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WYA Indian Summer Book List 2024
The Book Club “On the Same Page” presents its annual book list! Slightly later than you may be used to, we took a well deserved break as well. The list is compiles of the favourite (summer) reads of members of the Wageningen Young Academy. We included six fiction and six non-fiction books, across different field, debates, and themes.
Fiction
The Maniac - Benjamin Labatut (2023)
The Maniac mixes fiction with fact in a fictionalised biography of the real-life polymath John von Neumann (to the opinion of many, one of the greatest mathematicians that ever lived). It offers a meditative triptych on the history of artificial intelligence, Von Neumann’s role in this history, and what it may imply for humankind. It’s a work of art.
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
A great novel about an American missionary family who move to Belgian Congo in 1959. The family, consisting of the reverend Nathan Price, his wife and four daughters, settles in the small village of Kilanga. It particular highlights the problematic role of Western powers – Belgium and the US in particular – in spurring those conflicts and supporting the ruthless dictator Mobutu.
The Capital – Robert Menasse (2017)
A satirical epic novel about the European Union, its bureaucrats, institutions, and inhabitants. The book follows several characters (policeman, commission employee, professor, a pig) whose storylines come together in Brussels. What defines the EU? And what future awaits union?
Shelby van Pelt – Remarkably Bright Creatures (2022)
It’s fiction and not at all academic, but certainly not pulp. A wonderful story about loneliness, involving a surprising friendship with an octopus – who apparently are very intelligent creatures.
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett (1989)
A classic novel about the building of a cathedral in England. Follett very quickly grips your attention by creating tension around the main characters as they engage in love, quarrels, and war. The book is ideal for summer time as it provides you with hours of enjoyable reading. And there is more good news, it is part of a series of 4 books that all describe the same part of England in different eras.
Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese (2023)
Covenant of Water was on Obama and Oprah's top books lists. It's written by a medical doctor (and Professor) so there is some science in it, but the focus is on the story and characters spanning threegenerations of a family in Western India.
Non-fiction
Dead in the water: A very angry book about our greatest environmental catastrophe.. the death of the Murray Darling Basin - Richard Beasly (2021)
This is an inside-account of how pretty good environmental laws and policies for the Murray Darling Basin were professionally screwed up. Richard Beasly was an attorney who tried to defend the good environmental legislation. He became very very disappointed and angry, and wrote this (black) humoured book to unload his frustration while also trying to influence water politics one more time.
Letters to a Young Scientist - Edward O. Wilson (2013)
Wilson was an eminent retired biologist, who bundled his live-long experience in academia into 21 smart, insightful and funny letters with advice for young scientists from all sciences. The letters are great pieces of advice, to which you can agree and disagree. It made me think quite a bit about what matters in my academic career.
The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany - David Blackbourn (2010)
Blackbourn beautifully reconstructs how the Germans have cultivated their soils and straightened their rivers. Then there are more recent chapters that explain how the Nazi’s promoted the occupation of ‘new’ territory and how East- and West-Germany managed its environment differently during the Cold War.
Song of the Cell - Siddhartha Mukherjee (2023)
Siddharta Mukherjee previously won a Pulizter for his book The emperor of maladies.
1983: The World at the Brink - Taylor Downing (2019)
A book that covers the dangerous tension built-up between the Soviet Union and the United States of America before and leading up to 1983. It is a reminder of how close we can come to the brink of catastrophic nuclear conflict.
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New Worlds - Andrea Wulf (2015)
Biography of a famous scientist that was forgotten for a long time. The book describes all the expeditions and discoveries of this naturalist, who even inspired Charles Darwin himself.