Our Chazen Senior Scholars are never off duty — not even during the dog days of summer. They’ll be using these hot-weather months to plow through some weighty tomes (no light beach reads for this crowd!) See if any of these titles tempt you.
Amit Khandelwal, Jerome A. Chazen Professor of Global Business
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari (2011, Harper): A fascinating take on how humans came to dominate the world.
7 Brief Lessons on Physics, by Carlo Rovelli (2016, Riverhead Books): A clear and concise explanation of the big ideas in physics and how they relate to each other.
Burmese Days, by George Orwell (Originally published in 1934; current edition 1974, Mariner Books): To put some texture around my ongoing research projects in Myanmar.
A Great Place to Have a War: American in Laos and the Birth of a Military CIA, by Joshua Kurlantzick (2017, Simon & Schuster): Written by a great guest speaker I had in my course and about a country that up to now I knew nothing about.
Learn more about Amit Khandelwal →
Nelson Fraiman, Professor of Professional Practice
Graf Spee: De la Politica al Drama, by Daniel Acosta y Lara et al (2010, Ediciones Cruz del Sur) and El Graf Spee En El Tiempo, by Fernando Klein (2014, Ediciones B): Two books on the Battle of the River Plate in December 1939, the German pocket battleship Graf Spee, and how it was scuttled off Montevideo to avoid the British navy waiting beyond.
Matisse in the Studio, by Suzanne Preston Blier, et al (2017, MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). The catalog of the exhibit currently in Boston and later this year in London. It relates his work to his personal collection of objects.
Washington Journal: Reporting Watergate and Richard Nixon’s Downfall, by Elizabeth Drew (2015, Overlook Press). Interesting reading in parallel with contemporary events.
Learn more about Nelson Fraiman →
Robert Hodrick, Nomura Professor of International Finance
The Rise and Fall of American Growth, by Robert Gordon (2016, Princeton University Press): According to the blurb, “this book purports to show that a wide range of unrepeatable technological, economic and social transformations drove an exceptional rise in prosperity between 1870 and 1970. Gordon also argues that the narrower recent developments in communications and information technologies have not had — and will not have — a comparable effect on prosperity." I am reading this to decide whether his argument makes sense or not. My conjecture is that it does not.