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Faculty, students and administrators offer their recommendations for a summer of reading
 Navajo Mystery
Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J. President, Holy Cross
For pure enjoyment, my summer reading typically includes a Tony Hillerman detective novel. I spent five years in the Southwest working with Native Americans and learned a good deal about Navajo culture, which he features in his novels. He is a masterful storyteller, depicting the Navajo culture and Native American people with authority and sensitivity, and capturing the numinous landscape of that region. One of my favorites is A Thief of Time.
 A Masterpiece Recovered
Timothy Austin,
Vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College
Set in France during 1940 and 1941, when Nazi domination of Europe seemed at first unthinkable and then unavoidable, Irene Nemirovsky’s narrative, Suite Française, follows a varied cast of women and men as they seek to adjust to the new “normalcy” of the Occupation. Though Nemirovsky died in Auschwitz before she could polish (let alone publish) this work, each page brims with lively characters, wry humor and occasional brutal violence. Hers is a world far removed from ours in both time and space, but this story remains vibrant 65 years later.
 A Call to Action
Rev. Catherine Reed, Assistant chaplain
Does the terminology of “slave master” have any relevance in the 21st century? In The New Slave Masters, Bishop Dallas McKinney takes this racially charged term and utilizes it to reveal issues that are destroying our modern society. He states, “In this day there are new insidious slave masters at work in our society. These new slave masters not only enslave the physical being but imprison the mind and spirit as well.” This book challenges the reader to become proactive in the fight for the survival of our families, our communities and, ultimately, our future.
 Life in the Charterhouse
Joanne M. Pierce
Associate professor, religious studies
In 2006, a film documentary on the Carthusians, Into Great Silence, was a surprise box office hit. Nancy Klein Maguire’s book, An Infinity of Little Hours: Five Young Men and Their Trial of Faith in the Western World’s Most Austere Monastic Order, offers a fascinating perspective on the austerity of Carthusian life (unchanged from its foundation in 1084 until after the Second Vatican Council), by chronicling the experiences of five young novices, all of whom entered the Charterhouse at Parkminster, England, between 1960 and 1961. Maguire has written an intriguing and a quite readable blend of history and biography, augmented by personal letters and photographs. Twenty-first-century readers will come as close as possible to experiencing what this thousand-year-old monastic life was, and, to a large extent, still is, really like.
 From Russia with Love
Lee Oser
Associate professor, English
My favorite book this past year was Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Its grasp of the passions is like a flash of lightning from some celestial region, exposing our inner lives. Tolstoy doesn't robe his characters in flattering conventions: he shows the soul's nakedness before God. Is it better than War and Peace? Hard to say, of course, but it finishes on a happier note. Tolstoy ends War and Peace by dismantling Napoleon's illusions of grandeur. He ends Anna Karenina by dignifying our common vision.
 Gastronomical History
Marc Sheehan ’07
As modern cuisine has moved increasingly toward celebrating locally produced foods and artisanal products, it only makes sense for us to honor our local food customs and histories. Often wrongly maligned as old-fashioned and bland, New England cooking is commemorated by Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald, both New England librarians, in America’s Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking. The authors approach the material from a historical, as well as an anthropological, point of view by focusing on important regional ingredients. By studying a multitude of literary sources—including cookbooks, works of fiction, diaries, letters and first-person narratives—the authors detail how the earliest European settlers were influenced by their own culinary heritage and the Native Americans they encountered, as well as the evolution of the region’s cuisine with the growth of New England and America.
(This fall, Marc Sheehan will begin studying at the Culinary Institute of America.)
 Pivotal Moments
Rev. James Miracky, S.J.
Associate professor and chair, English
One of the joys of teaching my “21st Century Literature” course, which had its second run this past fall, is testing out new works amidst the discerning audience of an upper-level Holy Cross English class. By far the most enjoyable text we read that semester, perhaps because of its timeliness, was Saturday, by the British novelist Ian McEwan. Set in London against the backdrop of an anti-war protest just days before the start of the Iraq War, the novel follows a disorienting day in the life of Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon. In the course of preparing for a family reunion, Henry undergoes an experience of personal terrorism that leads to much reflection about his place in the world and the tension between reason and faith as modes of viewing life. The students loved it and our discussions were great!
 Botanical Delights
Mary Lee Ledbetter
Professor and chair, biology
In The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan, the author selects four plants that humans have chosen for a particular property: apples (for sweetness), tulips (for beauty), marijuana (for mind-altering properties) and potatoes (for nutrition). In each case, he discusses both the natural state of the species and how human cultivation or other intervention has maximized the property chosen. Throughout, Pollan writes with clarity and humor, while including remarkably accurate scientific information about evolution, genetic engineering, sensation and perception, and physiology.
 A Summer at Hogwarts
Cristina Baldor ’07
Despite my so recently acquired degree in English, I have looked beyond the “great works” to recommend, instead, a guilty pleasure: the first six books in the Harry Potter series. I’d also suggest reserving the seventh and final installment—you’ll need it. The books I first considered recommending used beautiful words to reveal an ugly world. But, at times, it is quite enough to carry our own burdens rather than shoulder also the plight of the fictional. In the spirit of the “Joy of Reading,” let us regain true joy, treat ourselves to awe and believe that the good guys always win.
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