The Bookworm
a reader’s guide by the faculty of falmouth academy 30th edition | 2019-2020
The Bookworm
A gift from your fellow readers at Falmouth Academy. “Reading is to the mind as exercise is to the body.” (Joseph Addison) At Falmouth Academy, we believe that reading is a lifelong activity and that healthy reading habits start young. Each prospective student who spends a full day visiting the school is invited to select a book from the Admission Office bookshelf as our gift to them. To build our Admission library, we annually canvas current students to find out about interesting reads and then vet the list with FA Librarian Britta Santamauro. Below is a sampling of our collection, which spans various genres from the last three years (the most popular is highlighted). If you know of a student interested in spending a day at Falmouth Academy or would like to suggest a book for our shelf, please email the Admission Office at admission@falmouthacademy.org.
2019-2020
2018-2019
2017-2018
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
I Am Malala
Breakaway: Beyond the Goal
John Boyne
The Lightning Thief Rick Riordan
Malala Yousafzai
The Hate U Give
Alex Morgan
Angie Thomas
The Boys in the Boat
The Sun Is Also a Star Nicola Yoon
On the Come Up
Angie Thomas
Refugee
Kwame Alexander
Divergent
Veronica Roth
Paper Towns John Green
Dear Evan Hansen: The Novel Val Emmich
Hatchet Children of Blood and Bone
Tomi Adeyemi
Tomi Adeyemi
Restart
Gordon Korman
The Boys in the Boat Daniel James Brown
Unbroken
Laura Hillenbrand
Strange the Dreamer Laini Taylor
Awkward
7 Highfield Drive, Falmouth, MA 02540 508-457-9696 falmouthacademy.org
Administration Matthew Green, Head of School Michael Earley, Assistant Head of School Petra Ehrenbrink, Academic Dean Pamela Clapp Hinkle, Director of Development Julie Bradley, Director of Admission and Enrollment Management Carmen DiSanto, Director of Finance & Operations
Editorial Staff Amy Galvam, Director of Communications Dr. Ben Parsons, English and Modern Language Photos: Amy Galvam Design: Julianne Waite
Our Mission Harnessing the power of inspired learning in a world-renowned scientific and vibrant artistic community, Falmouth Academy emboldens each student to take creative and intellectual risks to confidently engage the challenges of our times.
Guiding Values
Alan Gratz
Children of Blood and Bone Booked
Daniel James Brown
Falmouth Academy
Svetlana Chmakova
Gary Paulsen
I Am Malala
Malala Yousafzai
I Will Always Write Back: How One Letter Changed Two Lives Martin Ganda
An Ember in the Ashes Sabaa Tahir
October Sky
We value the beauty of knowledge and the joy of conversation. We value collaboration and generosity of spirit. We value the power of a culture of kindness. We value relationships built on trust, respect, and direct communication. We value the wonder of imagination. We value each student’s pursuit of diverse challenges and opportunities. We value teachers as models of confident, rich adulthood.
Homer Hickam
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian Sherman Alexie
Undertow
Michael Buckley
Photos Inside cover: Arden O’Neil ’26 Page 1: William Butler ’24, Leah Croom ’24, Maria MacDonald ’23, Ella Keohane ’23, Jessica Green ’23, Kyra Ramsey ’22
Dear Friends, Welcome to the 30th edition of The Bookworm, in which Falmouth Academy faculty and staff share their favorite books with one another and the greater community. The Bookworm was the brainchild of Tucker Clark, who joined the school as the head’s secretary and director of public relations in 1989. Now retired, Tucker recalls hearing her colleagues discuss their favorite books and thinking it would be a great idea to try to capture and share these genuine and witty conversations. Hence, the idea for The Bookworm was born. What I love about this is that it speaks volumes about the culture, collegiality, and general mindset at Falmouth Academy, then and now. Interestingly, five faculty members—Dr. Alison Ament, Dr. Petra Ehrenbrink, Mrs. Monica Hough, Mr. Rob Wells, and Mr. Don Swanbeck—have contributed annually to The Bookworm since its inception. Nine others have been writing reviews for over twenty—some of them close to thirty years.1 The fact that The Bookworm has persevered for three decades is a great testament of how the adults in the school “walk the talk.” We pride ourselves on emphasizing close reading, clear writing, and the ability to analyze and appreciate literature. This love of reading permeates all aspects of the school and goes beyond the classroom. For example, in seventh grade we use the Accelerated Reading program to instill good habits of reading for enjoyment; we regularly invite authors to school to talk about their craft; and we often bring in local librarians to share their book recommendations. In addition, prospective students are invited to choose a book at the end of their visit as a parting gift from the admissions office. This gesture captures what we stand for and believe in: strong reading skills as a foundation for academic success. You’ll find a list of titles from the carefully curated admissions bookshelf on the facing page. The Bookworm is our open invitation to join Falmouth Academy’s community of readers. The reviews contained within reflect our multifaceted and engaging faculty and their love for reading. Here’s to many more issues of The Bookworm to come! Sincerely yours,
Britta Santamauro Director of Library and Media Services Mrs. Barbara Campbell, Mrs. Eleanor Clark, Mr. Mike Earley, Mr. Doug Jones, Mrs. Elisabeth Ledwell, Mr. Edward Lott, Mrs. Susan Moffat, Mr. George Scharr, Mrs. Julie Swanbeck
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FALMOUTH ACADEMY Falmouth Academy has been educating Cape, Coast, and Islands students in grades 7-12 since 1977. Remarkable teachers lead an innovative academic program that is deep in English, history, science, mathematics, and modern languages, and enhanced by signature offerings including Arts-Across-the-Curriculum, Science in the Real World, and 40-plus electives. Class sizes are intentionally small, ensuring personalized attention and “no back rows.” FA students become confident, active learners who read closely, listen carefully, and think critically. They are scholars and musicians, athletes and artists, budding scientists and aspiring authors who go on to thrive at many of America’s finest colleges and universities. Learn more at falmouthacademy.org.
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Alison Ament
Science
Leonardo da Vinci Walter Isaacson
This fascinating and beautifully written biography is based on a close examination of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks. Leonardo carried a notebook with him everywhere, always ready to make a sketch in preparation for a painting, or to draw a design for an engineering solution, or record his philosophical ideas about art and life. Isaacson describes the style of the notebooks as part of his presentation of Leonardo’s methods, personality, and illustrations. For a reason Leonardo never explained, the writing in the journals is entered from right to left in mirrorimage script. Crammed together on many of the individual pages are text and sketches for both art and engineering projects, showing that Leonardo probably thought about all of his ideas at once, not compartmentalized. Isaacson tells the reader about Leonardo’s birth, family situation, artistic training, career, and political connections, but my favorite parts of the book are the in-depth discussions of his paintings. How do his innovations compare with those of other artists painting the same themes? Why are we drawn to Mona Lisa’s smile? Why was the Mona Lisa, most likely a commissioned work, still in his possession when he died? Why did he paint so few paintings? The book contains color palettes of the paintings, making it possible to see just what Isaacson is pointing out. If you think that you already know a lot about Leonardo da Vinci, or if you think a detailed biography might drag, you will be in for a great surprise if you read this book—it is engaging on almost every page, except perhaps the pages on mixing pigments.
Martha Borden
Director of Technology
The Relic Master Christopher Buckley
In 1517, the religious relic market has become saturated with questionable items, and Dismas, an honest relic hunter only interested in “authentic” relics for his clients, has decided to retire. While traveling to Nuremberg to collect his savings, his only dream is to “go home, find a sweet and pretty girl and fill her belly with babies.” That is until he meets up with his good friend Albrecht Dürer, the painter, and, over a pint or two, learns that his money is gone. He has been swindled, robbed of his dream. But soon Dürer has a plan. He will create for his friend an “authentic” shroud to sell to the greedy Archbishop of Mainz, who has never been above the passing of questionable relics to poor pilgrims to collect the indulgences. Unfortunately, Dürer cannot resist adding his own secret message in the shroud. When the deception is exposed, 2
Dismas and Dürer find themselves in the dungeon of a very unhappy Archbishop. Their only way out is to strike a deal to steal the Shroud of Chambéry, Christ’s burial cloth, from the Duke of Savoy and return it to the Archbishop. What follows is an unholy alliance between mercenaries (to make sure Dismas and Dürer return with the Shroud), a female apothecary on the run from a lustful count (and a charge of witchcraft), a former relic master, and a painter with the audacity to steal Christianity’s most sacred relic. When they reach Savoy, they discover they are not the only ones with designs on the Shroud and the intrigue begins. The Relic Master is a wonderful summer read, filled with details of the early church, Vatican politics, art history, and religion. The novel doesn’t take itself too seriously, and leaves the reader guessing whether or not they really steal the Shroud of Chambéry.
Barbara Campbell
Director of Alumni and Parent Relations, Development
Line Change Matt Brown
On January 23, 2010, life changed forever for hockey player Matt Brown. A Norwood High School sophomore and teammate of my nephew, a senior, he had just been called up from junior varsity to play in his first varsity game. He had also just arranged a first date with the girl of his dreams. Minutes into the action, he was hit from behind and his head rammed into the boards. Unable to move, one of the last things he told a friend before he was taken off the ice was, “Tell Megan I’m going to be late.” Broken C4 and C5 vertebrae ensured complete paralysis from the neck down. Interestingly, in the very next game, my nephew hit the boards with his head in the same place as Matt, but, except for a horrible concussion, he was okay. Line Change is an inspiring story about Matt’s journey and the acceptance of learning how to function in the world through therapy and rehab. An instant member of the professional hockey fraternity, Matt was befriended by the Bruins and other key sports figures who bolstered his spirits along the way. Matt was able to return to Norwood High, with the assistance of a team of helpers, and graduated from Stonehill College in 2016. Today, both Matt and my nephew are enrolled in Master’s programs.
Christine Carter
French
Lights All Night Long Lydia Fitzpatrick
Ilya, a fifteen-year-old student from a small, poor Russian town, has wanted to speak English and visit the United States since he began reading lips on bootleg copies of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies. He gets his wish when he is chosen to participate in an exchange program and is sent to live with a family in rural Louisiana. Upon arrival, however, he pretends as though he knows no English, mystifying the American family who has been told that he is the brightest English student in his hometown. Ilya reveals to the family’s eldest daughter, Sadie, that his reluctance to immerse himself in American life is due to the guilt he feels at leaving his brother, Vladimir, behind after he is accused of murdering three women, an accusation that Ilya cannot bring himself to believe is true. The novel pivots back and forth between Ilya’s new life in America, trying to search for clues to Vladimir’s innocence using the basement computer in his host family’s home, and his childhood in Russia with Vladimir, leading up to Vladimir’s descent into drug addiction and his eventual arrest for murder. Fitzpatrick’s debut is poignant and heartbreaking, yet humorous, and testifies to the strength of familial bonds, whether between brothers in a desolate Russian town, or host siblings in a land of swimming pools and Super Walmarts.
Eleanor Clark
English
Transit
Rachel Cusk
Toward the end of Rachel Cusk’s Transit, the second of a trilogy that begins with Outline, the narrator, engaged in a conversation about truncated marriages, the complications of parenthood, and ideas of fate, tries to explain her current approach to life, saying, “I had found out more…by listening than I had ever thought possible.” Her cousin Laurence then responds, “But you’ve got to live.” While he, like many of the characters in the novel, seems to exist in a fascinating state of self-absorption, here he has a point. The narrator is very good, perilously good, at erasing herself. The novel may be framed by her first-person narration, but almost immediately she lets her own voice go and turns the pages over to the voices of others—an ex-boyfriend she runs into on a London street, the contractor she hires to renovate a newly purchased apartment, a friend she meets for coffee at a café. It’s as if having conducted the most perfectly paced interview, having drawn out elaborate stories and confessions, she then edits herself out almost entirely, leaving others’ monologues shimmering with exquisite details. So in a way, calling the characters self-absorbed is not fair; we aren’t quite sure what her role in the conversation really is. We aren’t quite sure, in fact, who she really is. (She may have quietly
inserted her own name somewhere in the pages, but I certainly can’t remember it.) This uncertainty gives the novel momentum. Gradually answers seep through around the edges, in the details she allows to slip into conversation and in others’ reactions to her. I find myself holding my breath a little, rooting for her and all of these characters, as flawed and ridiculous as they often seem to be. Happily, the third in the trilogy, Kudos, awaits.
Carol DiFalco
School Counselor
Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates
In anticipation of summer, reading Between the World and Me jumped to the top of my list. Coates speaks to the reader through a powerful and exquisitely intimate letter to his 15-year-old son. This was a book I could physically feel as I read. After reading it cover to cover, I read it again. As with his other writings, Coates shines a light on the race inequity crisis our nation continues to face. However, in Between the World and Me, Coates channels the light from within himself. Perhaps it was the parental voice that resonated with me, or maybe it was Coates’ recounting excerpts of his personal narrative; whatever the source, the reach was broad and deep. Through his vibrant and unapologetic expression, Coates connects the actions of systemic racism with the seemingly invisible impact on men and women inhabiting black bodies. Coates conveys his deep parental desire to protect his son from a system established to work against him, and the world in which he sees potential hope for change. “I would not have you descend into your own dream. I would have you be a conscious citizen of this terrible and beautiful world,” he counsels his son.
From Scratch: A Memoir of Love, Sicily, and Finding Home Tembi Locke
Through understanding someone else’s story, I often find a path to better understand my own. This is often what guides me towards memoirs on a bookshelf. However, instead of turning the pages of this memoir, I enjoyed listening to Tembi Locke narrate her own story in the audible version of From Scratch. Listening while walking on the beach, out for a run, or walking my dog through the woods, I soaked up every word. Rich in beautifully written metaphors, From Scratch explores connections between home-cooked food, love, risk, culture, and grief. What first appears to be a crosscultural story of grieving lost love, the memoir quickly transforms into something bigger. Locke dives deep into the heart of her story; traversing the cultural expanse between her Sicilian husband and her biracial Texan-family upbringing through a shared love of food. Preparing, cooking, and gathering with multi-generations of women we, the readers, 3
bear witness to Locke’s journey through grief, self-discovery, and ultimately healing. Beautifully written, From Scratch touches us at our core and expands our understanding of what it really means to love deeply.
Mike Earley
Assistant Head of School, Modern Language
The 57 Bus: A True Story of Two Teenagers and the Crime That Changed Their Lives Dashka Slater
I learned more from this short book than from anything else I’ve read recently, and I encourage anyone who cares about young people to read it. It is a true story of a chance encounter between two teenagers in Oakland, one who is white, agender, and from a middle-class family, and another who is black and has grown up without family in one of the city’s toughest neighborhoods. It is hard not to feel both terrible sadness and hope for both kids. I suppose this would be considered a Young Adult book, but we older adults probably stand to learn more about gender identity from it than most younger folks, most of whom, I think, are more up to speed on this issue. The book manages to weave the facts of the sad, yet uplifting, story with social commentary on gender identity, class inequality, and the juvenile justice system. The glossary of terms for Gender and Sex, Sexuality, and Romantic Inclination was particularly informative.
Gundhild Eder
Modern Language
Heimat: A German Family Album Nora Krug
While visiting Germany this summer, I came across Nora Krug’s new bestseller graphic novel, Heimat. I was immediately drawn to the design and layout, with its beautiful illustrations, historic photographs and documents, and her handwritten texts that give it the appearance of a scrapbook more than of a novel. Through her artwork, Krug tells the powerful story of her journey to explore her family history during the time of the Holocaust. Krug, who grew up in Germany in the seventies, moved to the US seventeen years ago and married into a Jewish family. As a second-generation German who grows up post-WWII, she is very much torn between feelings of pride for her German heritage and feelings of guilt and shame about her country’s atrocities during the war. Having experienced some negative reactions from people after learning her nationality, she tried hiding her accent at first, so as not to be identified as German. In order to find her cultural identity, however, she decides that she needs to confront her country’s history and ask questions about her family members’ lives during the Nazi Regime. For several years Krug regularly traveled back to her father’s hometown in Swabia to look for answers in village archives 4
and from surviving family members. The novel is a captivating and honest account of the facts and stories she discovered during her mission. Reading this fascinating memoir really struck a chord with me, as it evoked so many similar memories of my own experiences after I moved to America from Germany.
Petra Ehrenbrink
Academic Dean and Chair, Modern Language
The Island of Sea Women Lisa See
I didn’t know anything about the unique culture of the Korean island of Jeju and the haenyeo, female divers who are the breadwinners of their families while their husbands take on the domestic duties. The novel focuses on the friendship of two women from different backgrounds whose lives unfold with the backdrop of Japanese colonialism, World War II, and the Korean War. Wellresearched details and See’s vivid prose help to make this a memorable read.
The Wall
John Lanchester
The Wall fits into the genre of dystopian fiction, depicting life after the “Change,” a time when the world as we know it ceases to exist and so-called Defenders and Others clash. In this new time, with the world scarred by climate change and depleted of resources, a heavily guarded wall protects one of the last remaining landmasses that is under constant siege by desperate people who are forced to live on the open oceans. This book poses interesting questions about the price of freedom, security, and humanity in general.
The Wolf and the Watchman Niklas Natt Och Dag
This was my favorite read of the summer, a great yarn spun in a masterly way. The novel is set in the Stockholm of 1793 where town employees Winge and Cardell set out to solve the mystery surrounding a mutilated body found in one of the city’s waste dumping grounds. The plot is embedded in a vivid description of the times, when people are rattled by news about a peculiar and somewhat fantastical French revolution (yes, the French Revolution) and does not shy away from a frank look at those ‘simpler times,’ with their horrid living conditions of the poor, whose exploitation leads to decadence and corruption. Much more than a historical crime story, the novel asks bleak questions about truth and justice that transcend centuries.
The Reckless Oath We Made Bryn Greenwood
Director of Communications
The Great Believers
Lastly, I have to add one more title because, just before the Bookworm deadline, I fell head over heels for this novel about quirky misfits whose unlikely hero will capture your heart. A summary of the plot wouldn’t do the book any justice, as the many details contribute to the characters’ richness and the storyline’s depth. It is a witty, clever contemporary fairytale of some sort, inhabited by characters who do not often find their way into a novel. I’m not sure I have ever read anything like it. But I’m certainly glad I did.
Bettina Freelund
Amy Galvam
Modern Language
The Mindful Education Workbook Daniel Rechtschaffen
How do we bring our mindfulness practice into our classrooms? I have often asked myself this question. Rechtschaffen’s The Mindful Education Workbook explains that mindfulness begins with us, the teachers. He emphasizes that mindfulness is not a magic pill, but something like a muscle we can exercise by tracking our behaviors, thought patterns, and relationships, then returning to focus on our breath. Once we find ourselves in this space of focus and self-regulation, he explains, our students tend to shift toward a state that resonates with our own mindfulness. I loved reading about Rechtschaffen’s concrete examples and case studies of teachers who felt overwhelmed in the classroom and distracted by a multitude of simultaneous demands all coming at once. I imagine we all have had similar experiences. He gives step by step instructions, enumerates specific considerations, and includes recommendations about how we can return to our breath as a central hub and focus, bringing a sense of calm and kindness that can have a ripple effect on the students in our classrooms. Rechtschaffen provides a wide range of mindfulness classroom practices for specific age groups of students as well as teachers. The lessons include emotional, social, and global literacy, mindful seeing and listening, and generating gratitude. His stress test lesson ranks as my all-time favorite. This book is a wonderful and useful read, especially for teachers.
Rebecca Makkai
Having come of age in the mid-’80s and watching the devastation of the HIV/AIDS epidemic unfold, I was, at first, averse to reading this book. It felt too heavy. I picked it up a few times before getting through the first chapter, but then I was in. Makkai artfully weaves together two storylines—the first chronicling the life of Yale Tishman and his small close-knit group of liberated gay men from the Chicago neighborhood of “boys town” from the onset of the outbreak through the devastation that followed, and the other of a middle-aged woman’s search for her estranged daughter and unknown granddaughter in Paris 2015. Yale’s life shows such promise. He is a young art curator on the cusp of landing a major acquisition and settled in a committed relationship after years of self-doubt. However, far too soon, his good fortune gives way as the virus claims more and more of his friends before it finally comes for him. Fiona, the mother in 2015, was the fiercely-loyal younger sister of Nico, the first of the friends to die of AIDS, and whose funeral sets the opening scene of the book. Fiona finds herself as the caretaker, almost by default, of many young men sentenced to die alone, including Yale Tishman, as the virus sweeps through “boys town.” Pregnant, grieving, and suffering from what understandably might be post-traumatic stress disorder, Fiona is not able to give her daughter the love she needs and deserves, fostering alienation and rebellion. When taken together, these two intertwining stories tell the history of the AIDS epidemic through personal narratives of the lives of the characters Makkai develops so well. The thread that connects the two stories is the belief that while life is fleeting, fragile, and fraught with suffering, the balm is found in our shared humanity. Despite all the pain and incalculable loss wreaked by this pandemic–which is still thriving today— this book is more about survival, friendship, and love, which makes life worth living through any crisis.
Unsheltered
Barbara Kingsolver
This was a tricky read and I worked for it. It wasn’t until I listened to it after I had read it that it came together for me. It is an interlacing narrative telling two stories set over 100 years apart in the same house in a suburban neighborhood in New Jersey. Both stories have parallel themes about society on the brink of great change and the characters having to decide how to move forward, what to believe, and how to adapt in the face of antiquated social norms, ill-fitting beliefs, and scientific discovery. It illustrates the great lengths some will go to protect their worldview or way of life even in the face of glaring and unavoidable truths. Unsheltered has both literal and metaphorical meanings as the main characters face losing their actual home, thus finding themselves without 5
shelter, and losing their long-held beliefs when confronted with a new paradigm. What will they choose, the fate of the frog slowly boiled to death in hot water or that of a more adaptive creature? Kingsolver wrestles with the big questions of social and economic inequity, political instability, and environmental justice and sustainability, but she doesn’t leave the reader hanging. She offers hope. Through thinly veiled references to rampant consumerism, global warming, and corrupt politicians, Kingsolver invites us to embrace truth, not lose heart, and make a plan forward showing us that we’ve done it before and we can do it again.
Matt Green
Head of School
Prague Spring Simon Mawer
“You haven’t lived here long enough. No one can live in this place for long and still believe in reality.” So notes university student and budding political activist Zdenek to self-described realist Sam Wareham. The “place” that Zdenek is referring to is Prague, or more specifically Prague in the summer of 1968, just weeks before Soviet tanks would roll into the city and put an end to the brief era of liberalism known as the Prague Spring. In his eleventh and most recent novel, aptly titled Prague Spring, British author Simon Mawer introduces us to a pair of couples, each exploring new love against the backdrop of a city flirting with a new love of its own. Or, perhaps more accurately, a city renewing its dalliance with an old flame, the West. James and Elle are Oxford students sharing a summer holiday backpacking through Europe. Embodying the carefree spirit associated with the era, they quite literally flip a coin to determine their next port of call. The ebbs and flows of their budding relationship are comparably unpredictable, and almost by chance and certainly without caution, they find themselves a few miles from the western frontier of the Iron Curtain. Not far from the border, they are picked up by Sam, a midtier British diplomat stationed in Prague, who escorts them over the border and into a city that, after just a few sips, is rapidly becoming drunk on long-denied freedoms. Sam, too, is exploring new love in the person of Lenka Koneckova, a beautiful, a bit mysterious, and certainly worldweary Czech student. They spend late nights with artists and musicians in bars, clubs, and matchbox apartments, where they debate politics and plan with equal parts optimism and naivete for a future that feels imminent but which the reader knows will not arrive for another 22 years. The romances seem removed from time and place, as fresh and fragile as the Prague Spring, which, despite brief protest, was destined to wilt under the oppressive weight of the Soviet occupation. As a student, I was always frustrated by how little time in my history classes was devoted to the recent past, a trend that, I suspect, has only been exacerbated by the addition of some thirty years or so. Each year, it seemed, my teacher 6
would explain, “And so that’s the Cuban Missile Crisis; so sorry we ran out of time; have a good summer!” Prague Spring is no literary masterpiece, but it moves at a brisk pace, asks some important, even timeless questions, and brings life to a particular place and time in history, a time when liberalism seemed all too vulnerable to the menace of authoritarianism. A diplomat to the end, Sam Wareham’s response to a question posed to him, “So what’s your view of the politics here?” may ring true to a modern reader trying to make sense of right and wrong, good guys and bad guys, in our own increasingly unsettled geopolitical world. “I think I know too much about it to have a single view. I have many views, each one calling the previous one into question.”
Pam Hinkle
Director of Development
Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens
Whenever anyone asks (and even if they don’t), I am quick to recommend this wonderful debut novel by writer and zoologist Delia Owens. Where the Crawdads Sing is a carefully crafted murder mystery enhanced by a little descriptive natural history. The central character, Kaya, is abandoned by her dysfunctional family at a very young age and left to fend for herself in the marshes of North Carolina. To survive, the scrappy, mysterious “Marsh Girl” becomes an eager and observant student of nature and a curiosity for the nearby townsfolk. Local football hero Chase encounters the beautiful teenage Kaya and finds her intriguing, and the two are briefly involved. When Chase winds up dead sometime later, the townsfolk are outraged, and Kaya immediately becomes the focus of the investigation. This is a beautifully written story of betrayal, survival, love and the complexities of the natural world. Don’t wait for the movie.
Monica Hough
English
The Dutch House Ann Patchett
Reviews of this marvelous book have focused on the fairytale aspects (an elaborate house, orphaned then exiled children, a wicked stepmother) that drew me to this book, but Patchett is such a talented writer that I happily followed the luscious breadcrumbs of her prose through the larger themes of sibling love, loyalty, and forgiveness. The house is named for its original owners, whose portraits loom large over the main room of the ornate mansion and also over the subsequent inhabitants. Cyril Conroy purchases the Dutch house and all its furnishings as a surprise for his wife, who is indeed surprised, just not as he had intended. His children, narrator Danny and his older sister Maeve, view the house as a symbol of all that they have lost over the decades and spend their lives trying to puzzle out the past and find a figurative way back home.
The Testaments Not certain that I had the stamina to return to the dystopia of Gilead, I nearly passed up the chance to read this sequel to 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale. I am glad that I did not take that pass. The story interweaves narratives from the terrifying Aunt Lydia and two teenaged girls: one in Canada, one in Gilead. At first, I was a tad irritated—I wanted all Lydia all the time—but the three stories weave together into a satisfying whole.
From Fred’s early life to his foray into television and his ultimate creation of the Neighborhood, King assembles a captivating story through interviews, archives, and oral traditions that illustrate the man of Fred Rogers who, surprisingly, isn’t different from his television persona. This book also harkens us to recall a simpler time; a time when a humble man would put on his sweater and his sneakers, look directly into the eyes of his “television neighbor,” and invite us to be his neighbor. Thus, it is a journey through the evolution of children’s television, showing how Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood remained, from its inception throughout its run, an anomaly in the industry, albeit a very successful one.
Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language
Doug Jones
Margaret Atwood
Gretchen McCulloch
Worried that the Internet is sending an entire generation of writers to hell in a handbasket? Linguist McCulloch warmly and wittily reassures those of us who still know what a handbasket is that the Internet is changing language in ways that will bring us together rather than drive us apart. My favorite chapter involved the brouhaha around the invention of the telephone which, in its day, also terrified language lovers everywhere. Even how to answer the phone became a point of contention. Thomas Edison won out with “Hello,” but I do so wish Alexander Graham Bell had triumphed with “Ahoy!”
The Five: The Untold Stories of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Hallie Rubenhold
Rather than offering the grisly details of the Ripper’s crimes, Rubenhold seeks to restore the details of the lives of the women he killed. In debunking the myths, she also paints a compelling almost Dickensian portrait of the intense poverty of many residents of Victorian London and the meager options available to women who lack the protection of a man.
Charles Jodoin
Stagecraft/Technical Director
The Good Neighbor: The Life and Work of Fred Rogers Maxwell King
King’s biography is the quintessential book for lovers of all things Fred Rogers and his Neighborhood. I readily admit I grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood long after my chronological age dictated that I should. This first in-depth biography contains all the necessary ingredients for telling the story of a man who today is considered an American icon.
Department Chair, Math
E: The Story of a Number Eli Maor
Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets Of The Universe Steven Strogatz
These two books complement each other quite nicely by describing the development of calculus from two different viewpoints. I found that the language of both books effectively navigated the challenge of being simplistic enough for the generalist to understand without insulting the intelligence of the mathematically trained. Each reader can easily choose which units to skim due to his/her own level of understanding.
Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before Tony Horwitz
This book was recommended to me at a dinner party in the first week of June. When I went online to search the author since I couldn’t remember the title, I was saddened to discover that he had passed away suddenly two days earlier. This talented and worldrenowned author had been an FA parent and frequently presented his writing to our 8th graders; he will be profoundly missed. In Blue Latitudes, Horwitz retraced the numerous travels and explorations of Captain Cook and carefully detailed the effects that these explorations had on the natives and lands he visited. Full of fascinating insights and reflections on the trials of sailing around the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, it’s a worthwhile read that will keep you engaged and interested.
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Visual Intelligence: Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life Amy Herman
In this book, the author describes her use of modern art to train investigators, teachers, and police officers on how to look more carefully at what they see, and how more careful observation can make them more effective in their occupations. With pun intended, I found her findings to be truly eye-opening and revealing. A great book to read a few pages at a time.
Adrift, Seventy-Six Days Lost at Sea Steven Callahan
While the mere existence of this book and its title precludes any suspense of the eventual outcome, I found that I kept wondering whether the author was going to survive and how soon he might be rescued. This is an exhilarating recounting of the author’s experience “living” in an inflatable raft for 76 days, carefully and thoughtfully describing both his survival skills and profound reflections.
disagreements between my son and his cousins in another language, and meeting up with old friends with whom I communicate in a German-English mix that we fondly call “Denglish,” became something that I eagerly anticipated. Chabon tells the story of two cousins, one born in New York City and the other in Czechoslovakia, who come of age just before the outbreak of World War II. The cousins meet when Joe flees from Czechoslovakia and joins his family in Brooklyn, with his goal of getting a job, saving up money, and rescuing the rest of his family from persecution by the Nazis. Sammy, his American cousin, works for a novelty products company, and manages to find employment for Joe there as an artist. The two end up proposing a series of comic book characters that help define the comic book era and, consequently, they become relatively wealthy in the process. Despite all of their career success, however, Joe struggles to rescue his family and Sammy is unsatisfied with his personal life. I was surprised to find that a novel that dealt with comic books also addressed the struggle of religious minorities, homosexuality, and family conflict. Over 600 pages, I became thoroughly wrapped up in the characters and their lives, and I highly recommend the book to others. In the age of Marvel Studios, this comic book story has good guys, bad guys, and a whole lot of in-between.
Sarah Knowles PK Kennedy
Humanities
Associate Director of Admissions
The Incomplete Book of Running
Washington’s Spies: The Story of America’s First Spy Ring
Peter Sagal
The title of the book is quite descriptive. The AMC television series, Turn: Washington’s Spies, was based on this book. The Revolutionary War period has always been my favorite era of American history and this non-fiction work, which reads like a novel, furthered my fascination with this time period. It tells the story of the establishment of the Culper Spy Ring on Long Island and its impact on the war effort. One of the reasons for my fascination with this topic is the fact that one of the stops along the route that the information traveled was my hometown of Danbury, CT. The book also goes into great detail describing British spying operations, particularly that of Benedict Arnold as he attempted to turn over West Point to the British.
A fellow Falmouth runner recently gifted this book to me and I suggest it to all readers, not just runners or athletes. Author Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s Wait Wait...Don’t Tell Me!, is an avid runner who has completed over 14 marathons. He discusses his personal relationship with running and how running has been intertwined with his experiences with fatherhood, marriage, divorce, conflict, and success. He shares anecdotes about his running career, including being a guide for blind runners during the 2013 and 2014 Boston Marathon. Sagal emphasizes how running taught him the importance of persistence and how hard work over time allowed him to accomplish his goals. This book, part memoir, part running field guide, is a fast-paced (pun intended) and humorous read that will be sure to interest runners and non-runners alike.
Alexander Rose
Liz Klein
Science
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Michael Chabon
I picked this book up from the library in preparation for a family trip to Germany. I chose it for three reasons: it was a Pulitzer Prize winner, it was listed as a “staff pick,” and it looked like it would take me a while to read. Returning to the book at the end of a day of German immersion visiting aunts and drinking coffee, trying to navigate playground 8
The Art Detective: Adventures of an Antiques Roadshow Appraiser Philip Mould
While scrolling through Netflix one rainy day, a BBC show called Fake or Fortune appeared on my recommended list. The show follows an art expert and a journalist as they use investigative skills and scientific techniques to determine if works of art are real or convincing forgeries. After binging the four available episodes, I was hooked. In my attempt to try and find more episodes, I learned that the show was based on a book written by the show’s art expert several years before the show was produced. Broken into 6 chapters, art expert and dealer Philip Mould takes the reader on historical and scientific adventures in an attempt to figure out the provenance of many well-known, and not so well-known, paintings. Some of the work he uncovers includes paintings by Gainsborough, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Rockwell, and Homer. The reader is able to share the journey with Mould through his first-person account of his adventures as he travels the world in search of clues and insights into how and why the artwork has surfaced. One story to excite readers is Mould’s account of a Norman Rockwell forgery that was so convincing that it hung in the Norman Rockwell Museum for years. Read the book and watch the show. You’ll enjoy both!
On the Come Up Angie Thomas
In the Admission Office, I always enjoy asking our prospective students what books they have recently read. This past admission season, several students mentioned loving the 2017 young adult novel, The Hate U Give, by Angie Thomas. Upon learning that Thomas released her second novel in 2019, I decided I would check her new book out of the library. On the Come Up is set in the same universe as The Hate U Give and tells the fictional story of a high school student named Bri who is pursuing her dream of following in her father’s musical footsteps by becoming a rapper. Bri is a strong-headed and outspoken individual who struggles with internal conflict on how to be her authentic self despite how society views her. Thomas uses a diverse set of characters to discuss racism, racial inequality, social justice, family dynamics, and gang violence. Her use of music, syntax, and rhyme scheme as a way to describe the internal turmoil of Bri and her struggle with everyday issues was impressive. The way Thomas is able to interweave social injustice into her story is eye opening for all readers. As a result of enjoying this book so much, we have added it to our admission’s bookshelf for prospective visitors this fall.
Sharon Kreamer
Science
Searching for Sylvie Lee Jean Kwok
If you like books that involve mystery, emotional drama, and personal transformation, Jean Kwok’s (Girl in Translation) new novel will not disappoint. Set in New York City and the Netherlands, the novel follows two sisters from a family that has immigrated from China to New York City. After the glamorous and dynamic Sylvie does not return from a trip, her reticent and reclusive sister, Amy, is determined to find her. As Amy digs deeper and leaves her comfort zone, both figuratively and literally, she uncovers family secrets that forever change their lives. The themes of cultural identity, family loyalty, love, and sacrifice are intricately woven throughout the story. The novel has three narrators: Amy, Sylvie, and their mother. Kwok uses these narratives like clues in a mystery, challenging the reader to try and figure out what the next twist or turn in the story might be. You will find yourself hoping and cheering for Amy and Sylvie, while at the same time worrying about what might happen next. This novel is a page-turner, filled with wonderful detail and imagery.
Elizabeth Munro Ledwell
Department Chair, English
Finding Dorothy Elizabeth Letts
The Wizard of Oz seems like an American fairy tale. Almost everyone knows the story— through at least one of its incarnations—book, play, film, or through fan-fiction inspired books, plays, and films (in the form of Wicked). Elizabeth Letts’ novel looks at the story through a different lens. Two stories in one, the novel imagines the life of Maud Gage Baum, the author’s wife. The story, like many good films, flickers back and forth between Maud’s early life with her husband and her present-day story as his widow. In this portion of the tale, Maud is a fierce protector of her husband’s legacy as she visits the set of the MGM movie, where she befriends a young Judy Garland. Maud is determined to protect “Dorothy,” both the real and imagined. Knowing the tragic ending of Garland’s life only heightened the poignancy of the novel.
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The Good Neighbor
Anka Martula
Maxwell King
Ruthless River
I loved Mr. Rogers. Maxwell King’s biography illuminates many of the things those of us who watched his shows and were comforted by them knew instinctively—Fred Rogers was a good man. I won’t spoil the revelations, but reading about his musical talents, his charity work, and his drive for success and to protect children made me feel good about the world’s prospects.
The Ferryman Jez Butterworth
This play is a fascinating character study about the effect the past has on the present. It’s the early 1980’s and the Carney family in Northern Ireland must cope with the shadows of the past when an unexpected visitor arrives. A great, emotional family drama with political, historical undertones. I only wish I had seen the original cast on Broadway!
Allyson Manchester
Holy Fitzgerald
If there was such a thing in literature as an adventure and survival genre, this book would fit in it perfectly. I actually read this book in one sitting with small breaks for food and drink here and there. This is a story about a newly married couple who go on a yearlong lifetime adventure around the world. A few months into the trip, they crash-land in an indigenous colony of the Peruvian jungle and their romantic honeymoon turns into a terrifying ordeal of life and death. Hopeful that they can navigate the Amazon River on a make-shift raft, they wind up wildly off-course and lost. Their survival comes in phases: attempts to escape, exhaustion and resignation, and, finally, a desperate search for food that yields small frogs, snails, and berries. After 31 days, they are finally rescued by a couple of monkey hunters. Suffice to say, I was engrossed by this wild and unexpected adventure, yet kept “rolling my eyes” at the protagonists’ youthful foolishness and naiveté.
Words to Outlive Us College Guidance Advisor, English/Summer Programs
Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive Stephanie Land
Stephanie Land, the author of the memoir Maid, spends her early adulthood as a housekeeper in Port Townsend, Washington. Although she often stumbles upon her clients’ dirtiest secrets as she scrubs and vacuums, her own identity remains invisible to the wealthy people who employ her. In Maid, Land steps out of invisibility and articulates the gritty reality of her work and her life as a single mom on government assistance. More broadly, she purchases space for the story of America’s working poor and pushes us to think about why it’s so convenient for us to overlook these narratives in the first place. Land’s situation is certainly grim, and yet she resists complaining and self-pity. Instead, the concrete details of her life—facing judgment in the grocery store for buying expensive organic milk with food stamps; drinking coffee to suppress her hunger; struggling to find affordable and safe childcare for her daughter—speak for themselves. Fortunately, there are more hopeful moments in this book, and they were just as powerful and well-written. In fact, the passage about Land’s love for her young daughter brought me to tears. I recommend this memoir for all of the bleakness and beauty that it offers.
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History
edited by Michal Grynberg
While following the festivities commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising this past summer, I came upon a recommendation for the book Words to Outlive Us. And, since I wanted to learn more about this important part of history, I immediately ordered it and soon discovered that I could not put it down. It is a collective memoir consisting of twenty-nine personal accounts of the men and women who lived in the Warsaw ghetto from its establishment in 1940 until its destruction in 1943. Most of the accounts were written during the war, some by anonymous authors, and many by writers who later disappeared, their writing found among the rubble of destroyed buildings, in attics or basements, or passed from one person to another until they found their way into the archives. The stories describe the creation of the ghetto, how it was organized, the struggle for basic necessities such as shelter and food, collaboration and resistance, and the round-ups that led the victims to almost certain death in the concentration camps. Even though the mood of this book is certainly somber and tragic, I very much appreciated the authenticity presented by the writers.
Scottie Mobley
Science
The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted And the Startling Implications for Diet, Weight Loss, And Long-term Health Thomas Campbell
This is a fascinating book on health and nutrition. Growing up on a dairy farm, Dr. T. Colin Campbell was taught that his diet needed to consist primarily of meat and milk, which provide protein to grow up strong and healthy. This message is still taught today in many regions. However, as a scientific researcher, he found that protein was the biggest culprit of many Western diseases that people suffer from today. This book details his findings and his research. Dr. Campbell explains how eating a plant-based diet can and will reduce, or possibly eliminate, the risk for common chronic diseases. He also highlights the nutritional confusion from misinformation and outdated research propagated by organizations that have a direct influence over food production and promotion. He gives an extensive bibliography at the end of the book that is very helpful.
Where the Crawdads Sing Delia Owens
This is a book that I can’t stop thinking about. It takes the reader deep into the swamps of coastal North Carolina with vivid descriptions of flora and fauna. It is a lovely and heart-wrenching tale told through the eyes of a girl who, at the age of five, was abandoned by her dysfunctional family and left to grow up with very little human contact. Kya Clark, who the townsfolk called “Marsh Girl,” found solace in her surroundings and was perfectly happy to live alone in the marsh until she befriended a boy from town. Ignored and teased by society, her striking marsh-girl beauty and incredible talent as a writer and illustrator, especially of the natural world around her, was a mystery to others. She compensated for the abandonment by her family and allowed herself to be nurtured by nature. I learned so much from the poetic descriptions of crawdads, gulls, fireflies, and bullfrogs, and was riveted by the mystery of the marsh-girl that unfolds. It’s a true page-turner.
Lucy Nelson Susan Moffat
Arts/Summer Programs
Dreamland
Sam Quinones
This is a book that I love-hated; it was both fascinating and eye-opening. Published in 2015, Quinones writes an historical and somewhat shocking account of how America’s opiate epidemic started. Quinones, a journalist and non-fiction writer, conducts interviews over a five-year period with addicts, police, dealers, politicians, and doctors. His story weaves back and forth through small towns in Ohio, Oregon, New Mexico, and, most dangerously, Xalisco, a tiny town in the state of Nayarit, Mexico. Many boys leave Xalisco to travel to the US in search of a better life. They’re drawn by the lure of Levi’s 501s, fancy cars, and easy money. They target a wide range of people—affluent white college students, professionals whose prescriptions have run out and who’ll do anything for relief, and drug-addicts on the street. The Xalisco boys ride the wave of the opioid crisis created by the malpractice of over-prescription of synthetic opiates such as Oxycontin by “big pharma.” Xalisco’s black tar heroin is much less expensive and readily available. This complicated story is woven together by peoples’ need for relief from pain and a quest for money. Poverty, opportunity, and greed all play roles in addiction. At first, I thought Dreamland was slightly outdated. Shockingly, it continues.
Arts
Song of Achilles Madeline Miller
Written from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ lifelong companion, this story explores the relationship of the famed Greek hero and his friend during the Age of Heroes. The nature of their relationship has long been debated in literature; were they lovers? From a young age, Patroclus was the chosen companion for Achilles. In Song of Achilles, it is a given that Achilles is the son of the nymph, Thetis, and that the interference of the gods in the lives of mortals plays out to grave consequence. The natural progression of the two boys from friends to lovers in Chiron’s cave angers Thetis, who sees Patroclus as a distraction and potential weakness for her son, whose reputation as the greatest living soldier has spread throughout Greece. When Achilles is summoned to battle to help the Greeks retrieve Helen, he is accompanied by Patroclus during the lengthy siege of Troy. Revisiting this well-known story from the perspective of Patroclus rather than from the heroes of battle adds a humanizing element.
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Jennifer Park
English
Maybe You Should Talk to Someone Lori Gottlieb
In her memoir, Lori Gottlieb relates her story of being a therapist who goes to therapy after experiencing a painful breakup with a partner of two years who decides he does not want to be a parent to her 10-year-old son. Blindsided, Gottlieb takes us through her process of letting go. The memoir alternates between Gottlieb as therapist and Gottlieb as patient, allowing for a breadth of insight into the therapy process that would not be possible if told from only one vantage point. From Gottlieb’s own journey through heartache, to the struggle of her own clients—a successful screenwriter writer whose lack of patience hides a painful truth, a retired artist estranged from her children, a young newlywed college professor diagnosed with terminal cancer— Gottlieb highlights the defenses people put up to cope with emotional pain as well as what makes for the closeness and vulnerability that constitute true connection.
Love Medicine Louise Erdrich
If Erdrich’s story is authentic, as we have every reason to believe it is, then life on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota is as unjust and brutish as any place on earth. Yet, as Erdrich weaves the stories of two families as tightly as they can be wound—to the point where the reader (this reader, anyway!) has difficulty discerning who belongs with whom—the reservation also becomes a place of resilience, magic, and love. In the murkiness of bloodlines and shared history, the only real clarity is the resilience of Ojibwe women. Despite unspeakable hardships and cruelty, the women rely on humor, magic, and each other to find meaning and redemption in their lives. As such, their power is unassailable and absolute, despite their very human flaws. By the end of Erdrich’s tale, I accepted my inability to follow every character’s story and just let her poetic prose transport me to another place. I guess that’s why love is the best medicine.
Helen Reuter Ben Parsons
English and Modern Language
Purple Hibiscus
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
From the opening lines of the novel, when the 15-year-old narrator hints at things falling apart at home—a direct reference to Chinua Achebe’s classic account of Nigeria’s fraught marriage with the West—the reader understands that this will be a fresh look at “domestic” tensions facing this powerful West African nation. As the young protagonist, Kambili, navigates coming of age in a family divided by religious fundamentalism, domestic violence, intergenerational and intragenerational loyalties, politics, and ideology, we start to see how her formation mirrors that of her country. Even though many of the characters, particularly Kambili’s father, are extremely heavy-handed, Adichie’s touch is gentle and deft. She is a gifted novelist who paints Kambili’s position as both deeply personal and wonderfully human. The joy for the reader is in the details: hibiscus and bougainvillea spilling out of the garden, the palpable tension in the backseat on car rides, the sights and smells of boiling curry and nutmeg in her aunt’s tiny kitchen, and the thumping of Kambili’s heart in the presence of a first crush, a charismatic young Catholic priest. I am really excited to be introducing this novel to the 10th graders this year as part of our curriculum. Adichie has every right to be celebrated as one of the finest novelists writing in English today.
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Learning Specialist
The Sympathizer Viet Thanh Nguyen
Most of my summer reading was inspired by the podcasts I listened to on my walks through the glory of Crane Wildlife Management Area. (This is a plug for land conservation and ecosystem reclamation; the meadowland flora of Crane is stunning and worth the effort to visit for anyone with an interest in native plants or an aesthetic for the natural.) The rising sun, my daughter’s (Ella Martin ’12) dog, and Hidden Brain and Invisibilia were my daily companions, and I credit them for leading me into the mind of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer. The Guardian describes this Pulitizer Prize-winning novel as “a spy novel, a war novel, an immigrant novel, a novel of ideas, a political novel, a campus novel, a novel about the movies, and a novel… about other novels” (the latter two referring to Nguyen’s unabashed critique of the white-washing of the Vietnam War in American films and the masterfully executed homage to The Invisible Man, respectively); for me, however, the novel is an exploration in psychology—a study of how humans navigate the complexity of identity and the pulls of loyalty through the lens of the sympathizer, a Viet Cong mole. As his confession to the unseen “Commandant” unfurls, harrowing events and gruesome deeds intermingle with unbelievably poignant tales of friendship and devotion. Although at some points Nguyen’s prose is overwritten and plot turns appear forced, he does not falter in laying bare the sympathizer’s noble motives, inner struggles, and haunting regrets; the reader has no choice but to reciprocate feelings of sympathy towards Nguyen’s unnamed protagonist, who sacrifices all for the lofty ambition of liberating his country.
Jill Reves
Department Chair, Science
The Beekeeper of Aleppo
forever change our lives for the better. This book offers hope and a clear path to a promising future.
Christy Lefteri
This story was a moving testament to the human spirit. I devoured this book in just a few days. Lefteri knows her subject quite well from family and personal experience. Long ago, I met a friend who grew up in Aleppo, and if you follow the news, you know of the devastation of this beautiful city and the destruction of priceless artifacts, art, and historical sites that can never be restored. This book follows the life of a man who escaped the horrors of war in his hometown, but also the trials of living his life “after.” It’s a lovely story worth reading; a life most of us have been blessed to never know personally, offering a glimpse into the strongest part of our human soul.
Britta Santamauro
Director of Library Services
Ask Again, Yes
Mary Beth Keane
The title of the book says it all. Would you, when asked again, say yes? After years of ups and downs, of life throwing you curveballs, would you still say yes? But, this book is not simply a love story. It details the lives of two families, once neighbors, whose children played and grew up together. After a terrible tragedy, one family is forced to move away, and their family falls apart. However, the bond of two of their children, Kate and Peter, proves strong despite the separation and they reconnect after a few years. The story comes full circle when Kate and Peter “ask again” for their families’ blessing of their renewed friendship. Will they forgive and say yes? The story is wonderfully humble and deeply moving. Its realistic portrayal of how people can overcome life’s challenges will stay with me for a long time. The Age of Living Machines: How Biology Will Build the Next Technology Revolution
Susan Hockfield
This book is extraordinary in its premise: biology will solve the most urgent problems of our times. The author, former president of MIT, describes five research projects where scientists have already solved some of the big environmental and medical issues humanity is facing. Hockfield explains in detail, without becoming too technical, how scientists put in long hours conducting experiments, collecting data, and more often than not, discovering solutions in unexpected places. According to Hockfield, we are entering the next technological revolution by merging biology with engineering and this synthesis will
Henry Stevens
Athletic Director/Math
The Nickel Boys
Colson Whitehead
I heard about the release of this book early in the summer and I bought it as soon as it arrived at Eight Cousins. I believe that Colson Whitehead is one of the great writers of this generation, and his ability to create characters and stories that completely absorb you is what makes him so special. The Nickel Boys takes place during the 100-year existence of a reform school in Florida. In 2013, students from the University of South Florida found multiple hidden gravesites on the campus of the Florida School For Boys. Whitehead used this school, also known as the Dozier School, as the inspiration for his novel. The Nickel Boys tells the story of two young boys sentenced to the Nickel Academy, a juvenile reform school in Florida. Both Elwood and Turner arrive at the school for different reasons, but they turn to each other for support. Honestly, I do not want to go into too much detail because this book is best read without any spoilers. Whitehead’s attention to detail and the ability to create fully formed characters in just 200 pages is masterful. The story itself is haunting, and knowing that it is based on reality makes it all the more powerful.
Don Swanbeck
History
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the C.I.A. Tim Weiner
Legacy of Ashes: A History of the C.I.A. delves deeply into the six-decade history of United States’ intelligence operations using a wealth of sources from interviews and declassified documents from the C.I.A.’s own archives. The result does not paint a pretty picture of US information gathering or covert operations. Especially memorable are the thousands of covert operatives lost behind communist lines during the 1950s and 1960s, when overly optimistic assessments of anti-communist activity prodded the agency to undertake irresponsibly risky missions that almost always ended in abject failure. This is not a feel-good read and best taken up by someone ready for a serious exploration into the world of foreign policy and counterintelligence. It makes for a powerful argument for intelligence gathering and against covert operations and military adventurism in a world where we actually have less control over events than we think we do.
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1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Charles C. Mann
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created are two eye-opening books about the Americas. The first explores the extent of Amerindian civilizations, north and south, prior to 1492, and reveals evidence that posits the breadth and depth of native civilizations. As Europeans made intermittent contact with Amerindians during the 1400s, primarily through fishing and minor trading interactions, the devastation of the native culture became profound. As Europeans began to survey and settle the lands towards the end of the 16th Century, the Americas seemed an eternally uninhabited paradise. The second book presents a wealth of evidence demonstrating the impact of the Columbian Exchange on the world. The Americas were altered and, in turn, changed far-flung areas of the world in surprising ways. These are fascinating stories. (It was a pleasant surprise seeing FA’s own Ted Melillo ’92, professor at Amherst College, referenced in the second volume.)
Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade James Reston, Jr.
Warriors of God: Richard the Lionheart and Saladin in the Third Crusade examines the third major foray of crusading Europeans into Palestine to recover the Holy Land. The author engages the reader with delightful stories of several major personalities of the age. In addition to Saladin and Richard, Mr. Reston also gives us a glimpse into the life of the formidable Eleanor of Aquitaine, the scheming father Henry II, and Richard’s pusillanimous brother, the future King John. The story takes the reader from the internecine rivalries of Europe in the late 12th Century to the cataclysmic clash of civilizations on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea. Through all the jealousies, personal and political disputes, and gory battles, the extraordinary personalities of Richard and Saladin tower overall. Though the stakes of victory and loss soared above other temporal considerations, the two men as combatants demonstrated profound virtues of chivalry that were awe-inspiring in their day.
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Julie Swanbeck
History
The Weight of Ink Rachel Kadish
A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka Lev Golinkin
Two of my favorite recent reads dealt with Jewish emigres. The Weight of Ink and A Backpack, A Bear, and Eight Crates of Vodka—a multilayered novel and a personal memoir, respectively—take place in vastly different times and places, yet each presents a window on the tribulations of displaced Jewish families as they reestablished themselves in foreign settings. Kadish deftly alternates between the 17th century story of Ester, a refugee from Portugal orphaned in Amsterdam who then settles in one of the earliest Jewish enclaves in London, and the 21st century lives of an aging British professor and her young American protégée, a mismatched pair of historians who sift through a tranche of 17th century manuscripts and gradually uncover Ester’s unconventional life. Without being heavy-handed, this beautifully crafted book reveals parallels between its female leads and their struggles to engage in meaningful intellectual discourse while balancing gender expectations with their personal desires. Golinkin’s memoir, a tale of his family’s flight from the Soviet Union late in 1989 and resettlement in the United States, is replete with personal insights into the plight of Jewish refugees – prejudices driving their choices, dangers faced in leaving their homeland, and difficulties of starting anew. From the vantage of a young boy carrying a backpack and a bear, Golinkin recalls the family’s stays in refugee camps in Austria and arrival in his new home in West Lafayette, Indiana. Written shortly after Golinkin’s graduation from Boston College, this memoir, with humor and with gravity, traces his American journey, recognizing the disproportionate sacrifice of his parents and elevating the many memorable, but largely anonymous, people who aided his family. These books provided ample grist for thought regarding the courage and costs of uprooting oneself and one’s family, all the more poignant with the refugee crisis at the US southern border as this summer’s backdrop.
Crissy Torruella
Associate Director of Annual Giving & Development Operations
The Alice Network Kate Quinn
Brilliant historical fiction! The Alice Network is an amazing book that skillfully tells the story of several women spies in WWI, and the story of two cousins two years after WWII. In a straightforward and very real way, the author unveils our protagonists: Eve, a drunken, gun-wielding, bitter old woman with mangled hands, and a former WWI spy of the Alice Network; and Charlie St. Clair, an 18-year-old pregnant college dropout and self-proclaimed “slut.” (I dislike that word, but Charlie describes herself that way.) Quinn manages to make these seemingly unlikeable characters so real and moving that halfway through the book I found myself cheering them on and loving them both. Word of warning, this is a long book (over 400 pages), but you will find it impossible to put down. There are male characters in this book, some good, some pretty evil, but they are all supporting characters who fill in the blanks between the underlying thread that ties all our female characters together in their struggle against the prejudices they face just because they were born female. There were several brave women spies in WWI with overprotective male handlers to whom they would lie just so they could stay in the field and undertake the business of spying. Ironically, they were successful as spies because the men they were spying on considered them too stupid, insipid, or just too female to be doing men’s work! In 1947, Charlie, a brilliant mathematician who is ignored by her professors, has to hide her math acuity from the world. She is not allowed to take money out of her bank account without her father or husband present. She is ostracized by her family when they find out about her pregnancy (and yes she has no idea who the father is) and is forced to travel to Europe to “take care of her little problem.” Despite societal and personal obstacles, Charlie and Eve turn out to be amazingly strong, powerfully willful, and extremely determined women. Kudos to Quinn for giving us characters to admire that were clearly breaking stereotypes and boundaries. In the words of historian and author Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “well-behaved women seldom make history.”
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler Kelly Harms
Emily Turner
English
The Good Guy Susan Beale
I often find myself, after finishing a historical novel or a particularly outstanding TV series, accompanied by artificial nostalgia for an era I’ve never really known. This spring, after plowing through all eighteen episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, I caught myself daydreaming about an alternate existence as a chic and stubborn divorcée intent upon carving out a career in the maledominated field of stand-up comedy. Naturally, when I learned about Susan Beale’s The Good Guy, a novel which follows the lives of Ted and Abigail in 1960s Boston, I couldn’t wait to be swept back into the allure of what I believed to be an idyllic decade. How very wrong I was. Susan Beale wastes no time in breaking down her readers’ romanticized notions of the 1960s. Her story, which draws on the events leading up to her own adoption, follows three main characters whose lives are far from enviable. Ted, a fairly successful tire salesman, suffers from ennui and a lust for something more than his merely satisfactory life. His pursuit of something more creates a nightmare for Beale’s two female protagonists—Ted’s wife, Abigail, and his mistress, Penny. While Ted seeks fulfillment, Abigail struggles to manage a budding career in academia, her thankless job as a homemaker, her failing marriage, and motherhood. Penny, young, naïve, and in search of affection, finds herself unmarried, pregnant, and fearing rejection by proper society. The moment that struck me most in this novel occurs when Penny, who is hiding in her mother’s house on Cape Cod over the winter to conceal her pregnancy from the outside world, finds herself forced to hide in a closet to avoid discovery at the hands of a curious neighbor. As Beale writes, “The only thing worse than getting caught hiding in a closet was the prospect of being caught hiding in a closet, pregnant.” Beale’s frank and unromantic approach to historical fiction provides a poignant and necessary reminder for those who are guilty, as I am, of idealizing eras past, and of how lucky we are to live in the twenty-first century. If you’re looking for a page-turner that will leave you feeling grateful for modernity, look no further than Beale’s The Good Guy.
Rob Wells
Department Chair, History
Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic Beach read! I greatly enjoyed this book. It was funny, easy, and entertaining. Amy Byler, a middleaged librarian, reluctantly goes on a voyage of self-discovery and self-indulgence, and frankly, this is what makes the book engaging and a pleasure to read. Save it for a long day at the beach next summer.
Paul Fussell
Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory was assigned to me in college, and remains a valuable resource for my teaching and understanding of the cultural impact of World War I. Doing Battle is, at heart, Fussell’s memoir about his World War II experiences as a young, green lieutenant in combat in Europe, but the title also alludes to his general outlook of being “at war” with most of the institutions, 15
movements, and a good number of individuals, he encountered in his life. He may describe himself as a skeptic, but he often comes across as more of a committed contrarian, if not, in fact, a crank. I find his determined iconoclastic view of most everything delightful, but it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The memoir covers his life from childhood to near retirement, not just the months that he was involved in the war, and I found his descriptions of growing up privileged in Pasadena in the 1930s interesting; one often imagines what Southern California was like before the population explosion of the 1960s. As an academic, he offers numerous insights, mostly cantankerous, but a few of unabashed praise, into his own educational experience and into the American higher education system that I found to be very wise and on-point. If you like memoirs, fine writing, an intense hostility to the rebellion of the 1960s, and a sharp mind that delights in challenging “group-think” and the myths of cherished values, then you’ll like reading Paul Fussell. Overall, I think that he gets a lot more right than he gets wrong.
Why Orwell Matters Christopher Hitchens
This selection is in keeping with what I have apparently established as a celebration of contrarianism theme for my 2019 Bookworm entries. I miss Hitchens and remember very fondly looking forward to his regular contributions in The Atlantic and other literary journals. He clearly idolizes Orwell, and his mission is to champion Orwell as a voice of truth who speaks boldly about so many subjects that were clouded in his day by “conventional wisdom,” mythmaking, and propaganda; I’m sure that if Orwell were alive today, “political correctness” would be added to the list. Examples of chapter titles include “Orwell and the Left,” “Orwell and the Feminists,” “Orwell and America,” and “Orwell and the Empire.” As one would expect, this is a very thoughtful and intellectually argued work, and Hitchens especially applauds Orwell’s willingness to call out, from his own socialist position, the purposeful blindness of some elements of the “Left” to the horrors of Stalin’s rule in the USSR. Orwell, like Hitchens, was an equal-opportunity critic, ready to joyfully attack the Left or the Right. Reading Orwell and/or Hitchens is nearly always a joy, so reading Hitchens on Orwell is a special pleasure.
The Confessor The English Girl Daniel Silva
My college roommate turned me on this summer to the international spy/assassin thrillers that Silva has been churning out for almost 20 years now. Almost surely, I’m late to the party here. I started somewhere close to the middle in the chronology of his work, based entirely on what looked appealing by their titles 16
and covers on the shelf at the Falmouth Public Library. As is true of almost all of Silva’s novels, the two I read featured Israeli agent Gabriel Allon. Both were fun and hugely entertaining reads, and I was quickly caught up in the fictional life of Allon and the other recurring central characters such as his longtime mentor, and his wife. These reads were definitely guilty pleasures, but one can gain a number of useful insights and discoveries about international affairs and the recent histories of Europe and Israel from both novels. I am sure that I will return to Silva and his Allon stories when I’m looking for a gripping and relaxing read. My college friend has read them all.
Jacqueline Yanch
Science
Darkness Visible William Styron
This summer I re-read William Styron’s Darkness Visible. I had picked up the book originally back in the 1990s, a few years after it was published, eager to read something else by the writer of Sophie’s Choice. But Darkness Visible is no Sophie’s Choice. Where Sophie’s Choice is a lengthy, fictional story of the life of a Holocaust survivor after the war, Darkness Visible is a very brief, non-fictional, personal account of Styron’s own experience with severe depression. The subtitle of the book is “A Memoir of Madness.” Styron tries to tell the reader just what deep depression “feels like.” Realizing how difficult it is to convey a feeling with words, he includes the attempts of other famous writers, also sufferers of severe depression, in a broader effort to give the reader a sense of the torment a depressed person feels. On my first reading, I remember being struck by the intensity of the descriptions and the feeling that I had gained some sense of what it must be like, at least from an intellectual, if not from a sensory, perspective. Styron’s therapist had actively resisted hospitalizing him out of concern that the stigma of hospitalization would negatively impact Styron’s reputation as a famous writer. But Styron writes, “…the hospital was my salvation, and it is something of a paradox that in this austere place with its locked and wired doors and desolate green hallways—ambulances screeching night and day ten floors below—I found the repose, the assuagement of the tempest in my brain, that I was unable to find in my quiet farmhouse.” Styron reflects on this idea of stigma and even back in the 1980s felt that the idea was long outdated. On re-reading the book, I realize that little seems to have changed, the stigma of hospitalization to treat mental illness still largely exists. If you are close to someone suffering from severe depression, this is a book to help you gain some understanding of what they might be going through.
Falmouth Academy Presents
Community Events at the Simon Center for the Arts 2019–2020 DECEMBER 11 at 6 PM Skylark in Concert: A Century of Carols.
Information and tickets: skylarkensemble.org
14 at 1 PM and 4 PM Cape Conservatory presents The
Nutcracker Ballet recital. Information and tickets: capeconservatory.org
14 at 7 PM Film Falmouth presents Bluebird. Information and tickets: woodsholefilmfestival.org
JANUARY 18 at 7 PM Film Falmouth presents Winter Shorts.
Information and tickets: woodsholefilmfestival.org
31 & February 1 at 7 PM FA Middle School Play. Free and open to the public.
FEBRUARY 6 at 7 PM Community Series with Andy Bowen, Director
of National Deep Submergence Facility, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and alumna Allisa Dalpe ’12, Ph.D. candidate in Ocean Engineering at the University of New Hampshire. Sponsored in part by the Woods Hole Foundation. Information and reservations: falmouthacademy.org/ community
14 at 6:30 PM FA Midwinter Concert. Free and open to the public.
15 at 7 PM Film Falmouth presents Human Nature.
Information and tickets: woodsholefilmfestival.org
20 at 6 PM 32nd Celebration of Science: Falmouth
Academy’s Science and Engineering Fair. Open for public viewing at 6 PM. FALMOUTH ACADEMY 2019-20 ADMISSIONS EVENTS
December 4 January 11 February 1 February 1 March 10 April 3 April 10 April 29
Coffee and Tour Information Session Scholarship Exam and Faculty Forum Admission Application Deadline Tuition Assistance Application Deadline Admission and Tuition Assistance Decisions Sent Accepted Student Revisit Day New Student Enrollment Contract and Deposit Due Coffee and a Class Information Session
REGISTER FOR ADMISSIONS EVENTS AT falmouthacademy.org/admissions/learn-more/admission-events
MARCH 14 at 7 PM Film Falmouth presents Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Information and tickets: woodsholefilmfestival.org
21 at 4 PM & 22 at 3 PM Falmouth Chorale in Concert:
The Day is Far Behind You with guest conductor John Verkuilen. Information and tickets: falmouthchorale.org
26 at 7 PM Community Series with Urvashi Rangan,
Ph.D., former director of the Consumer Safety and Sustainability Group for Consumer Reports. Sponsored in part by the Woods Hole Foundation. Information and reservations: falmouthacademy. org/community
APRIL 4 at 5:30 PM Falmouth Academy Auction and Benefit. 9 at 7 PM Community Series with John Powers, a
longtime sportswriter for the Boston Globe will speak about his new book, Fridays with Bill: Inside the Football Mind of Bill Belichick. Information and reservations: falmouthacademy.org/community
18 at 7 PM Film Falmouth presents Runner (to benefit the Falmouth Service Center). Information and tickets: woodsholefilmfestival.org
22 at 7 PM Skylark in Concert: Sub Rosa Secrets Revealed. Information and tickets: skylarkensemble.org
27 at 7 PM Former FA English teacher Clare Beams will discuss her new novel, The Illness Lesson.
MAY 8 & 9 at 7 PM FA Spring Play. Free and open to the public. 15 at 5 PM FA Spring Art Show followed by Spring Concert at 6:30 PM. Free and open to the public.
16 at 7 PM Film Falmouth presents a Festival
Preview Screening. Information and tickets: woodsholefilmfestival.org
SIMON CENTER FOR THE ARTS
The Simon Center for the Arts at Falmouth Academy is a 7,200-square-foot stateof-the-art facility dedicated to arts education and performance. It is designed to meet the needs of Falmouth Academy students and faculty and to serve as a cultural hub for the Upper Cape Cod community. A collaborative space where students, educators, professional artists, and patrons can engage, learn and share in a medley of enriching arts and experiences year-round, the Simon Center is home to concerts, theater productions, fine art exhibits, lectures, cinema, community outreach programs, and cultural events.
Learn more about these and future community events at: falmouthacademy.org/community
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