Summer Reading
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!