*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* The Lamont News-List lamref(a)fas.harvard.edu May 25, 2005 http://hcl.harvard.edu/lamont *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* This is the 11th and last issue of the 2004-2005 Lamont News-List, which will resume publication again in early October. Thanks for reading! Very best wishes, from all of us here in Lamont, for a Summer vacation that is restful, fun, full of adventure (especially if you're traveling), and productive (if you're getting a head start on your thesis). To our News-List subscribers who are graduating: congratulations, farewell, and good luck. To everyone else: we'll be hoping to see you back here in the Yard next Fall! ********************************************************** THE SUMMER BOOKS ISSUE: -- 12 Tempting Titles, Suggested by News-List Readers Books to suit all kinds of Summer reading tastes ********************************************************** ** THE GINGER MAN, by J. P. Donleavy. (Grove Press, 1955). First published in Paris in 1955 and originally banned in America, J. P. Donleavy's first novel is now recognized the world over as a modern classic of the highest order. Set in Ireland just after World War II, _The Ginger Man_ recounts the misadventures of Sebastian Dangerfield, a young American ne'er-do-well studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Dangerfield's appetite for women, liquor, and general roguishness is insatiable--and he satisfies it with endless charm. "The novel's hero, writes sophomore Nitin Ahuja, "is an amazingly wrought character, his life a constant spectacle. I read [_The Ginger Man_] last summer and loved it." ** THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM, Nelson Algren (1949; Four Walls Eight Windows, 1990). Algren won the very first National Book Award (1950) for this novel, which was also nominated for a Pulitzer. Algren has been compared to Dreiser, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy, and yet inexplicably, he has passed into literary obscurity. _The Man With the Golden Arm_ is a beautifully written, moving, and often bruising depiction of life in the Polish slums of postwar Chicago. It tells the story of Frankie "Machine" Majcinek, a card dealer and amateur drummer, and his losing battle with a morphine addiction. Though Algren's world is peopled by the damned and the damaged, he manages to convey that world with extraordinary compassion. Director Otto Preminger turned _The Man With the Golden Arm_ into a 1955 film, starring Frank Sinatra (in an Oscar-nominated performance). Algren, however, never forgave Preminger for what he did to the book in adapting it. ** FIRE UNDER THE SNOW: THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A TIBETAN MONK, by Palden Gyatso (Grove Press, 1997). In 1959, along with thousands of other Buddhist monks, Palden Gyatso was sent to prison and then to a forced labor camp for his opposition to the Chinese occupation of Tibet. Thirty three years later, in 1992, Gyatso was released from prison and fled Tibet for India, crossing the Himalayas on foot. He brought with him a small pouch containing instruments of torture, like those the Chinese had used against him. _Fire Under the Snow_ details his experiences and, by extension, bears witness to the suffering of the Tibetan people. "My story," he writes, "is not a glamorous one of high lamas and exotic ritual, but of how a simple monk succeeded in surviving the destructive forces of a totalitarian ideology." Gyatso's autobiography--which contains a foreword by the Dalai Lama--is banned in his homeland. ** THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD, by Zora Neale Hurston (1937; Perennial Classics, 1998). Hurston's book tells the story of Janie Crawford Killicks Starks Woods, a thrice-married, twice-widowed woman who learns the hard way: through her own experience. Granddaughter of a slave and daughter of a runaway mother, Janie rises above her circumstances to find her identity as a woman and as an African American. Eunpi Cho, of Winthrop House, writes: "I just recently reread the book and rediscovered my love for it. The language is so sharp and original, and the characters so alive. Hurston does an amazing job in forcing the reader to live the thoughts and passions of the characters. It's a short book, best read in one sitting, and it will be an incredible experience." ** BALL FOUR, by Jim Bouton (1970; Macmillan, 1990). Before there was BALCO, before there was the disgrace of Pete Rose, before Richard Ben Cramer disillusioned us with his biography of DiMaggio, and long before Jose Canseco penned _Juiced_, there was Jim Bouton's _Ball Four_. Bouton, a knuckleball pitcher and one-time Yankee, forever changed the public's image of baseball in his 1970 expose, which depicted players as fan un-friendly pill-poppers and booze-swillers. _Ball Four_ shocked and scandalized MLB executives, players and sportswriters; the controversy it generated made front-page news. Bouton became an MLB pariah. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn tried to force Bouton to retract the allegations he made; one team even burned a copy of _Ball Four_ in anger. Today, however, it's a baseball classic, and comes recommended by a Harvard sophomore. ** BORSTAL BOY, by Brendan Behan (1958; David Godine, 2000). Freshman Aidan Kelly suggests you pick up this autobiographical memoir, by one of Ireland's foremost playwrights and novelists, when you go looking for some good summer reading. In 1939, 16 year-old Behan, an IRA operative, was arrested in Liverpool with a suitcase full of explosives and became a prisoner of the British crown. In England, juvenile delinquents were sent to "borstal institutions," and Behan, for his crimes, served two years in reform school. _Borstal Boy_, Aidan tells us, "is wonderfully well written and funny," and Behan is a superb storyteller, so "the pages just flew by." ** THE MAN WHO LOVED ONLY NUMBERS: THE STORY OF PAUL ERDOS AND THE SEARCH FOR MATHEMATICAL TRUTH, by Paul Hoffman (Hyperion, 1998). Though little known outside mathematical circles, Erdos, who died in 1996 at age 83, was a legend among his colleagues. In fact, Erdos was so devoted to mathematics that he went without wife, children, steady job, or even a home, preferring to exist as the wandering guest of fellow mathematicians. He published more than 1,500 papers with at least 484 coauthors, who pride themselves on their "Erds number" (a figure indicating one's degree of separation from the master). Rosamond Xiang, a Quincy House junior, calls _The Man Who Loved Only Numbers_ a "witty bio" that's also interesting and accessible to those who aren't very mathematically inclined. In fact, says Rosamond, "Hoffman gives a lucid catalogue of some great conundrums in math history, its personages, and so on." ** SONS AND LOVERS, by D. H. Lawrence (1913; Signet Classics, 2000). Set in a Nottinghamshire coal town, _Sons and Lovers_, published in 1913, is the novel that established Lawrence's reputation. Intensely autobiographical, it traces the emotional and artistic maturation of Paul Morel. It is marvelously Freudian, too, in its depiction of the complicated relationships between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, and men and women. Kay Negishi '07 read _Sons and Lovers_ just recently. "At first, it didn't seem to affect me that much, but it was one of those things where you close the back cover and begin to reflect on what just happened. And it starts hitting you. The brooding emotions, the subtle temptations--it's all there." ** A HEART SO WHITE, by Javier Marias (New Directions, 2000). The winner of several literary prizes in Spain and abroad, this novel begins with an event that happened 40 years before the narrator's birth: the suicide of an aunt--his mother's sister, and his father's first wife. A _Washington Post_ review described the novel as many things: "a love story, a murder mystery, a tale about the loss of innocence and the burden of guilt, a study of the complicated, sometimes sinister negotiations between fathers and sons or husbands and wives." Marias has been likened to Proust, Henry James, and Laurence Sterne. _A Heart So White_ is the pick of an Adams House junior. ** PONZI'S SCHEME: THE TRUE STORY OF A FINANCIAL LEGEND, by Mitchell Zuckoff (Random House, 2005). One late summer morning in 1920, Charles Ponzi coasted to work in Boston in the back seat of his luxury convertible, showing no signs that his financial empire, and his life, were near ruin. Indeed, by August 1920, things were far worse than Ponzi--a confidence man and early master of media "spin"--let everyone believe. Ponzi's company, the ironically named Securities Exchange Commission, bilked investors of millions of dollars by promising to double their money in 90 days. All these years later, the phrase "Ponzi scheme" is still used to describe a "get rick quick" scam. Lamont News-List reader Mark Benson believes Zuckoff's new book is worth your time: "_Ponzi's Scheme_ will be an entertaining and informative read for those who follow the financial markets"--as well as those who don't. ** FREAKONOMICS: A ROGUE ECONOMIST EXPLORES THE HIDDEN SIDE OF EVERYTHING, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (William Morrow, 2005). Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their mothers? These may not sound like typical questions for an economist to ask, but Steven D. Levitt, a University of Chicago award-winning scholar, regularly studies the stuff of everyday life--from cheating to child naming patterns--and draws conclusions that turn conventional wisdom on its head. He usually begins with a mountain of data and a simple, unasked question. Some of these questions concern life-and-death issues; others have an admittedly freakish quality (hence the title of the book). Through forceful storytelling and wry insight, Levitt and _New York Times_ co-author Stephen J. Dubner show that economics is, at root, the study of incentives--how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. ** WIT, by Margaret Edson (Faber and Faber, 1999). Edson won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for _Wit_, considered one of the "finest plays of the decade," according to an early reviewer. In 2001, Mike Nichols directed a film version for HBO, starring Emma Thompson, that also received wide acclaim. Vivian Bearing, a professor of English whose life has been spent studying the metaphysical poetry of John Donne, is diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer. She responds to her illness--at least at first--with the same cool wit and rational intensity that she has brought to Donne's Holy Sonnets. As her disease progresses and chemotherapy further debilitates her, Vivian pushes toward an understanding that is as brutal as it is moving. As Peter Marks commented in his _New York Times_ review, at the end of _Wit_ "you will feel both enlightened and, in a strange way, comforted." ********************************************************* HAVE A TOPIC you'd like to see us cover in a future issue of the Lamont News-List? All suggestions welcome! Send your questions, thoughts and comments to sgilroy(a)fas.harvard.edu. ********************************************************** You received this email because you subscribed to the Lamont News-List. If at any time you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, point your browser to http://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/lamontnews-list. Directions for unsubscribing are at the bottom of the page. ********************************************************** Copyright 2005 President and Fellows of Harvard University _______________________________________________ lamstaff-list mailing list lamstaff-list(a)lists.fas.harvard.edu http://lists.fas.harvard.edu/mailman/listinfo/lamstaff-list