Off the Shelf

Recent books with Harvard connections

During a 2022 U.N. inspection of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant— squarely in the war zone | Photograph by RUSSIan DeFenSe MInIStRY PReSS SeRVICe VIa tHe aSSoCIateD PReSS

Chernobyl Roulette: War in the Nuclear Disaster Zone, by Serhii Plokhy (W.W. Norton, $29.99). The author, Hrushevsky professor of Ukrainian history, writes often about Ukraine and about nuclear power and disasters. This journalistic account tells what happens when they intersect, in the invading Russians’ occupation of the ruined Chernobyl nuclear plant (and subsequently of the operating Zaporizhzhia reactor site)—perhaps a harbinger of wartime horrors to come. Plokhy was profiled in “The Return of History” (September-October 2023, page 33).

Ignorance and Bliss: On Wanting Not to Know, by Mark Lilla, M.P.P. ’80, Ph.D. ’90 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $27). “Aristotle taught that all human beings want to know,” observes the author, an engaging essayist and professor of humanities at Columbia. In his latest examination of intellectual history, he explores why “all human beings also want not to know, sometimes fiercely so,” and especially during “certain historical periods—we are living in one—when the denial of evident truths seems to be gaining the upper hand….”

If Lilla’s inquiries disquiet, Storehouse of Treasures: Recovering the Riches of Chan & Zen, by Nelson Foster ’73 (Shambhala, $24.95 paper), an exploration of the roots of Chinese and Japanese Buddhist thought—and focus on character—may be just the ticket. The author has endured the tumultuous past half-century as an American Zen teacher. He believes that “gems from our tradition’s Asian past, hitherto unsuspected, hold exciting potential for us moderns and English speakers.”

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Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus Would Freeze, Hendrick Goltzius, c. 1600-1603: on the intersection of food and Eros—before the era of worrying about eating only what’s good for you | CoURteSY oF tHe PHILaDeLPHIa MUSeUM oF aRt

Eating and Being: A History of Ideas about Our Food and Ourselves, by Steven Shapin (University of Chicago, $35). The Ford professor of the history of science emeritus is a wise and entertaining guide to the differences between the modern view of eating what is good for you and earlier conceptions of what about eating is good. Readers are well served from the introduction, titled “What’s for Dinner?” In this case, a bowl of Tuscan bean soup, from which many fruitful trains of thought ramify.

Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture, by Niobe Way, Ed.D. ’94 (Dutton, $30). A professor of applied psychology at NYU draws on decades of studying social and emotional development to explicate some simple, hard truths. Boys and young men, she observes, “want us—the adults in the room—to listen, care, and take responsibility. They also want us to value friendships and recognize that these are key to their and our mental health.” Those needs clash with a “‘boy’ culture, one in which the goal is to have a lot of money so as to have a lot of toys,” producing many troubling outcomes.

One way to help youngsters grow up, of course, is to be honest with them. The Real Body Manual: Your Visual Guide to Health and Wellness, by Nancy Redd ’03 (Avery, $28), draws on the author’s experience as an on-air host and writer to present, frankly and with photographs, all the unmentionables—skin, hair, breasts, bowels, genitals—and their development and complications. “Why aren’t humans born with a body manual?” she asks, and this answer, directed both to her own pubescent children and their peers and parents everywhere, is a good one. At the other end of the spectrum, All About Grief, by psychologist-writer Lora-Ellen McKinney, M.P.A. ’97 (Beaming Books, $17.99), is an illustrated guide for youngsters encountering deep loss.

The Search: An Insider’s Novel about a University President, by Thomas Ehrlich ’56, LL.B. ’59 (Indiana University, $24 paper). Don’t let the subtitle put you off. Ehrlich, president emeritus of Indiana (and former Penn provost and Stanford law dean), confects a tale of Charlie Rosen, Nebraska State U’s leader, searching for a successor to the beloved football coach, RIP. At a time when identifying and supporting university leaders is ever more fraught (and a U.S. vice presidential nominee’s credentials include high-school coaching), this knowing tale about academics, athletics, and more is timely, entertaining, and revealing in a way mere factual narrative could never be.

Disconnected: Call Center Workers Fight for Good Jobs in the Digital Age, by Debbie J. Goldman ’73 (University of Illinois, $27.95). A downside of corporate power and technology is the production of isolated, mind-numbing jobs. The author, who spent her career in the Communication Workers of America’s research department, did doctoral studies in labor history, resulting in this account of telecommunication companies’ call center workers, their increasingly stressful employment conditions, and their efforts to improve their lot. A fine-grained account of what it takes “to improve—rather than further immiserate—conditions in our modern automated workplaces.”

Beware Euphoria: The Moral Roots and Racial Myths of America’s War on Drugs, by George Fisher ’82, J.D. ’86 (Oxford, $34.99). Stanford’s Crown professor of law reinterprets common understandings of the country’s drug laws, vividly tracing their origin to San Francisco’s 1875 ban on opium dens. To the extent race was involved then, he notes, the objective was not to protect Chinese users but to prevent the spread of moral rot (heaven forbid!) to the white population. Untangling multiple misperceptions, Fisher carefully warns that current efforts to undo the antidrug legal regime (for which he sees many valid rationales) cannot proceed on the basis of new misunderstandings.

Let’s Start the Revolution, by Ralph Nader, LL.B. ’58 (Skyhorse, $32.99). Now in his seventh decade of trying to reform American governance and corporate behavior, the consumer advocate spells out his frustrations and hopes in a chatty voice, aiming to encourage others to pick up the “tools for displacing the corporate state and building a country that works for the people.” The systemic challenges are detailed in Corporatocracy: How to Protect Democracy from Dark Money and Corrupt Politicians, by Ciara Torres-Spelliscy ’97 (NYU Press, $32), a professor of law at Stetson. She attributes much of “the pathetic state of American democracy” (her term) to corporate influence. Democracy is a young system, she notes, “A precocious toddler”—less mature than corporate organizations: “Spending corporate money in a democratic election is like handing that toddler a hand grenade.”

Visions of Financial Order: National Institutions and the Development of Banking Regulation, by Kim Pernell, Ph.D. ’16 (Princeton, $33 paper). With the Federal Reserve System under increasing political challenge and crypto-entrepreneurs touting deinstitutionalization (or worse), it helps to be reminded why countries approach the hugely consequential arcana of bank oversight in different ways. Pernell’s approach is decidedly scholarly, but with a twist: she is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and her understanding of why so many banks “ended up getting in over their heads” in the 2007-2008 financial crisis proceeds from a deeper reading of “the broad principles of order embedded” in politics and institutions. All of which suggests that current efforts to change, or upend, the prevailing system might have unintended, and even cataclysmic, side effects.

Leading Through: Activating the Soul, Heart, and Mind of Leadership, by Kim B. Clark ’74, Ph.D. ’78, Jonathan R. Clark, Ph.D. ’10, and Erin E. Clark, M.B.A. ’04 (HBR Press, $35). One wouldn’t ordinarily find “soul” and “heart” in the subtitle of a book on leadership and management, but most of those aren’t created by the former Harvard Business School leader who stepped down to accept the call to serve as president of Brigham Young University-Idaho—nor are they a self-described “family project.” Dean Clark, son Jonathan (professor of management at the University of Texas at San Antonio), and daughter Erin (a managing director with Deloitte Consulting) advocate a “shift in the concept of power—from power over to power through” organizations and their people.

Roman Year: A Memoir, by André Aciman, Ph.D. ’88 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $30). The novelist (Call Me by Your Name), memoirist (Out of Egypt), and scholar, revisits the period in the 1960s when his family, expelled from Egypt, lived as refugees in Italy before arriving in the United States. Vividly remembered and written, a coming of age and an awakening to ideas and literature, in a Rome that is now barely recognizable.

Click here for the November-December 2024 issue table of contents

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