Books that have carried weight with me over time. I will quickly admit that I am not a literary person and I take no pride in the depth (or lack thereof) of this list. I’d like to think that will change over time, but it hasn’t yet. The truth is that music, TV, movies, and reading news-related periodicals have taken precedence and mind share in my life. Still, these are some books (and plays) that have resonance for me; let me try to catalog them and then maybe come up with some ideas why.
1491 and 1493, Charles Mann. Doubling down on including two more books I read in late 2019 and 2020, I greatly enjoyed Mann’s overviews of the pre-Columbian and post-Columbian worlds. His journalist’s touch for storytelling makes complex topics comprehensible and memorable, mixing recent academic research with on-the-scene reporting. Both books shift our perspective of historical events, giving a sense that history is a lot more fluid than I was led to believe. Both books highlight the interconnections of nature, geography, human activity and the breadth of unintended consequences. There is so much we don’t know.
The Expanding Blaze, Jonathan Israel, read October 2019 and finished in December — see post in Books I’ve Read Lately. At the risk of including the two most recent books I’ve read, I feel I need to include The Expanding Blaze on this list. I was looking for something to explain connections between the US and French Revolutions and this book filled that need and more. I’ve never been one to hold the Founding Fathers and the U.S. Constitution as sacred. This book goes a long way to show how narrowly the concepts of independence and democracy were adopted by the American revolutionaries, and how they never really agreed on the best implementation. The revolutions across Europe and the Americas did not happen in vacuums, either, but were highly interdependent. Times were in tumult, competing ideas were continually clashing and the “winners” were as much accidents of local circumstances as any great tide of history or wisdom. It feels like today.
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn. Read in July 2019 — see post in Books I’ve Read Lately. It took me too long to come across this book, but I’m glad I did, thanks to John Leguizamo. Zinn aims to change our perspective on history and this book widened mine. Particularly eye opening for me were early chapters on the conquest of indigenous people across the Americas, importation of slaves from Africa, and the forces that drove the waves of immigrants that followed. Not coincidentally, I read the book after visiting the Museum of African American History and Culture in DC. Together, they had a powerful effect on my understanding of our nation’s history and current struggles.
This Thing of Darkness, Harry Thompson. I can’t recall how I came upon this historical novel based on the life of Robert FitzRoy, who captained the Beagle for Charles Darwin’s voyage, among many other exploits. It must have been around 2008 when Allie and I went to Argentina and the Galapagos. Its stories have stayed with me: a near-great man often in fascinating places at the right time making wrong decisions. The sad tale of Fuegan Jemmy Button should be more widely known. For me, this novel was a precursor to the notion of looking at the history of European conquest and manifest destiny from a different perspective.
The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, Ray Kurzweil. Builds off ideas introduced in The Age of Intelligent Machines and the The Age of Spiritual Machines, which I’d also read. Kurzweil says we are living through exponential growth in computing and technology — specifically in genetics, nanotech and artificial intelligence — that will lead to a Singularity which he predicts for 2045. This book, and its predecessors, have had an out-sized effect on my thinking since 2005 or so when I read it. I take a lot of it with a huge grain of salt, particularly the near-religious overtones toward the end, the extravagant prolonging of human life, and I doubt that a rapture-like Singularity is coming in a specific year, much less my (near) lifetime. But I do agree with acceleration of change (see Future Shock) and the notion of human-machine integration that will be effectively bring a new stage of evolution sometime in the next 100 years or so. We will be plugged into the Internet before long, and the outcomes to individuals and society are unpredictable. I suspect some variant of the Borg is possible (“resistance is futile”) and maybe actually attractive rather than completely dystopian. The implications of this thinking are part of what drove me to embrace STEM programs as a way of encouraging youth to get familiar with technology and have some hope of getting ahead of the curve, so to speak.
Neuromancer, William Gibson. One of the first great cyberpunk novels and a predictor of the absorbing alternate reality of the Internet. The book was released in 1984 and it took me a few years to notice it, probably in the late 80’s or early 90’s, when a number of its futuristic ideas were already coming real. This set me on a path reading a lot of works by Gibson and Neal Stephenson, none of which quite equaled this one.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams. I first encountered Adams’ wonderful world sometime in the mid-1980s through snippets of the radio play of Hitchhiker’s Guide, though I’ve never heard the whole thing (that’s probably worth searching for on YouTube). I read the book, loved it then gobbled up its sequels. The Monty Python humor and occasional deep thoughts were right up my alley, and have remained so.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Tom Stoppard. I think I also read this in college, probably in the same class with Godot and other existentialists. I was knocked out by Stoppard’s humor and the conceit of the story of Hamlet based from the perspective of two side players. I thought it was one of the cleverest things I’d ever read, and was amazed that Stoppard was only in his twenties when he wrote it. Again, I’ve never seen a full production, though I recently tried (unsatisfactorily) watching the 1990 film version on YouTube.
Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett. I think I read this play for a class in college and greatly enjoyed its bleak humor. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a full staging or movie, but Beckett’s script is plenty powerful.
Hamlet, William Shakespeare. I think I first read this in high school, the first Shakespeare play I actually read and studied. I think we were forced to choose and recite a soliloquy and I took Polonius’ “to thine own self be true.” It took a while for me to appreciate the play as a whole, but it has grown on me as I’ve re-read it several times and seen some wonderful performances over the years, mostly on TV.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I’m not sure if I first read this in high school or college, but I was thoroughly enchanted and confused by this epic of magical realism. I was even more impressed that it was translated; full marks to Gregory Rabassa for his deft work. I read and enjoyed other Marquez works but this was the one that touched me most.
Burr, Gore Vidal. I think the sequence was that I read this book between 10th and 11th grade because it was a then-current best seller and then I decided to make Aaron Burr the subject of my 11th grade American History project. I greatly enjoyed Vidal’s handling of this real-life adjacent-to-fame figure and his numerous misadventures. It was an early opening of my eyes to alternative narratives of history and missed opportunities. When I made it my history project, I had a devil of a time finding actual historical sources on Burr in Hong Kong, but managed to cobble together a report that earned an A+ from a very tough teacher (Mrs. Prechtl) and a mix of admiration and scorn from Barb and my classmates. It was the highlight of my academic career.
Future Shock and The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler. I read Future Shock in high school and The Third Wave sometime after it came out in 1980. Both were influential for their high level look at the progress and effects of technology, and predictors of a coming technological age. I bought in.
Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck. I think I read this in high school or even sooner though I’m not sure how I got the urge. I’d heard of John Steinbeck so I thought I was earning points for reading a famous author, but the book itself was a pretty delightful travelogue of his road trip around the U.S. with his dog. I thought the whole idea was charming. I also remember how toward the end he got so bored of the small towns and byways that he succumbed to gobbling up miles on the interstates. The book fed my wanderlust but I felt I would have the same reaction by the end of a long road trip.
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell. I read this tome in high school at some point, partly at Mom’s urging (it was her favorite), and saw the film sometime later. I enjoyed the basic storytelling but could sense that this was a romantic, whitewashed version of the Civil War. It was enjoyable but it felt vaguely wrong. It’s taken me more than 40 years to begin to understand why.
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien. I think I read this in late elementary or middle school, more or less, and was enchanted by the tale of fuzzy footed Bilbo and his friends. It was one of the first full length novels I ever read and one of the few I re-read. Oddly, I could never get engaged with Lord of the Rings (though I saw all the films), nor was I interested in the Hobbit movies.
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle. Probably the first full length hard cover novel I read was this gift from Sue when I was in elementary school in Coral Gables. I felt grown up carrying it around, even if I didn’t understand most of what was happening in it. I can’t say that I loved the story, but felt it was an accomplishment getting all the way through.