ASTMH Council Summer Reading List

Hunting Mr. Heartbreak
--Jonathan Raban

America in the 1980s, as seen by a Brit.

Witness
--Whittaker Chambers

The political history of the East Coast in the first half of the 20th Century.

A Bend in the River
--V.S. Naipaul

"The life of an expatriate young single Indian merchant living in the interior of Africa. Naipaul's writing is rich with detail of daily routine, relationships and passions. Riveting reading to me as the book is beautifully crafted...and I have spent many a sweaty, mosquito-buzzing night in villages and towns of which he writes."

Cleopatra
--Stacy Schiff

"A magisterial tale of the most powerful woman in history. This book centers on Cleopatra's rise to power and life in Alexandria, Egypt, and her relations with the Roman and Greek empires in the 50 years BCE. She captivated and married both Caesar and Marc Anthony and protected her vulnerable Ptolemic/Egyptian empire, ruling as Pharoah-ess during this time. Very illuminating, as I have been to Alexandria and visited the newly reconstructed jewel--the Bibliotheca Alexandrina--for science meetings in 2006 and 2008."

Cutting for Stone
--Abraham Verghase

"A magical medical mystery set mainly in Addis Ababa and New York City. Skilled writing by a passionate doctor about people with medical conditions and professional backgrounds and places he knows and conjures well. African settings--social and health problems, revolutions, religious beliefs--all of special interest to me from residence and continued work in sub-Saharan Africa."

My Name Is Red
--Orhan Pamuk

"Historical fiction of life in Istanbul during the Sultan's reign in the late 1500s. Seems autobiographical--as was Pamuk's Snow--and modern in that tensions between East and West, old ways and new, are woven into this story. [Interesting because] I just returned from almost a month in Istanbul and Israel."

Unbroken
--Laura Hillenbrand

"A stunning tale of perserverance and survival under the most brutal conditions of shipwreck and incarceration during World War II. The star is Louis Zamperini--not a household name--from Torrance, near where I grew up in Southern California. He was an Olympic runner and this part of the the tale is a great read. This is the best book on human endurance since Endurance, the story of Ernest Shackleton's epic adventures in the Antarctic."

Colonel Roosevelt
--Edmund Morris

"The third and final edition in Morris' trilogy, Colonel Roosevelt starts with the now ex-president riding on the cowcatcher of a train going across Kenya on the start of his famous safari. It weaves a fascinating tale of the politics of that era, beginning with TR's disaffection with his hand-picked Republican successor, William Howard Taft; the splintering off of the Progessive (Bull Moose) Party; and the disastrous loss in the 1912 election, which resulted in Woodrow Wilson's accession to the White House."

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
--Edmund Morris

"Teddy Roosevelt is one of the most compelling characters in U.S. history. The first in a trilogy, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, begins with his birth until he becomes president upon the assassination of William McKinley."

The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road
--Paul Theroux

"Travel maestro Theroux conducts a rambling tour of the genre in this diverting meditation on passages from his own and other writers' works. Several chapters spotlight underappreciated travel writers from Samuel Johnson to Paul Bowles, while others explore themes both profound and whimsical. There are classic set-piece literary evocations, including Thoreau on the hush of the Maine woods and Henry James on the miserable pleasures of Venice."--Publishers' Weekly

Theodore Rex
--Edmund Morris

"The second in Morris' trilogy, Theodore Rex covers the years 1901-08, when he was president. A particular interest to me because I try to read about food and drug law history, the year 1906 saw the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act, considered to be the creation of what is now the FDA."

The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic that Shaped Our History
--Mary Caldwell Crosby

"For trop med wannabees, a highly readable historical tale of yellow fever in the United States. It underscores how yellow fever affected Memphis' growth trajectory and, as a result, positioned Atlanta to rise as an influential city."

The Help
--Kathryn Stockett

"Next on my list, this is a novel about black maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the early 1960s. It is told from the point of view of three women: two black maids and a white woman, now returned home from college, who was raised by a black maid."

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
--Rebecca Skloot

"This is an intersection of bioethics, racism, accepted health/medical practices in a segregated era, black families navigating the world of white doctors, lack of education/opportunity, science, profits and more. Ms. Lacks' cells--now known as HeLa cells--have been grown and used in every major medical advance and have been bought and sold by the millions."

The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
--Francis S. Collins

"The issue of science and faith has always generated discussion. This gets even more interesting when Director of the NIH Francis Collins, a world-class scientist and a believer in God, writes about how he sees the two going hand-in-hand."

And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic
--Randy Shilts

"Shilts' expose revealed why AIDS was allowed to spread unchecked during the early 80s while the most trusted institutions ignored or denied the threat... and changed and framed how AIDS was discussed in the following years."--Publisher's synopsis

The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
--Bryan Burrough

"Burrough's focus is on four men who by the early 1930s had presided over one of "the greatest periods of wealth generation in American history, in size perhaps the largest creation of individual wealth between the Gilded Age and the Internet boom of the 1990s."--Washington Post Book Review

Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas
--James L. Haley

"In Passionate Nation James L. Haley offers a comprehensive and definitive history of this singular and singularly American state, a history that explains how Texas became Texas, even before it became such a central national symbol for America. Haley peers through the lens of the extraordinary "ordinary" men and women who have streamed to Texas from its beginnings, and created it in their own contradictory, uncontrollable image."--Publisher's synopsis

The Raven: A Biography of Sam Houston
--Marquis James

Robinson Crusoe
--Daniel Defoe

"One of the first novels ever written, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), the classic adventure story of a man marooned on an island for nearly 30 years, is part of our culture. From Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) to the recent movie Castaway, the elemental situation of the person suddenly alone, who must make a life in a dangerous environment, continues to enthrall all ages."--Booklist

Catch-22
--Joseph Heller

"Seems strangely relevant--as relevant in this period of history as in the period in which it was published by Heller."

Faces of America: How 12 Extraordinary People Discovered Their Pasts
--Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

"Faces of America traces the lives, population genetic background and life courses of a number of prominent Americans such as Meryl Streep, Queen Noor, Yo-Yo Ma, Dr. Oz and Louise Erdrich. It is based on the PBS series of the same title."

Solar
--Ian McEwan

"It is an excellent novel, more whimsical than his other writing, of a Nobel Prize winner in theoretical physics who gets mixed up in running an institute in the U.K.; unusual personal relationships; questionable innovations and a good description of the far north in Norway. I have enjoyed his previous works very much and this was a lighter read, but one that was thoroughly enjoyable--and one that will resonate with researchers."

The Runner
--Christopher Reich

"Set in Germany in the few months after the end of World War II in the European Theater, it's a fun cloak-and-dagger piece, but also has some marvelous writing evocative of the period."

When Zombies Attack! Mathematical Modelling of an Outbreak of Zombie Infection
--Philip Munz et al

Available free by PDF; click on photo at left.

One Thousand and One Arabian Nights
--Geraldine McCaughrean (2000)

"King Shahryar kills a new wife every night, because he is afraid she will stop loving him. But his new bride Shahrazad has a clever plan to save herself. Her nightly stories--of Sinbad the Sailor, Ali Baba, and many other heroes and villains--are so engrossing that King Shahryar has to postpone her execution again and again... This illustrated edition brings together all the Arabian Nights tales in an original retelling by award-winning author Geraldine McCaughrean."--Publisher's synopsis

Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories
--Simon Winchester

"Winchester's sea saga is necessary reading for those who want to understand the planet better, even as, he notes, our waters are rapidly changing from pollution, overfishing and climate change."--Publishers Weekly

A Little History of the World
--E.H. Gombrich

"Using vivid imagery, storytelling and sly humor, [Gombrich] brings history to life in a way that adults as well as children can appreciate.The book displays a breadth of knowledge, as Gombrich begins with prehistoric man and ends with the close of WWII. In the final, newly added chapter, Gombrich's tone sadly darkens as he relates the rise of Hitler and his own escape from the Holocaust...and ends on a note of cautious optimism about humanity's future."--Publishers Weekly

Night Train to Lisbon
--Pascal Mercier

“The artful unspooling of Prado’s fraught life is richly detailed: full of surprises and paradoxes, it incorporates a vivid rendering of the Portuguese resistance to Salazar . . . . comes through on the enigmas of trying to live and write under fascism.” --Publishers Weekly

Shadow of the Wind
--Carlos Ruiz Zafon

"In post-World War II Barcelona, young Daniel is taken by his bookseller father to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a massive sanctuary where books are guarded from oblivion. Told to choose one book to protect, he selects The Shadow of the Wind, by Julian Carax. He reads it, loves it, and soon learns it is both very valuable and very much in danger because someone is determinedly burning every copy of every book written by the obscure Carax... It's big, chock-full of unusual characters, and strong in its sense of place."
--Booklist

Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft
--Paul Allen

"Here is the tale of one of the most restlessly curious and broadly imaginative people of our times, which in simple and eloquent language tells how he changed those times forever."--Jann S. Wenner, editor and publisher, Rolling Stone