What Wellesley's Reading
by Wellesley Faculty
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Description
Listen as Wellesley College faculty introduce you each week during the fall and spring semesters to a book that they're passionate about in their field, and then read a brief passage to whet your appetite. The books might be little-known literary gems, beloved classics, scenes from plays, recent provocative essays, poems, thought-provoking analyses of current social issues, biographies, or many other literary forms. Take a few minutes to explore the books that captivate Wellesley faculty.
| Name | Description | Released | Price | ||
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1 |
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! | Robbie Berg reads an excerpt from Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! , published by W.W. Norton. "He kept telling everybody what a tremendous genius I was, saying, 'He fixes radios by thinking!'" | 5/9/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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2 |
China Marches West | Pat Giersch reads from China Marches West by Peter C. Perdue, published by Belknap Press. "This book joins a growing body of work that finds China and Western Europe sharing broad similarities in the eighteenth century." | 5/2/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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3 |
American Prophecy | Laura Grattan reads an excerpt from American Prophecy: Race and Redemption in American Political Culture by George Shulman, published by University of Minnesota Press. "Because the danger is great, it is tempting to split good and bad forms of prophecy, as if to exorcise Jerry Falwell but save Frederick Douglas..." | 4/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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4 |
Eucalyptus | Nick Rodenhouse reads an excerpt from Eucalyptus by Murray Bail, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. "Anyway, don’t you think the compliant pine is associated with numbers, geometry, the majority, whereas the eucalypt stands apart, solitary, essentially undemocratic?" | 4/11/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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5 |
Ill Fares the Land | Stephen Marini reads an excerpt from Ill Fares The Land by Tony Judt, published by Penguin. "This is not only a book of historical interpretation […] it is more importantly a call to moral advocacy and action for all who believe in the common good, especially those who are privileged to teach." | 4/4/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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6 |
How To Talk About Books You Haven't Read | Scott Gunther reads an excerpt from How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard, published by Bloomsbury. "There’s a lot of social pressure to say we’ve read a book if we’re going to talk about it, but Bayard encourages us to acknowledge without shame the many books we haven’t read […]" | 3/28/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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7 |
The Answer | Evelina Guzauskyte reads an excerpt from The Answer by Juana Inés de la Cruz, translated by Electa Arenal and Amanda Powell and published by the Feminist Press. "…one can philosophize quite well while preparing supper. I often say, when I make these little observations, 'Had Aristotle cooked, he would have written a great deal more.'" | 3/21/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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8 |
I Want to Be a Mathematician | Marty Magid reads an excerpt from I Want to Be a Mathematician by Paul Hamos, published by Springer-Verlag. "One of the chapters in the book is entitled "How to Do Almost Anything." There are short essays on how to write a recommendation, how to be a chairman, how not to be a chairman, and […] how to do research..." | 3/14/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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9 |
Small Wonder | Barbara Beatty reads from Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory by Jonathan Zimmerman, published by Yale University Press. "A century ago, most American students attended a one-room school; today, almost nobody does. But images of the little red schoolhouse [...] are ubiquitous, instantly recognizable..." | 3/7/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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10 |
What Technology Wants | Franklyn Turbak reads an excerpt from What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly. "Kelly believes that […] humans have the power and responsibility to train technology to be convivial, or compatible with life." | 2/29/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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11 |
The Drunkard's Walk | Robin McKnight reads an excerpt from The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow, published by Pantheon. "I think that readers will be interested in, and perhaps surprised by, the myriad ways that our understanding (or misunderstanding) of statistics can lead us astray." | 2/22/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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12 |
Consider the Lobster | Vernon Shetley reads an excerpt from Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, published by Little, Brown & Co. "Every August I vow silently to chill about usage this year, and then by Labor Day there’s foam on my chin. I can’t seem to help it." | 2/15/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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13 |
Washington: A Life | Rob Paarlberg reads an excerpt from Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow, published by Penguin Press. "Chernow’s great achievement in this book is to turn Washington from a statue or an icon back into a human being. This is a highly intimate biography..." | 2/8/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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14 |
Carrying the Fire | Wendy Bauer reads an excerpt from Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins, published by Cooper Square Press. "The moon I have known my entire life, that two-dimensional small yellow disc in the sky, has gone away somewhere, to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I have ever seen." | 2/1/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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15 |
The Metamorphosis | Jens Kruse reads from The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, translated by Joachim Neugroschel, published by Simon and Schuster. "One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin." | 1/25/12 | Free | View In iTunes |
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16 |
The Most Human Human | Brian Tjaden reads an excerpt from The Most Human Human: What Talking to Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive by Brian Christian, published by Doubleday. "[…] my goal in these conversations is one of the strangest things I’ve ever been asked to do. I must convince them that I’m human. Fortunately, I am human; unfortunately, it’s not clear how much that will help." | 12/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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17 |
All Souls | Lynne Viti reads an excerpt from All Souls: A Family Story from Southie by Michael Patrick MacDonald, published by Beacon Press. "I stopped laughing then and I just prayed to every ancestor I'd ever heard of, and to my brother Patrick, and to the Blessed Mother, to intervene and not let Davey kill himself [...]I'd found myself doing this often." | 11/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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18 |
Nine Gates | Phyllis McGibbon reads an excerpt from Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield, published by Harper Perennial. "Part of any good artist’s work is to find a right balance between the independence born of willing solitude and the ability to speak for and to others." | 11/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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19 |
Perpetual Euphoria | Julie Norem reads an excerpt from Perpetual Euphoria: On the Duty to Be Happy by Pascal Bruckner, published by Princeton University Press. "How did a liberating principle of the Enlightenment, the right to happiness, get transformed into a dogma, a collective catechism?" | 11/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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20 |
The New World of Mr. Tompkins | Ted Ducas reads an excerpt from The New World of Mr. Tompkins by George Gamow, published by Cambridge University Press. (6:30) "The challenge to understanding... [quantum mechanics]... is that we can't observe [it]...What if Planck's constant were [much larger] than it is?...Tompkins comes face to face with [the] uncertainty principle and the amazing phenomenon of quantum tunneling." | 11/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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21 |
The Princess of Cleves | Helene Bilis reads an excerpt from The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette, published by W. W. Norton. "I would go so far as to claim that the novel could and should belong on almost any syllabus in the humanities. It offers an enduring fiction of love, sacrifice, and loss." | 10/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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22 |
The Two Cultures | Don Elmore reads an excerpt from The Two Cultures by C.P. Snow, published by the Cambridge University Press. "Closing the gap between our cultures [the sciences and the humanities] is a necessity [...] When those two senses have grown apart, then no society is going to be able to think with wisdom." | 10/19/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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23 |
The Tiger's Wife | Kate Brogan reads an excerpt from The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht, published by Random House. "Much of the novel describes the work of doctors during wartime and its aftermath -- experiences with landmine victims, inadequate equipment, poverty, and the contagion of ethnic hatred, experiences that rival the fantastical elements of the novel in their ability to confound." | 10/12/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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24 |
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion | Marion Just reads an excerpt from The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion by John R. Zaller, published by Cambridge University Press. "Zaller's model helps us to understand how a polarized Congress and the polarizing rhetoric of media pundits result in the political gridlock that perplexes many Americans." | 10/5/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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25 |
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis | Sergio Parussa reads an excerpt from The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani, published by Everyman's Library. "Bassani's work is a true statement on the power of memory and writing, on how literary writing can bring the past back to life and save it from oblivion." | 9/28/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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26 |
Noah's Garden | Kristina Jones reads an excerpt from Noah's Garden by Sara Stein, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. "I'm neither a romantic nor an altruist. I let grass grow for grouse, preserve dry-stone walls for toads, leave logs rotting in the wood, [...] less because it's the decent thing to do than because it's necessary." | 9/21/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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27 |
Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López's "Irreverent Apparition" | Irene Mata reads an excerpt from "Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López's 'Irreverent Apparition'" edited by Alicia Gaspar de Alba and Alma López, published by the University of Texas Press. "López’s images make manifest the sexuality and desire that are embedded in Chicano/a attachments to the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe. As might be expected, López’s work has been quite controversial." | 9/14/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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28 |
Let Their People Come | David Lindauer reads an excerpt from Let Their People Come: Breaking the Gridlock on Global Labor Mobility by Lant Pritchett, published by the Center for Global Development. "Pritchett's bold proposal: increased immigration, especially the temporary migration of guest workers, as the best option rich nations have for helping the world’s poor." | 9/7/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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29 |
The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov | Adam Weiner reads "A Nursery Tale" from The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov, published by Vintage Books. "The vast sky, suffused with dull rose, grew darker. A tram screeched by, inundating the asphalt with the radiant tears of its lights. And short-skirted beauties walked by." | 8/31/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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30 |
Next of Kin | Wini Wood reads an excerpt from Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees by Roger Fouts, published by William Morrow. "The Gardners ... decided to raise Washoe, a chimp, in a human family, with a hypothesis that if she [grew] up under the same conditions that a human child does she might acquire language just as a human child does." | 5/4/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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31 |
Parenting Out of Control | Kelly Rutherford reads an excerpt from Parenting out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times by Margaret Nelson, published by NYU Press. "In general, parents speak as if safety depends on monitoring, on knowing precisely what it is their children are doing and precisely where they are." | 4/27/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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32 |
King of Infinite Space | Megan Kerr reads from King of Infinite Space: Donald Coxeter, the Man who Saved Geometry by Siobhan Roberts, published by Walker Books. "While we no more notice geometry and its crucial impact on our lives then we notice the curve of the earth when walking upon it, geometry is everywhere, and its reach is infinite." | 4/20/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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33 |
Apres Vous | Jim Petterson reads an excerpt from his unpublished translation of Apres Vous by Pierre Alferi, published by P.O.L. "[Alferi] would rather call 'home' a place from which - from which to look out, from which to leave- than a place where; rather a perch, a belvedere, a locker, than a residence." | 4/13/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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34 |
Wrong Place Wrong Time | Soo Hong reads an excerpt from Wrong Place, Wrong Time: Trauma and Violence in the Lives of Young Black Men by John A. Rich, published by Johns Hopkins University Press. "Everybody that gets locked up says the same prayer when the steel doors slam, 'God if you get me out of this one, I swear I'll never...' prayer. So the last time I got locked up, I actually asked God to 'Give me what I deserve this time...'" | 4/6/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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35 |
The Canon | John Cameron reads an excerpt from The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Natalie Angier, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. "The cell is surely the greatest invention in the history of life on this planet, and ever since the first cell arose, as Günter Blobel said, it has been all cell, all the time..." | 3/30/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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36 |
A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain | Carlos Vega reads an excerpt from A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain by Chris Lowney, published by Oxford University Press. "Technology has shrunk our world. Our globe has become, in some respects, no different from those tiny, medieval, Spanish villages where Muslims, Christians, and Jews rub shoulders on a daily basis." | 3/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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37 |
The Face of Battle | Stacie Goddard reads an excerpt from The Face of Battle by John Keegan, published by Penguin Books. "What motivates a soldier in the 15th century, in the 19th century, in the 20th century and beyond, to move across the battlefield often in the face of almost certain death and enter into combat?" | 3/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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38 |
The Design of Everyday Things | Orit Shaer reads an excerpt from The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman, published by Basic Books. "Why do we put up with the frustrations of everyday objects that we can't figure out how to use... that claim in their advertisements to do everything but that make it almost impossible to do anything?" | 3/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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39 |
Selected Letters of Emily Dickinson | Paul Fisher reads an excerpt from Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters by Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas Johnson, Harvard University Press. "When I introduce these letters in my classes people gasp at their raw, unexpected beauty, their irony, and their shear brilliance." | 2/23/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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40 |
The Other Wes Moore | Beth Hennessey reads an excerpt from The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore, published by Spiegel & Grau. "Why is it that some of us seem driven, right from the start, almost from the womb...yet others, sometimes even siblings in the same family, lack this drive?" | 2/16/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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41 |
Einstein's God | Adele Wolfson reads an excerpt from Einstein's God: Conversation About Science and the Human Spirit by Krista Tippett, published by Penguin Books. "Einstein's writings have always seemed to me to be something like the Bible in that you can find a quote to fit any point of view about God." | 2/9/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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42 |
The Origins of Totalitarianism | Martin Brody reads an excerpt from The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, published by Schocken. "The Origins of Totalitarianism... reveals a passionately engaged writer, one who overcame personal adversity and strove relentlessly to look at the horrors of the immediate past without despair." | 2/2/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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43 |
Your Money or Your Life | Courtney Coile reads an excerpt from Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America's Health Care System by David Cutler, published by Oxford University Press. "The 15% of GDP that is spent on healthcare in the United States is not necessarily too much. [Cutler] offers the reader a choice: 1950s medical care at 1950s prices, or today's medical care at today's prices." | 1/26/11 | Free | View In iTunes |
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44 |
Emancipation | Fran Malino reads an excerpt from Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance by Michael Goldfarb, published by Simon & Schuster. | 12/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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45 |
The Billion Dollar Molecule | Julia Miwa reads an excerpt from The Billion-Dollar Molecule: One Company's Quest for the Perfect Drug by Barry Werth, published by Simon & Schuster. "Since then, however, the search for new drug molecules has narrowed to where they are most likely to be found: in soil and sludge." | 12/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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46 |
The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart | Andy Shennan reads an excerpt from The Somme: The Darkest Hour on the Western Front by Peter Hart, published by Pegasus Press. "The Somme quickly became a byword for the futility and senselessness of trench warfare...strategic incompetence, class based callousness, bureaucratically sanctioned mass murder. But was the Somme senseless?" | 12/1/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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47 |
Adornment | Jon Imber reads an excerpt from The Rise of Fashion: A Reader, by Daniel Leonhard Purdy, published by University of Minnesota Press, featuring an essay by George Simmel. "Simmel describes how what we wear gives pleasure to others, while ... ensuring that in their pleasure they reciprocate with esteem expressed toward us, as in 'you look great'." | 11/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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48 |
Losing Control | Joe Joyce reads an excerpt from Losing Control: The Emerging Threats to Western Prosperity by Stephen D. King, published by Yale University Press. "The risk is that in time, the developed world refuses to pay up. At that point, globalization disintegrates whether through protectionism, financial collapse, ethnic or religious rivalry, or war." | 11/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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49 |
The Poetics of Space | Anjali Prabhu reads an excerpt from The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard published by Beacon Press. "Words- I often imagine this- are little houses, each with its cellar and garret. Common sense lives on the ground floor, always ready to engage in 'foreign commerce' ... . To go upstairs in the word house, is to withdraw step by step; while to go down to the cellar is to dream..." | 11/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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50 |
Endless Forms Most Beautiful | Emily Buchholtz reads an excerpt from Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll, published by W.W. Norton & Company. "[Carroll] compares the evolution of animals to the evolution of everyday objects, such as the paper clip or the fork." | 11/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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51 |
Toxic Bodies | Jay Turner reads an excerpt from Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES by Nancy Langston, published by Yale University Press. "Our bodies are not black boxes disconnected from the environment. Instead, some of the most powerful aspects of our identities, such as our gender, are affected by environmental factors." | 10/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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52 |
Gilead | Ed Silver reads an excerpt from Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. "My mother's father was a preacher, and my father's father was, too, and his father before him, and before that, nobody knows, but I wouldn't hesitate to guess." | 10/20/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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53 |
Quantum | Courtney Lannert reads from Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, and the Great Debate about the Nature of Reality by Manjit Kumar, published by W.W. Norton & Company. | 10/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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54 |
Imaginary Companions | Tracy Gleason reads an excerpt from Imaginary Companions and the Children Who Create Them by Marjorie Taylor, published by Oxford University Press. "If children's grasp of reality is not faulty, then trying to calm a panicky child by assuring her that a scary, pretend entity is not real is likely to be ineffective." | 10/6/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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55 |
Enlightened Sexism | Susan Reverby reads an excerpt from Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done by Susan J. Douglas, published by Times Books. "Feminism thus must remain a dirty word, with feminists (particularly older ones) stereotyped as man-hating, child-loathing, hairy, shrill, humorless, deliberately unattractive, ninjas from Hades." | 9/29/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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56 |
The Worldly Philosophers | Corri Taylor reads an excerpt from The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers by Robert L. Heilbroner, published by Simon & Schuster. "John Stuart Mill was born in 1806. In 1809, he began to learn Greek. ... At thirteen, he made a complete survey of all there was to be known in the field of political economy." | 9/22/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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57 |
Blown to Bits | Takis Metaxas reads an excerpt from Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness after the Digital Explosion by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, published by Addison-Wesley. "Any technology can be used for good or ill. ... The photo manipulation tools that enhance your snapshots are used by child pornographers to escape prosecution." | 9/15/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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58 |
The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis | Dan Chiasson reads an excerpt from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. "At first we did not even know what he meant. Then, when we realized, we were frankly upset. 'Cremains' sounds like something invented as a milk substitute in coffee, like Cremora, or Coffee-mate." | 9/8/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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59 |
To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica's Missing | Adam Van Arsdale reads an excerpt from To Know Where He Lies: DNA Technology and the Search for Srebrenica's Missing by Sarah Wagner, published by the University of California Press. (7:01) | 6/9/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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60 |
The Clearing: A Play by Helen Edmundson | Nora Hussey reads an excerpt from The Clearing: A Play by Helen Edmundson, published by Theatre Communications Group. (6:53) | 6/2/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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61 |
Moby Dick | Larry Rosenwald reads an excerpt from Moby Dick by Herman Melville. (5:30) | 5/26/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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62 |
Plato's Symposium - The Speech of Aristophanes | Nicolas de Warren reads an excerpt from Plato's Symposium translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, published by Hackett Publishing Company. (7:05) "It's obvious that every soul of every lover longs for something else. A soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle, it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle, it hides behind a riddle." | 5/19/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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63 |
Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject | Roxanne Euben reads an excerpt from Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject by Saba Mahmood, published by Princeton University Press. (6:16) "What's often hard to appreciate is that Muslim women have become increasingly active in the Islamist movement and that their role is far more important than simply serving as passive pawns of Islamist men." | 5/12/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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64 |
Mathematics in Civilization | Stanley Chang reads an excerpt from Mathematics in Civilization by Harold Resnikoff and Ronald Wells, published by Dover Publications. (4:03) "Why were accurate calculations that necessary? ... It shows how an error made by the Greek geographer Strabo in 63 BCE as transferred to Greek astrologer Ptolemy in 150 AD could affect a sailor in 1500 AD." | 5/5/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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65 |
War and Peace | Tom Hodge reads an excerpt from War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude and published by W.W. Norton. (6:27) "Pierre brings about a regeneration of Andrew's sense of hope and illustrates Tolstoy's view of what friends can do for each other if the circumstances are right." | 4/28/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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66 |
The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War | Kathy Moon reads an excerpt from The Coldest Winter by David Halberstam, published by Hyperion. (6:28) "It brought an angry client state, still bitter about its recently ended colonial period and embittered about being severed in half, under the hegemony of an awkward new superpower that was not at all sure if it wanted to be in the business of empire." | 4/21/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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67 |
The Life of Ira Remsen (1846-1927) | Flick Coleman reads an excerpt from The Life of Ira Remsen by Frederick Getman, published by Journal of Chemical Education. (3:37) "A greenish blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air in the neighborhood of the performance became dark red. A great colored cloud arose. This was disagreeable and suffocating." | 4/14/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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68 |
Homer's Odyssey | Carol Dougherty reads an excerpt from The Odyssey of Homer translated by Richmond Lattimore, published by Harper Collins. (5:30) "I am here to confess that I am a chronic re-reader. Often, when I'm stumped, or can't figure out what to do next, I pick up Homer's Odyssey and start reading it again." | 4/7/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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69 |
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It | Ann Velenchik reads an excerpt from The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier, published by Oxford University Press. (4:42) "Suppose your country is dirt poor, almost stagnant economically, and that few people are educated. You don't have to try that hard to imagine this condition; our ancestors lived this way." | 3/31/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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70 |
Einstein's Dreams | Glenn Stark reads an excerpt from Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman, published by Vintage Books. (4:46) "In this world, everyone lives in the mountains. At some time in the past, scientists discovered that time flows more slowly the farther from the center of Earth. Once the phenomenon was known, a few people, anxious to stay young, moved to the mountains. Now it is impossible to sell living quarters elsewhere." | 3/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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71 |
Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human | Kathryn Lynch reads an excerpt from Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham, published by Basic Books. (6:57) "An unmarried man cannot provide the bread and porridge that is the spirit's food and a chief's hospitality. To his friends, he is an object of pity." | 3/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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72 |
Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, 1870-1940 | Lee Cuba reads an excerpt from Women and the City: Gender, Power, and Space in Boston, 1870-1940 by Sarah Deutsch, published by Oxford University Press. (5:34) "I chose this book because I thought many would be interested in the important historical role that Wellesley played in Boston at the turn of the last century." | 3/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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73 |
Copenhagen: A Play by Michael Frayn | Nancy Kolodny reads an excerpt from Copenhagen, a play by Michael Frayn, published by Anchor Books. (4:26) "The play takes place at some point when all three characters are dead. They are all ghosts and they are talking to each other trying to figure out what happened in 1941..." | 3/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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74 |
Chekhov's "Peasants" | Nina Tumarkin reads an excerpt from the short story "Peasants", collected in The Essential Tales of Chekhov edited by Richard Ford, published by Harper Perennial. (5:35) "I'll say it now. I'm a shameless Russophile who has yet to fully understand how one of the world's most despotic regimes could produce arguably the most glorious literary canon of the 19th century." | 2/24/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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75 |
Unmaking the West: "What-If?" Scenarios That Rewrite World History | Craig Murphy reads an excerpt from the preface to Unmaking the West: "What-If?" Scenarios That Rewrite World History, edited by Philip Tetlick, Richard Lebow, and Geoffrey Parker, published by Michigan University Press. (5:00) "Imagine reading a book that begins, 'We Chinese take our primacy for granted. We are one of the oldest civilizations in the world and the oldest continuous culture in existence.'" | 2/17/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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76 |
The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus | Dick French reads an excerpt from the preface to The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus by Owen Gingerich, published by Walker and Company. (5:00) "Spring, 1543. Europe was in turmoil. The German princes had taken over the banner of Protestantism from an aging Martin Luther and Europe was poised on the brink of war." | 2/10/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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77 |
The Tower of Babel (from Genesis) | Thomas Nolden reads the story of the Tower of Babel from The Five Books of Moses translated by Everett Fox, published by Random House. (5:15) "This book has been called by many the 'book of the books'. It has been generating an endless number of tales and stories, spurring for endless centuries the imaginations of its readers around the world." | 2/3/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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78 |
Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism | Akila Weerapana reads an excerpt from Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism by George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller | 1/27/10 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 78 Episodes |
Customer Reviews
Critical thinking at its best
Plato's Symposium - The Speech of Aristophanes -
His review was clear, concise, and informative. The audio was sharp, crisp, and clear as well. I look forward to hearing the rest of his works.
