For the final entry in this series of posts listing suggested reading, I’m not going to try to create an underlying theme.  Here is a diverse mix of theoretical and practical works.

Prof. John Burgess — who teaches Fletcher courses on international mergers and acquisitions and international finance, in addition to his day job at a Boston law firm — recommends, “Benn Steil’s The Battle of Bretton Woods, which deftly combines geopolitics, economic theory and practice, and personalities to describe the history of the Bretton Woods Conference and its implications for the post-war world.  A great combination of diplomatic history, biography and analysis.”

Prof. Jes Salacuse told me, “One recent book that might be of interest is Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson’s, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty.”

Prof. Bill Martel suggests, “One work I assign in my Decision Making and Public Policy and my Evolution of Grand Strategy, which incoming students would benefit from reading, is Jonah Lehrer’s How We Decide.”

Two professors who followed my instruction to include their own recent work among their suggestions are Prof. Joel Trachtman, who recently published The Future of International Law: Global Government, and Prof. James Forest, who noted that his The Terrorism Lectures, is “good prep for my Modern Terrorism and Counterterrorism class, and an inexpensive book as well.”

A suggestion from Prof. Leila Fawaz came with an apology that she wasn’t supplying more suggestions.  She told me to point readers “back to an old but reliable one, Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples.”

Prof. Cheyanne Scharbatke-Church said that “anyone interested in the NGO sector and donors to it” should read Uncharitable by Dan Pallotta, which will connect to NGO Management and to her DME module series.

And, finally, because Fletcher students will all, ultimately, need to go beyond reading and do some writing themselves, Prof. John Perry suggests, Jacques Barzun, Simple and Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers.

Happy reading (and writing) everyone!

Continuing the reading list theme, I would nonetheless be remiss if I didn’t first tell you about the beautiful late spring day we’re experiencing today.  The sky is completely cloud free — so beautiful I couldn’t resist snapping a photo.  See for yourself:

If I weren’t at work, it would be a perfect day to grab a book and read.  Before I go ahead and list more suggestions for your summer reading, I want to take a step back and provide a more complete explanation of why I’m including the faculty book picks in the first place.  I generally try not to post information that is relevant only to one subset of blog readers, and the blog is not, in fact, the most efficient way for us to reach incoming students.  But some of the people who will be joining us for Orientation in August check the blog, and some of those are interested in a little pre-Fletcher reading.  And if you’re not an incoming student this year?  Well, you may still want to read something recommended by our professors.  So back to the list.

Today’s amazing list comes from a single source.  Prof. Bridget Conley-Zilkic, the research director for the World Peace Foundation, offered up at least a season’s worth of options, explaining, “Given that we’re talking about summer reading, I’ll do my best to keep it to the more narrative-focused texts.  Granted, many of these are atrocity focused.”  Even those who may never interact with the WPF might want to read about these still-relevant international events.  Here’s the list:

Chinua Achebe, Girls at War (short stories, Nigerian civil war)

Deborah Scroggins, Emma’s War (non-fiction, Sudan)

Sven Lindquist, Exterminate All the Brutes (non-fiction, colonial Africa)

Kang Chol-Hwan, The Aquariums of Pyongyang (non-fiction, North Korea)

Jason Stearns, Dancing in the Glory of Monsters (non-fiction, DRC)

Sheri Fink, War Hospital (non-fiction, Bosnia)

Clea Koff, The Bone Woman (non-fiction, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo)

Semezdin Mehmedinovic, Sarajevo Blues (poetry, Bosnia)

Aleksander Hemon, The Question of Bruno (short stories, former Yugoslavia)

Courtney Angela Brkic, The Stone Fields (fiction, Bosnia)

Anything by Slavenka Drakulic (fiction & non-fiction, Croatia)

Bob Shacochis, The Immaculate Invasion (non-fiction, Haiti)

James Dawes, That the World May Know: Bearing Witness to Atrocity (non-fiction, human rights)

Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost (history, Congo) or To End All Wars (history, peace movement and WWI)

Wade Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (history, UK, WWI and, obviously, Mt. Everest).

And for anyone who can handle theory by the beach: Judith Butler, Frames of War and Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (these two are best read together), and just about anything by Hannah Arendt or Jacques Rancière.

As promised, I’m ready today to start a series of posts with suggested materials that an incoming student might want to read.  I emphasize “might” because you are not under any obligation to read anything!  Still, to get your intellectual juices flowing, you might want to check out a few of the professors’ picks.

I’ll start with the request I sent to the faculty.  I pointed them toward past reading lists that can be found in the blog archives (which is a good resource for current readers, as well) and then I asked them to send a suggestion that would fit one of these descriptions.

• A book that you assign for your class and that incoming students might benefit from reading at a leisurely pace in the summer;
• A book that provides good contextual explanation of your field;
• Fiction or popular non-fiction that provides context for your field;
• Articles or blogs that incoming students may not already know about;
• A newly published book of your own that provides general context.

I hope that sharing my request to the professors will make it clear why their suggested books/articles/blogs take many forms.  This post will kick off the lists with a couple of picks for the economics folks (actual or aspiring) out there.  First, Prof. Michael Klein recommends After the Music Stopped by Alan Blinder, which he thinks is the best book on the economic crisis, and which relates to his classes on International Finance and Finance, Growth and Business Cycles.

For general background, Prof. Dan Richards (whose primary position is in the Economics Department, but who also teaches at Fletcher) says, “They’re both a little older, but either Freakonomics  or SuperFreakonomics are still good reads that give a decent presentation of how economists approach problems — if not always the answers that all economists agree on.  There is also the Freakonomics blog.”

Read these choices or not, blog friends — it’s totally up to you.  More reading suggestions will be coming soon!