A summer reading list for the intellectually curious.
A personal odyssey through history, a postmortem on the Arab uprising as it played out (and unraveled) in Egypt and Syria, and an exhaustively researched new look at the Carter administration are just a few of this year's summer picks for the ponderous. (Readers of a voracious disposition can check out last year's beach reads here).
1
The Latinos of Asia »
How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
sociologists, stereotype debunkers, and critical race theorists
Are Filipino Americans Asian, Latino, or something else entirely? Though classified by the U.S. Census as Asian, centuries of Spanish colonialism has left many Filipino-Americans feeling more Latino than Asian. “When it comes to the way we think about race, Filipinos are really hard to place,” says Anthony Christian Ocampo in an interview with NPR’s Renee Lamontagne. In his book The Latinos of Asia, Ocampo draws on survey analysis, in-depth interviews, and personal narrative to explore how the Filipino story is changing the way people negotiate race—particularly in cities like Los Angeles—shattering static, reductive categorizations of both Asian Americans and Latinos.
"Essential reading not only for the Filipino diaspora but for anyone who cares about the mysteries of racial identity"
—José Antonio Vargas, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and founder of Define American and #EmergingUS
2
Lead and Disrupt »
How to Solve the Innovator’s Dilemma
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
leaders, disrupters, and biz execs who love to stir the pot
The complacency that success can engender in leaders, companies—and even whole industries, (as Michael L. Tushman argues in the Harvard Business Review)—leaves businesses vulnerable to disruption from more agile start-ups and other competitors. But old firms can learn new tricks: When it comes to solving the innovator’s dilemma, business experts Tushman and Charles A. O’Reilly III boil it down to one keyword—ambidexterity. Drawing on a vast research program and over a decade of experience helping companies innovate, Lead and Disrupt presents a set of practices to help firms on the one hand by exploiting existing strengths, while on the other, by exploring future market opportunities to stay always ahead of the curve.
"Lead and Disrupt is a tour de force, a must-read for those who wish to disrupt and avoid disruption. Executives will find in this book many decisions that they wish to emulate."
—David J. Teece, UC Berkeley and Chairman, Berkeley Research Group
3
A History of the Grandparents I Never Had »
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
history buffs, and people who like their summer reads with a side of gravitas
Blending memoir, history, and moral imagination, Ivan Jablonka’s A History of the Grandparents I Never Had painstakingly reconstructs the lives of the author’s ancestors, Matès and Idesa Jablonka. Their lives—buffeted by the major tragedies of early 20th century Europe—ended long before the author’s began. Digging through archives and plumbing the literary, oral, and historical record across three continents, Jablonka gradually pieces together the scattered fragments of his grandparents’ lives. His award-winning account, originally published to great acclaim in France, "cast[s] light where shadows long ruled," writes Forward, and will leave readers "heart-filled."
"Ivan Jablonka is a tremendous writer—compassionate, searching, intimate and ambitious. . . . [A History of the Grandparents I Never Had] is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read in years."
—Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
4
Crook County »
Racism and Injustice in America’s Largest Criminal Court
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
social justice advocates, Law & Order fans, and concerned members of the publics
Recent miscarriages of justice in Chicago have joined the growing bulwark of testimony calling attention to widespread practices of police brutality and racial profiling affecting communities of color across the nation. The rote response of belated hearings and symbolic firings does not, however, go deep enough in addressing the problem—as Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve noted in an interview with Rachel Maddow; nor does the problem necessarily stop with the police, she writes in the New York Times. Van Cleve, who spent a decade embedded in the Chicago-Cook County court system, bore witness to a courthouse culture riddled with racism. Based on over 1,000 hours of observation, her book, Crook County takes readers inside the halls of justice to witness everyday racial abuses in the courtrooms, judges’ chambers, and attorneys’ offices in an exposé the Chicago Tribune calls "powerful" and "propitious."
"As Van Cleve’s investigation so startlingly lays bare, just because legal institutions profess to be colorblind does not make it so."
—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Professor, Harvard University
5
Morbid Symptoms »
Relapse in the Arab Uprising
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
Middle East experts, current events buffs, and aspiring revolutionaries
Since the first wave of uprisings in 2011, the euphoria of the "Arab Spring" has given way to the gloom of backlash and a descent into mayhem and war. Foremost Arab world and international affairs specialist, Gilbert Achcar, argues in Morbid Symptoms, that the regional relapse has been the result of a failed revolutionary project, in which progressive forces were ultimately overwhelmed by clashes between rival counter-revolutionary forces—resilient old regimes on the one hand and Islamic fundamentalist contenders on the other. Through an analysis of the recent upheaval in Syria and Egypt, his book (borrowing its title from Antonio Gramsci) offers, as The Guardian writes, "an update on the bleak winter that followed the Arab spring—with some ideas about the future."
"One of the best analysts of the contemporary world."
6
Jimmy Carter in Africa »
Race and the Cold War
RECOMMENDED READING FOR:
politicos, BBC listeners, and presidential biography hobbyists
Drawing on candid interviews with former president, Jimmy Carter, as well as key U.S. and foreign diplomats, and on a dazzling array of international archival sources, Nancy Mitchell offers in her comprehensive account, Jimmy Carter in Africa, a timely reevaluation of the Carter administration and of the man himself. With an eye toward the flaring hot Cold War tensions in Africa, Mitchell underscores how, during Carter’s administration, the essence of American foreign policy—stopping Soviet expansion—slammed up against the most explosive and raw aspect of American domestic politics: racism. Hers is a portrayal that overturns longstanding assumptions about Carter’s tenure in the Oval Office, an account The Christian Science Monitor hails unequivocally as "the best book about that presidency that’s yet appeared."
"Mitchell’s superb treatment of international maneuvering in Africa in the 1970s delivers the most incisive portrait yet of Carter and other personalities at the top of his administration."
—James G. Hershberg, author of Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam
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