book cover for The Man Who Ran Washington by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser

Summer Reading No.11: Bo Adams

It’s been a summer of excellent reading, listening, and viewing recommendations from the staff and faculty of Pitts Theology Library and Candler School of Theology! For this final entry in our summer blog series, we offer here the recommendations of Pitts Director Bo Adams. Bo often recommends that incoming Candler students prepare for graduate school by getting some “fun” reading in, so he offers here some non-academic recommendations that have been entertaining him recently.

If you know Bo, you may know that he has a moderate obsession with politics, both those current and those from America’s past. Even for those who don’t share this interest, though, he recommends Peter Baker’s new biography of James Baker (no relation), The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker, III. For those who follow contemporary American politics, the story of James Baker might feel like a completely different world, even though it was only a few decades back. This remarkable story gives insight into our nation’s institutions, where power is situated, and how things happened in domestic and foreign policy over the latter decades of the 20th century, as one man, who wasn’t exactly qualified for the various high-level positions he held, was pulling the levers of power left and right. While many may not remember fondly American foreign policy of the late 20th century and its implications for today, Peter Baker’s book is a clear-eyed telling of how it unfolded and the outsized role that one man played in it all. Find this book at Emory or a local library near you!

Bo is proudly a member of Generation X, and The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman documents incredibly well the cultural hallmarks of that generation’s formative years. Bo suggests, though, that all pop culture fans of any generation will enjoy Klosterman’s exploration of music, culture, politics, and seemingly everything from the bizarre 1990s, a decade that Klosterman argues is a major pivot between the old world and the one in which we live today. Check out this book from Emory or your local library! 

Bo prides himself on injecting obscure knowledge of the American presidency into conversation, particularly trivia from the late 19th century (hey, the gilded age is more relevant than ever!). He notes that one of his favorite sources of fun trivia is the podcast Very Presidential with Ashley Flowers. These short (~40 minute) episodes each focus on one US president (often those lesser known by the public) and offer the lesser known details (often scandalous) that drove the news of the era. Curious to learn about Cleveland’s hidden oral surgery at sea? Want to explore Gerald Ford’s connection with the Manson family murders? These entertaining episodes will be of interest to those who (unfortunately) may not share Bo’s zeal for the history of the White House.

As a final recommendation, Bo draws again on his childhood in the 80s and 90s. One of his favorite podcasts for the drive to work is Fly on the Wall, from SNL alums Dana Carvey and David Spade. If you’re a fan of Saturday Night Live (or even if you’re not but you’re a fan of the celebs that host the show), you’ll enjoy this irreverent and structure-less interview show. Carvey and Spade interview former cast members and hosts from SNL, sharing a lot of behind the scenes info about the show and snippets from their own careers in comedy, TV, and movies.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this summer’s reading recommendations from the Pitts Theology Library and Candler School of Theology staff and faculty! Find them all at pitts.emory.edu/summerreading, and happy reading! 

book cover for The Candy House by Jennifer Egan

Summer Reading No.10: Ted Smith

This week’s Summer Reading Recommendations are from Candler’s Professor Ted Smith, who was recently appointed as the Charles Howard Professor of Divinity! A member of the Candler faculty since 2012, Dr. Smith 04G works at the intersections of practical and political theology. 

Dr. Smith starts his recommendations with Jennifer Egan’s new novel, The Candy House (New York: Scribner, 2022). He explains, It’s a kind of sequel to her 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize. The publication of The Candy House is a great reason to revisit that novel. A Visit from the Goon Squad felt formally inventive in 2010, with whole chapters written in text messages and PowerPoint slides. Those chapters are as scattered—and as connected—as the browser history of a curious surfer of the web. Underneath all the formal tricks, they tell almost old-fashioned stories featuring characters readers come to care about. And the book offers a series of brilliant meditations on phenomena like nostalgia, authenticity, and the nature of language in a digital world. Deep in the background are conversations with Proust about memory, consciousness, and time. Goon Squad bowled me over when I first encountered it. I read it almost in a single sitting. As soon as I finished I sat down to write a review.” 

Dr. Smith goes on to admit “The Candy House doesn’t feel revelatory in quite the same way. But it lets us connect with those characters again. And it extends Egan’s meditations on memory, authenticity, and more through updated engagements with a next wave of technologies, including social media, artificial intelligence, and what Shoshana Zuboff has called ‘surveillance capitalism’. Also: did I mention that the world of both books centers on punk rock and whatever “alternative” used to mean?” Find The Candy House at Emory online or in print, or at a local library near you!

Dr. Smith also recommends Reconsidering Reparations by Olúfhemi O. Táíwò (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022). Smith notes “Táíwò makes clear that he is not trying to convince people that some kind of reparations are necessary for systemic evils like slavery, genocide, and imperialism (for that kind of argument, see Ta-Nehisi Coates’s landmark essay in The Atlantic). Nor is he offering a detailed policy proposal. Instead he’s trying to reframe our thinking about reparations as what he calls a “constructivist” project. Instead of looking back, trying to redress past wrongs, he argues that reparations should work towards a more just future. Táíwò argues that this constructivist orientation both answers some of the good-faith criticisms of reparations from people who care about justice and does more to address the particular injustices that come with climate change.” 

Dr. Smith also suggests that “the book is remarkably accessible. Táíwò’s thinking is wonderfully clear, and his writing is lively. Many of our communities and institutions are now trying to think what meaningful reparations might look like. Reconsidering Reparations is an important guide for that work. Even if you don’t agree with Táíwò’s conclusions, he clarifies what is at stake in ways that let conversations reach deeper levels. And he makes me think about the ways Christian understandings of salvation—individual, social, and cosmic—must look to the past, the present, and the future.” Find this book at Emory or your local lending institution

Finally, Dr. Smith recommends the “Matters” series by Mary Margaret Funk, OSB. He explains “Funk is engaged in an important project of reclaiming practices from the desert fathers and mothers—especially John Cassian—for contemporary Christians. Drawing on Cassian (and two millenia of monastic traditions) she frames Christian life as a series of renunciations. The books seem perfectly suited to this season of intense institutional instability in the church, when—for better and for worse—we find ourselves cast as individuals. Funk’s writing is earthy and direct, plain in the best sense of that word. The books can be read quickly, but taking them to heart is the project of many years. A reader could start with any book in the series. But I might recommend Humility Matters as a first stop.” 

Next week will feature our final Summer Reading Recommendations from none other than the Library Director, Bo Adams! Find all summer reading blog posts at pitts.emory.edu/summerreading.

book cover for Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Summer Reading No.9: Yasmine Green

Not a fan of flipping through the pages of a physical book? Our Summer Reading Recommendations from Pitts’ Collection Management Coordinator, Yasmine Green, have you covered! Since “reading a physical book isn’t something I can make time for these days,” Yasmine advocates for taking advantage of Emory University and public libraries’ Overdrive, a convenient and diverse collection of free ebooks and audiobooks! 

First, Yasmine highly recommends Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi, a “beautifully written novel following the lives of people in two family lines.” Both lines originate in Africa’s Gold Coast during the slave trade. Readers are taken through the evolution of a family from the perspective of an individual’s struggle to survive. The book shows how quickly and easily descendants of slaves lost their heritage, how power struggles among villages aided in the accumulation of persons for trade, and how quickly the actions of the present could require generations to correct. Find this book at Emory or your local public library

Second, Yasmine suggests a Candler favorite, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, but this time in a two part audiobook available on YouTube. Recommended by TikTok, Yasmine originally sought out this resource because “it was said to be a better literary parallel of our current times compared to the Handmaids Tale.” Butler paints the picture of an early dystopia, the origins of which are eerily similar to present socioeconomic issues. In addition, Yasmine notes “the narrator’s voice is fitting of the character.” 

Yasmine’s final recommendation is Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys. The fictional narrative is based on the real story of the Dozier School, a reform school in Florida. Its main character happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and lives through atrocities brought on by peers and caretakers. Yasmine rates this audiobook with a 9/10! 

We hope you get to enjoy these audiobooks on the road, beach, or beyond! Check in next week for recommendations from a Candler faculty member. 

book cover of Middlemarch by George Eliot

Summer Reading No.8: Arun Jones

For this week’s Summer Reading Recommendations, we consulted Candler’s Dr. Arun W. Jones—Dan and Lillian Hankey Associate Professor of World Evangelism and Director of the Master of Theology Program. During the summer intercession, Dr. Jones uses his time to read “big, fat classics that I have never read before, and feel that I should.” See which classics make the list for Dr. Jones below!

One classic Dr. Jones has digested in recent years is Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life, a novel by George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans). This realist work which many deem the author’s masterpiece is published in four volumes. Anchored in the marriage of two principle characters, Dorothea Brooke and Tertius Lydgate, this novel acts as a study of every class of society in the town of Middlemarch, including landed gentry and clergy, manufacturers and professional men, farmers, and laborers. Find this book at Emory or your local library

Other literature staples Dr. Jones has pursued in summers past are Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Melville’s Moby Dick. Find these classic and links to even more on the The Great American Read’s “Best Books” Libguide!

As Dr. Jones anticipates a week-long trip to Spain, this summer he has chosen to take on Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote. This milestone work chronicles the extravagant adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. After acquiring a translation suggested from fellow Emory Professor of Comparative Literature and Religion, María Carrión, and recommended secondary literature, Dr. Jones is “excited to delve into what is probably the first novel written in Europe!” The story has been adapted for a variety of mediums, from ballet to music, but you can find the book at Emory or a library near you

Tune in next week for audiobook recommendations from Collection Management Coordinator, Yasmine Green!

 

woodcut from the Nuremberg Chronicle

July 30 Day Display: Colorized Woodcuts

Did you know that historical engravings and woodcuts allowed for creative license? Colors were often added after book production by their owners to enhance images. Find 15th and 16th century examples from Pitts’ collections at the new 30 Day Display for July!

Nuremberg Chronicle

1493 SCHE A

This woodcut depicting Christ enthroned, surrounded by the apostles, originally appeared in the Nuremberg Chronicle. The Chronicle is a renowned encyclopedia printed in Nuremberg in 1493 by Anton Koberger (c. 1440-1513), which recounts known human history at the time and is illustrated by hundreds of woodcuts, including Biblical scenes, maps of cities, and mythological creatures. The text of the work was originally written in Latin by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514), and the book was quickly translated into German by Georg Alt (1450-1510) in an edition printed the same year by Koberger. Woodcut images from the Chronicle were often colored by hand by artists or the owners of the book, as has this particular woodcut, which appeared in the German edition of the Chronicle. 

Hans Schäufelein (c. 1480-1540)

MSS 400

This colorized woodcut was designed by the German artist Hans Schäufelein (c. 1480-1540). Schäufelein was an assistant to the famed artist Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), and his work resembles the woodcuts of the master. This particular image, depicting the scourging of Christ, was originally part of a devotional work Speculum passionis Domini Nostri Ihesu Christi, published by Ulrich Pinder (d. 1519) though it has since been separated from the book (Pitts owns a copy- 1507 PIND). A prior owner has colored the image by hand.  

 

 

Drop by Level 2 of the library to see colorized woodcuts from two different artists of the 15th and 16th centuries, and try your own hand at enhancing images (but please not in the library collection itself)! Purchase a Pitts’ Digital Image Archive Coloring Book at the Circulation Desk!