What We Are Reading Today: Three Roads Back

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Updated 28 January 2023

What We Are Reading Today: Three Roads Back

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Author: Robert D. Richardson

In “Three Roads Back,” Robert Richardson, the author of magisterial biographies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and William James, tells the connected stories of how these foundational American writers and thinkers dealt with personal tragedies early in their careers. For Emerson, it was the death of his young wife and, 11 years later, his five-year-old son; for Thoreau, it was the death of his brother; and for James, it was the death of his beloved cousin Minnie Temple.

Filled with rich biographical detail and unforgettable passages from the journals and letters of Emerson, Thoreau, and James, these vivid and moving stories of loss and hard-fought resilience show how the writers’ responses to these deaths helped spur them on to their greatest work, influencing the birth and course of American literature and philosophy. In reaction to his traumatic loss, Emerson lost his Unitarian faith and found solace in nature.

Thoreau, too, leaned on nature and its regenerative power, discovering that “death is the law of new life,” an insight that would find expression in Walden. And James, following a period of panic and despair, experienced a redemptive conversion and new ideas that would drive his work as a psychologist and philosopher.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Plant Atlas 2020: Mapping Changes in the Distribution of the British and Irish Flora

What We Are Reading Today: Plant Atlas 2020: Mapping  Changes in the Distribution of the British and Irish Flora
Updated 28 March 2023

What We Are Reading Today: Plant Atlas 2020: Mapping Changes in the Distribution of the British and Irish Flora

What We Are Reading Today: Plant Atlas 2020: Mapping  Changes in the Distribution of the British and Irish Flora

Authors: P. A. Stroh, K. J. Walker, T. A. Humphrey, O. L. Pescott, & R. J. Burkmar

“Plant Atlas 2020” presents the results of field surveys by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland, building on past atlas surveys undertaken by the Botanical Society in the early and late twentieth century.

Drawing on the work of thousands of botanists who covered the entirety of Britain and Ireland between 2000 and 2019, this two-volume book features introductory chapters that provide a detailed assessment of the changes to the region’s flora over the past hundred years.

Distribution maps and accompanying text and graphics display the phenology, altitudinal range, and time-series trends for 2,616 native and alien species and 247 hybrids.

With more than 30 million records gathered during the project, Plant Atlas 2020 will serve as an essential resource for the study and conservation of these wild plants and their vitally important habitats for decades to come.


What We Are Reading Today: The Man Who Caught the Storm

What We Are Reading Today: The Man Who Caught the Storm
Updated 27 March 2023

What We Are Reading Today: The Man Who Caught the Storm

What We Are Reading Today: The Man Who Caught the Storm

Author: Brantley Hargrove

“The Man Who Caught the Storm” offers insight into the life and death saga of one of history’s greatest storm chasers. It is a tale of obsession, ingenuity, and the race to understand nature’s fiercest phenomenon — the tornado.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the tornado was one of the last true mysteries of the modern world. It was a monster that ravaged the American heartland a thousand times each year, yet science’s every effort to divine its inner workings had ended in failure. Researchers all but gave up, until the arrival of an outsider.

Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college in his life.


What We Are Reading Today: Myanmar: Politics, Economy and Society

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Updated 26 March 2023

What We Are Reading Today: Myanmar: Politics, Economy and Society

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Author: Adam Simpson, Nicholas Farrelly (editors)

“Myanmar: Politics, Economy and Society” provides a sophisticated overview of the key political, economic and social challenges facing contemporary Myanmar and explains the complex historical and ethnic dynamics that have shaped the country.
The book provides a clear and incisive contribution from the world’s leading Myanmar scholars, assessing the policies and political reforms that have provoked contestation in the country’s recent history.
Questions of economic ownership and control and the distribution of natural resources are shown to be deeply informed by long-standing fractures among ethnic and civil-military relations.

The chapters analyse the key issues that constrain or expedite societal development in Myanmar and place recent events of national and international significance in the context of its complex history and social relations, according to a review on goodreads.com.

The book demonstrates that ethnic and cultural diversity is at the core of Myanmar’s society and heavily influences all aspects of life in the country.

This book will be of top interest to students, journalists and scholars of Southeast Asian politics, economics and societies.

 


What We Are Reading Today: Rescuing Socrates by Roosevelt Montas

What We Are Reading Today: Rescuing Socrates by Roosevelt Montas
Updated 25 March 2023

What We Are Reading Today: Rescuing Socrates by Roosevelt Montas

What We Are Reading Today: Rescuing Socrates by Roosevelt Montas

What is the value of a liberal education? Traditionally characterized by a rigorous engagement with the classics of Western thought and literature, this approach to education is all but extinct in American universities, replaced by flexible distribution requirements and ever-narrower academic specialization. Many academics attack the very idea of a Western canon as chauvinistic, while the general public increasingly doubts the value of the humanities. In “Rescuing Socrates,” Dominican-born American academic Roosevelt Montas tells the story of how a liberal education transformed his life, and offers an intimate account of the relevance of the Great Books today, especially to members of historically marginalized communities.

Montas emigrated from the Dominican Republic to Queens, New York, when he was 12 and encountered the Western classics as an undergraduate in Columbia University’s renowned Core Curriculum, one of America’s last remaining Great Books programs. The experience changed his life and determined his career—he went on to earn a PhD in English and comparative literature, serve as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum, and start a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college.

Weaving together memoir and literary reflection, Rescuing Socrates describes how four authors—Plato, Augustine, Freud, and Gandhi—had a profound impact on Montas’s life.


What We Are Reading Today: Trust the Plan by William Sommer

What We Are Reading Today: Trust the Plan by William Sommer
Updated 24 March 2023

What We Are Reading Today: Trust the Plan by William Sommer

What We Are Reading Today: Trust the Plan by William Sommer

In “Trust the Plan,” William Sommer explains the rise of QAnon, how it has gained a mainstream following Republican lawmakers and ordinary citizens, the threat it poses to democracy, and how we can reach those who have embraced the conspiracy and are disseminating its lies.

What began as a fringe online conspiracy in the mid 2000s is now embraced by millions of Americans including new members of Congress and the thousands of Trump follower who attacked the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

This timely and essential book outlines what the nation must do to address this growing danger — including how to help friends and family who have fallen under Q’s pernicious sway.