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Reading lists: Faculty and staff share their picks for summer

Ready to relax with a good book? You’ll find plenty of options in these recommendations from Emory faculty and staff.

What are you reading this summer? We asked a diverse group of Emory faculty and staff about the books they plan to dive into during the time between semesters.

Whether you want to be entertained, enlightened or both, you’ll find plenty of options in their recommendations to create your own summer reading list.

Rebecca Baggett
communications and program manager
Emory Global Health Institute

“All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr and for non-fiction, “The American Health Care Paradox” by Elizabeth Bradley and Lauren Taylor, plus children’s and young adult novels to keep up with what my daughters are reading such as Lois Lowry’s “The Giver” quartet

“I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Bradley while I was at my husband’s 25th reunion at Yale, and she generously gave me a copy of her book.”

Mackenzie Bristow
director, English Language Support Program
Laney Graduate School

“The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures” by Anne Fadiman and “A Man Without Words” by Susan Schaller

Kim Collins
art historian and classics librarian
Robert W. Woodruff Library

“Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda” by Becky Albertalli

“The World Before Us” by Aislinn Hunter

Ann Dasher
graduate program development coordinator
Department of Chemistry

“Charleston” by Margaret Bradham Thornton. I just finished reading “A Place at the Table” by Susan Rebecca White, having met her at the AWA Bookclub meeting May 18 at the Miller-Ward House where she signed my book.

Carolyn Drews-Botsch
professor and vice chair of the Department of Epidemiology
Rollins School of Public Health

“Walter’s Purple Heart” by Catherine Ryan Hyde and I just finished Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See” and “The Invention of Wings” by Susan Monk Kidd; for work, “Principles of Exposure Measurement in Epidemiology: Collecting, Evaluating and Improving Measures of Disease Risk Factors” by Emily White, Bruce K. Armstrong and Rodolfo Saracci.

Allison Gilmore
director, admissions and student services
Goizueta Business School

“The Creative Habit” by Twila Tharp; “David & Goliath” by Malcolm Gladwell

Also, “our neighborhood has a ‘Little Free Library’ and I just picked up four Stuart Woods crime novels for quick, easy reading.”

Dana Haggas
director of enterprise applications
Libraries & Information Technology

“The Girl on the Train” by Paula Hawkins

“If you liked ‘Gone Girl,’ you will like this highly-addictive page-turner — a haunting psychological thriller.”

Raymond Hill
senior lecturer, economics and finance
Goizueta Business School

“The Passage to Power” by Robert Caro, the fourth volume of his biography of Lyndon Johnson

“This 27-disc recorded book, I expect, will keep me free of impatience and anxiety as I negotiate Atlanta traffic this summer.”

Ciannat Howett
director of sustainability initiatives

"Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design" by Charles Montgomery, about the importance of public spaces, bike paths and people-centered landscape design versus car-centered, with fascinating examples from around the world

“Rick Gilkey, a faculty member at Goizueta, gave it to me after I spoke to his executive MBA class. It has inspired me to think even more deeply about how we can create a ‘happy campus’ at Emory.”

Maeve Howett
pediatric nursing and lactation instructor
Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

“Brain on Fire” by Susannah Cahalan

“The story is autobiographical and about a young women’s brush with mental illness, the stigma associated with mental illness in contemporary society and how despite having many resources, she went undiagnosed for a long period while her condition worsened.”

Mike Luttrell
director of IT
Yerkes National Primate Research Center

“Galileo's Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love” by Dava Sobel

Suzanne Mason
manager of the Global Learning Programs
Emory Global Health Institute

Doerr’s “All the Light We Cannot See”

Lee Pasackow
business librarian
Goizueta Business Library

“When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa” by Peter Godwin

Sarah Peterson
assistant director of professional development programs and student affairs
Laney Graduate School

“I Am Because You Are: How the Spirit of Ubuntu Inspired an Unlikely Friendship and Transformed a Community” by Jacob Lief, “The Pain and the Great One” by Judy Blume and “Clybourne Park” by Bruce Norris

Melissa Pinto
assistant professor
Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing

“Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence” by Rick Hanson as part of my “therapists’ book club”; also Psychology Today and Scientific American Mind

Robyn W. Pollette
academic department administrator
Candler School of Theology

“The Goldfinch” by Donna Tartt and Stephen King’s “Revival” —I am horrified, but happy.

Tom Rogers
associate professor of history 
Emory College of Arts and Sciences

Amitav Ghosh’s “Flood of Fire,” the final book in his Ibis Trilogy, which stretches from India to China, covering the years leading up to the first Opium War

Jennifer Murphy Romig
instructor of legal writing, research and advocacy
School of Law

Mary Norris' “Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen,” Kate Atkinson's “A God in Ruins,” and Liane Moriarty's “Big Little Lies,” also the latest edition of “The Bluebook: A Uniform System of [Legal] Citation”

Julie Seaman
associate professor of law
School of Law

“Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs” by Sally Mann and “The Buried Giant” by Katzuo Ishiguro; plus, the latest neuroscience research on lie detection and on the topic of social media communication and legal first amendment free speech scholarship 

 
Priyanka Sinha
director of communications and marketing
Michael C. Carlos Museum

Malcolm Gladwell’s "David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants”

Ted A. Smith
associate professor of preaching and ethics
Candler School of Theology and the Emory College of Arts and Sciences’ Graduate Division of Religion

“Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life” by Michael Jennings and Howard Eiland and Everett Fox’s new translation of the so-called “Early Prophets” (the Biblical books of Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, and 1 and 2 Kings)

“For Father’s Day, I am hoping to receive volume one of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘My Struggle.’

Donna Troka
associate director
Center for Faculty Development and Excellence; adjunct professor, Institute for the Liberal Arts

 “God Help the Child” by Toni Morrison, “Specifications Grading: Restoring Rigor, Motivating Students, and Saving Faculty Time” by Linda B. Nilson and “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning In and Across the Disciplines” edited by Kathleen McKinney; with my son Felix: “A is for Activist” by Innosanto Nagara and “Love Monster” by Rachel Bright


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