum industry: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba by Thomas Gjelten.
Keller Coker, Dean, The School of Jazz at The College of Performing Arts
“I’m currently rereading Thomas Pynchon’s V. I’d recommend Franz Kafka’s The Trial as ideal summer reading. I first read it the summer after my freshman year in college, and as long as you remember that Kafka used to laugh out loud as he read passages to his friends, you’ll find yourself laughing too. Also given the fractured world we live in, Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon, would be a good read.”
Natalia Petrzela, Associate Professor of History, Eugene Lang College + The New School for Social Research
Teresa Ghilarducci, Irene and Bernard L Schwartz Professor of Economics and Policy Analysis at The New School for Social Research, and Director, the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis (SCEPA)
“I am reading Fugitive Pieces, the best novel I have read in 5 years — poetic, human, and about a time in World War two I didn’t know. My favorite novel, Phillip Roth’s Everyman. I am also reading Andrew Lo’s book on Adaptive Markets and human beings and investing. Lo’s book just got recommended on the Financial Times best Economics book of 2017.”
Timon McPhearson, Associate Professor of Urban Ecology + Director of the Urban Systems Lab
“I’m reading this summer Kim Stanley Robinson’s “New York 2140”, which images NYC after catastrophic sea level rise. As a side note, I’m looking into getting Stan here together with climate scientists to talk about the future of New York City in the fall.”
