Tunstall Summer Reading 2024

TUNSTALL SUMMER READING

ALL THE BEAUTY IN THE WORLD PATRICK BRINGLEY

As rich in moving insights as the Met is in treasures, All the Beauty in the World reminds us of the importance of learning not ‘about art, but from it.’ When Patrick Bringley's beloved brother died while they were in their twenties in 2008, he needed a place of solace and found it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His contemplative memoir, filled with musings on beauty and meaning and different ways of seeing, maps his transformative 10-year sojourn as a museum guard.

ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE

ANTHONY

DOERR

Marie-Laure lives with her father in Paris near the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of its thousands of locks. When she is six, Marie-Laure goes blind and her father builds a perfect miniature of their neighborhood so she can memorize it by touch and navigate her way home. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris, and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

THE BERRY PICKERS

AMANDA PETERS

July 1962. A Mi’kmaq family from Nova Scotia arrives in Maine to pick blueberries for the summer. Weeks later, four-year-old Ruthie, the family’s youngest child, vanishes.

In Maine, a young girl named Norma grows up as the only child of an affluent family. Norma is often troubled by recurring dreams and visions that seem more like memories. As she grows older, Norma slowly comes to realize there is something her parents aren’t telling her.

BEYOND THE FRONTIER: DREADNAUGHT

JACK CAMPBELL

The Alliance woke Captain John "Black Jack"

Geary from cryogenic sleep to take command of the fleet in the century-long conflict against the Syndicate Worlds. Geary knows that members of the military high command and the government question his loyalty to the Alliance and fear his staging a coup-so he can't help but wonder if the newly christened First Fleet is being deliberately sent to the far side of space on a suicide mission.

S C I F I

THE BHAGAVAD VITA

The Bhagavad Gita is one of the most important Hindu texts, as well as serving as a practical guide to living well. It is an early epic poem that recounts the conversation between Arjuna the warrior and his charioteer Krishna, the manifestation of God. In the moments before a great battle, the dialogue sets out the important lessons Arjuna must learn to change the outcome of the war he is to fight, and culminates in Krishna revealing to the warrior his true cosmic form, counselling him to search for the universal perfection of life.

R E L I G I O N

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT

DANIEL JAMES BROWN

Out of the depths of the Depression comes an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times the improbable, intimate account of how nine working-class boys from the American West formed a crew team and showed the world at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin what true grit really meant.

S P O R T S

BRUNELLESCHI’S

DOME ROSS KING

On August 19, 1418, a competition to design the dome of Florence's magnificent new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore was announced. The proposed dome was regarded as all but impossible to build. The dome would literally need to be erected over thin air. The winning plan was offered not by a master mason or carpenter, but by a clockmaker named Filippo Brunelleschi, who would dedicate the next twenty-eight years to solving the puzzles of the dome's construction. In the process, he reinvented the field of architecture.

DEAD WAKE

ERIK LARSON

Larson is a journalist who writes non-fiction books that read like novels, real pageturners. This one is no exception. In the tenth month of WWI a luxury ocean liner sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. For months, German U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania’s captain placed tremendous faith in the belief that civilian ships would be safe from attack. Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game.

DEVOTIONS

MARY OLIVER

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver presents a personal selection of her best work in this definitive collection spanning more than five decades of her esteemed literary career.

E T R Y

THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS

PIP WILLIAMS

Esme is born into a world of words. She spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed where a team of lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme begins to gather the words discarded by the dictionary men, and she realizes that words and meanings relating to women’s and common folks’ experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins to search out words for her own dictionary: the Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

DOPPELGANGER

NAOMI KLEIN

What if you woke up one morning and found you’d acquired another self a double who was almost you and yet not you at all? What if that double shared many of your preoccupations but, in a twisted, upside-down way, furthered the very causes you’d devoted your life to fighting against? Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience.

O N F I C T I O N

FAMILY STYLE

THIEN PHAM

A moving young adult graphic memoir about a Vietnamese immigrant boy's search for belonging in America. After the Pham family arrives at a refugee camp in Thailand, they struggle to survive. Things don't get much easier once they resettle in California. And through each chapter of their lives, food takes on a new meaning. Behind every cut of steak and inside every croissant lies a story. And for Thien Pham, that story is about a search-- for belonging, for happiness, for the American dream.

THE FERRYMAN

JUSTIN CRONIN

The islands of Prospera lie in a vast ocean, in splendid isolation from the rest of humanity. Citizens of the main island enjoy privileged lives. And when the end of life approaches, they’re sent to a mysterious neighboring island, where their bodies are refreshed, their memories are wiped away, and they return to start life anew. Proctor Bennett is a ferryman, whose job it is to enforce the retirement process when necessary. He never questions his work, until the day he receives a cryptic message: “The world is not the world.”

A N T A S Y

FIRE WEATHER JOHN VALLIANT

Grips like a philosophical thriller, warns like a beacon, and shocks to the core. In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a spreview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

FULL CATASTROPHE LIVING

JON KABAT-ZINN

Stress. It can sap our energy, undermine our health, even shorten our lives. It makes us more vulnerable to anxiety and depression, disconnection and disease. This classic, groundbreaking work which gave rise to a whole new field in medicine and psychology shows you how to use medically proven mind-body approaches derived from meditation and yoga to counteract stress, establish balance of body and mind, and stimulate well-being.

M E N T A L H E A L T H

THE GAME:

HARVARD, YALE, AND AMERICA IN 1968

GEORGE HOWE COLT

There's no doubt that football fans will find The Game fascinating Colt understands the nuances of the sport, and he writes about it superbly. But you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy the book; its human focus makes it accessible to everyone, even if you don't know the difference between a touchback and a touchdown. Vibrant, energetic and beautiful, The Game is a big-time winner.

S P O R T S

THE GOOD LIFE ROBERT WALDINGER

What makes for a happy life, a fulfilling life? A good life? In their captivating book, the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, show that the answer to these questions may be closer than you realize.

S Y C H O L O G Y

THE GUNS OF AUGUST BARBARA TUCHMAN

In this landmark account, renowned historian Barbara W. Tuchman re-creates the first month of World War I: thirty days in the summer of 1914 that determined the course of the conflict, the century, and ultimately our present world. Dizzyingly comprehensive and spectacularly portrayed with her famous talent for evoking the characters of the war’s key players, Tuchman’s magnum opus is a classic for the ages.

I S T O R I C A L

HIDDEN POTENTIAL

ADAM GRANT

We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve. When opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.

P S Y C H

IMPROBABLE DESTINIES JONATHAN LOSOS

A major new book overturning our assumptions about how evolution works Convergence: eyes and wings and treeclimbing lizards have evolved independently, multiple times. Contingence: the tiniest change a random mutation or an ancient butterfly sneeze caused evolution to take a completely different course. What role does each force play in the constantly changing natural world? Are the plants and animals that exist today, and we humans ourselves, inevitabilities or evolutionary flukes?

THE MAN FROM THE FUTURE ANANYO BATTACHARYA

An electrifying biography of one of the most extraordinary scientists of the twentieth century and the world he made. The smartphones in our pockets and computers like brains. The vagaries of game theory and evolutionary biology. Nuclear weapons and self-replicating spacecrafts. All bear the fingerprints of one remarkable, yet largely overlooked, man: John von Neumann.

N O NF I C T I O N

MASTER AND COMMANDER

PATRICK O’BRIAN

Widely considered one of “the best historical novels ever written.” British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander of the HMS Sophie. Stephen Maturin seems an unlikely choice for ship’s physician, given that his first meeting with Aubrey nearly leads to a duel. But that first encounter yields an unlikely friendship that anchors this beloved saga set against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.

THE MEASURE NICKI ERLICK

It seems like any other day. You wake up, pour a cup of coffee, and head out. But today, when you open your front door, waiting for you is a small wooden box. This box holds your fate inside: the answer to the exact number of years you will live. From suburban doorsteps to desert tents, every person on every continent receives the same box. In an instant, the world is thrust into a collective frenzy. Where did these boxes come from? What do they mean? Is there truth to what they promise?

S U S P E N S E

THE MYSTERIOUS CASE OF RUDOLPH DIESEL

DOUGLAS BRUNT

When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in the North American wilderness, he uncovers a series of lives upended: The exiled son of an earl driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.

H i s t o r i c a l

ON TYRANNY TIMOTHY SNYDER

The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.

O NF I C T I O N

OUTLIERS MALCOLM GLADWELL

Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

P S Y C H O L O G Y

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER

STEPHEN CHBOSKY

Charlie is charting his a course through the strange world between adolescence and adulthood. First dates, family drama, and new friends. The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Devastating loss, young love, and life on the fringes. Caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it, Charlie must learn to navigate those wild and poignant rollercoaster of growing up.

PUNCHING THE AIR

IBI ZOBOI AND YUSEF SALAAM

At just sixteen years old, Amal is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it? With spellbinding lyricism, award-winning author Ibi Zoboi and prison reform activist Yusef Salaam tell a moving and deeply profound story about how one boy is able to maintain his humanity and fight for the truth in a system designed to strip him of both.

O V E L I N V E R S E

REMARKABLY BRIGHT CREATURES

SHELBY VAN PELT

Tova Sullivan works the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, where she befriends Marcellus, a giant Pacific Octopus. Keeping busy helps Tova cope, which she’s been doing since her son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in Puget Sound thirty years ago. Marcellus knows more than anyone imagines but wouldn’t dream of helping his human captors except for Tova. Marcellus deduces what happened the night Erik disappeared. And now he must use every trick he can muster to unearth the truth before it’s too late.

THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO AND OTHER STORIES

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

The ideal introduction to the genius of Ernest Hemingway, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories contains ten of Hemingway's most acclaimed and popular works of short fiction. Beautiful in their simplicity, startling in their originality, and unsurpassed in their craftsmanship, the stories in this volume highlight one of America's master storytellers at the top of his form.

I C T I O N

THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD

JOHN LE CARRE

In the shadow of the newly erected Berlin Wall, Alec Leamas watches as his last agent is shot dead by East German sentries. Leamas, the head of Berlin Station, faces the prospect of retirement or worse a desk job. Then Control offers him a unique opportunity for revenge. Assuming the guise of an embittered and dissolute ex-agent, Leamas is set up to trap Mundt, the deputy director of the East German Intelligence Service with himself as the bait. In the background is George Smiley, ready to make the game play out just as Control wants.

S P Y N O V E L

THE SUN ALSO RISES

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

When first published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises changed American literature forever. Hemingway follows a disillusioned group of expats in post-World War I Europe whose relationships unravel as they travel from Paris to the bullfights in Spain. Unsettling, provocative, and inspiring to this day, this legendary novel about loyalty, love, and betrayal challenges readers to discover what it takes to be true to oneself.

THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY

PATRICIA HIGHSMITH

Tom Ripley is sent to Italy with a commission to coax a son back to his wealthy, American father. But Ripley finds himself very fond of Dickie Greenleaf. He wants to be like him-exactly like him. Suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral, Ripley stops at nothing-certainly not only one murder--to accomplish his goal. Turning the mystery form inside out, Highsmith shows the terrifying abilities afforded to a man unhindered by the concept of evil.

THE WAGER DAVID GRANN

A mesmerizing story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth. When thirty emaciated men wash ashore in Brazil aboard His Majesty’s Ship the Wager, a British vessel, they have extraordinary tales to tell and are greeted as heroes. But six months later three castaways arrive and sling accusations of mutiny. The stakes are life and death as a court is convened to untangle the truth.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

SARA

GRUEN

Jacob Janowski was orphaned and penniless. He had no direction until he landed on a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. As a veterinary student just shy of a degree, he was put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It was the Great Depression and for Jacob the circus was both his salvation and his torment. Water for Elephants is a whirwind of romance, adventure, and the magic of the circus.

THE WAYFINDERS WADE DAVIS

Every culture has a unique answer to a fundamental question: What does it mean to be human and alive? In The Wayfinders, renowned anthropologist, winner of the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize, and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures seeking to answer this question.

N O N F I C T I O N

WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING

DELIA OWENS

For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. But when two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life until the unthinkable happens.

WILD, BEAUTIFUL, AND FREE SOPHFRONIA SCOTT

Born the daughter of an enslaved woman and a Louisiana plantation owner, Jeannette Bébinn is raised alongside her white half sister until her father suddenly dies. His vindictive wife refuses Jeannette her inheritance and sells her into slavery. On her own, Jeannette must fight the injustices she faces. She escapes enslavement and travels the country searching for purpose, love, and her place in a nation torn asunder by the burgeoning Civil War

THE WOMEN KRISTEN HANNAH

Women can be heroes. When twenty-yearold nursing student Frances “Frankie”

McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.