We asked some of our faculty and members of the History Alumni Advisory Committee to recommend books for cozy winter reading. Grab a blanket, get the fireplace going, and curl up with a good book this holiday season!
Barry Cohen '66: "The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story is a comprehensive history of slavery and the African American experience in America. Just as the Mayflower was coming to America in 1620, another ship with future slaves as its cargo was coming to America the year before. The book is both a narrative and an anthology of essays and poems. It brings new perspective to the slave experience over centuries of bondage and liberation, and brings to life the multidimensional black experience in America."
Jon Getz '89: "While I could make many recommendations on books, one I encourage folks to read is Mickey7, a Science Fiction novel written by UR Alumni Edward Ashton (PhD Electrical Engineering). The main plot focuses on a character whose only crime seems to be that he wanted to be a historian. The plot starts with Mickey 1 who makes some bad life choices and becomes an "Expendable" on a spaceship that is off to colonize another planet. As an expendable, the character has the job to undertake deadly missions only to be cloned anew afterwards. The main storyline then follows Mickey 7 with interesting flashbacks and a drama surrounding the colony. The dark humor and main storyline makes you think about many different social issues, including a more contemporary take on "essential personnel" and what it means to be human. While it is science fiction, it is not overly scientific in the read and is quite fun. The book will also soon be out as a movie, directed and co-produced by Bong Joon Ho (Parasite and Snowpiercer) and I think it will be great to see how the ideas transform onto the screen."
Matthew Lenoe, faculty: "Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine. The best short general history of Ukraine available, this book avoids the distortions of extreme nationalist historiography. It is invaluable background to the Russian attack on Kiev and Ukrainian resistance."
Craig M. Nakashian, PhD '10: "I would like to recommend several, all by recent departmental alums: Douglas Flowe, Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York (2020); Kira Thurman, Singing Like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (2021); Jonathan Robins, Oil Palm: A Global History (2021); Peter Sposato, Forged in the Shadow of Mars: Chivalry and Violence in Late Medieval Florence (2022); and Samuel Claussen, Chivalry and Violence in Late Medieval Castile (2020).
Over the last couple of years I was fortunate to read the first three on the list, and all three are stellar; this break I am hoping to read the last two. I was privileged to study with all of these folks; they are wonderful representatives of the UR History Department."
Bill Robinson '72: "I recommend Our First Civil War: Patriots and Loyalists in the American Revolution by H.W. Brands. I focused in American history at UR and particularly in Colonial through Civil War. I'm a long-time member of the Lexington (MA) Historical Society and its Book Club and read this just recently as part of our group and really enjoyed it. It's thoroughly researched particularly with primary materials such as newspapers of the time and correspondence of key people; colonial, British, and otherwise. It is written in an easily readable style while remaining a serious work."
Joan Rubin, faculty: "Right now I'm reading Patti Smith's Just Kids, which I am using in my current seminar on Twentieth-Century American Cultural History. It's a beautifully written memoir of Smith's relationship with artist Robert Mapplethorpe and of the downtown New York scene in the 1970s. It's one course book that has proven to be a pleasure as well as an assignment!"
Thomas Slaughter,faculty: "May I share three recommendations? One is seasonal. Stephen Nissenbaum, who is Jewish, wrote the best book on the history of the American celebration of Christmas. The Battle for Christmas (1996) is a must-read for that origins story. Two more books hot off the presses caught my attention as I write a family biography of the Sewards of Auburn, NY. Jon Meacham, And There Was Light (2022) is yet another biography of Abraham Lincoln, but it is a book that considers Lincoln in his times and ours. Kerri K. Greenidge, The Grimkes (2022) is a family biography of the famous anti-slavery sisters, including their black relatives. Happy holidays!"
Laura Ackerman Smoller, faculty: "I always have going one book on tape (for the car, not fireside) and one "real" book. My current physical volume is Anthony Trollope’s The Eustace Diamonds, the third of his six Palliser novels, books that were one of the inspirations for Downton Abbey. I devoured the Palliser novels as audiobooks around ten years ago, and when I needed comfort-reading this fall, I returned to them in the beautiful Oxford hardback edition, complete with the original illustrations from their nineteenth-century serial runs. Trollope can be wickedly funny, all the while creating characters of deeply human complexity whom I genuinely miss when his books are over. He also has taught me everything I know (or need to know) about the British Parliament, as well as the eminently useful noun "ha-ha."
In the car, it’s also nineteenth-century England: Charlotte Bronte’s fascinating Shirley. A tale of friendship and seemingly crossed loves, Shirley also explores the changes brought to the Yorkshire countryside by early industrialization and the frustrating constraints faced by her strong-willed and intelligent heroine and her equally determined, if more docile, friend Caroline. I’ll definitely be pestering my colleague Bette London (English department) with a string of questions when I finish this one!"
Peter Szabo '85: "I suggest the following three-part memoir by Patrick Leigh Fermor about his travel on foot across Europe – from the Netherlands to Constantinople – in 1934. The writing is exceptional and the window into the cultures and natural lands of especially central and eastern Europe at this time is fascinating. Fermor is a remarkable character in his own right, as well. Yes, it’s three parts, but you will be engaged and transported quickly. The three parts are entitled A Time of Gifts; Between the Woods and the Water; and The Broken Road."