Scholarly Must-Reads: Part 2

Some books can be so influential that they change the way people think certain things. In this issue of the Concordian, professors in the Geography Department shared their top books they think everybody should read if they want to learn something about Geography.

    Joseph Manzo. Professor of Geography. 

    1. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. “This whole book is a metaphor of culture. And the big deal is that Ivan is literally in the prison camp, but culturally we are all in the prison camp. I am not just looking at it as a someone in the GULAG under Stalin, but in fact that we are all in GULAG.”

    2. Erik Larson. Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History. “It is not necessary the water that kills, it’s the debris. It is really just about people and the environment. About people who were arrogant, they thought they had everything under control; they were going to be the next big city on the Golf Coast. The best plans laid of mice and men. Meaningless”.

    3. Ernest Hemingway. The Sun Also Rises. “It talks about human process. It looks at stuff which is both environmental and cultural. The wound he suffered during the war, there were people from other countries who suffered the same thing”.

    4. Yukio Mishima. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. “It is about what happens when people in power lie to other people.  For me it is cultural historical geography”. 

    Shimantini Shome. Assistant Professor of Geography.

    1. Jared Diamond. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. “Diamond argues in minute detail about the role of environmental factors in the evolution of human societies. For anyone who has doubts about human societies being a product of their environment and vice versa, this is a must read”. Dr. Shome adds that Collapse by the same author would be a great addition to this book.

    2.  Edward Said. Orientalism. “This book studies the West’s interpretation of the “orient” or the people (especially Arabs) in Asia and North Africa. There is a history of the Global North telling the stories of the Global South and this book dismantles that”. 

    3. Mike Davis. Planet of Slums. “Anyone who wants to study cities and the inequalities that exist in them must read this book. This book brings to light the lives of the millions of people who live almost invisibly on the periphery of some of the most technologically advanced megacities in the world”.

    Tom Saladyga, Assistant Professor of Geography.

1. Wes Jackson. Becoming Native to this Place. “Wes Jackson lays out an ecological, or nature-based approach to a new agricultural that all geography majors (and humans who eat food) should read”.     

    2. Andrea Wulf. The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World. “This book will open the eyes of any reader interested in the complexities of the natural world and how our knowledge of Earth’s physical and biological systems has accumulated over time.  Also, from a geographer’s perspective, Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) had a mind for synthesizing and integrating the physical sciences and the arts like few before him or since”.

    3. John Steinbeck. East of Eden. “I have included this epic novel because it transcends space and time, exploring human nature in all its light and darkness.  It is also a story of place and landscape.  I’ve read this novel at least three times.  It simply stays with you.”