Transformations: A book can affect the way you think


The Copernican RevolutionThe Copernican Revolution: Planetary Astronomy in the Development of Western Thought

Thomas S. Kuhn

Selected by Nancy Elliott Mukundan, Visiting Assistant Professor of Chemistry

The Copernican Revolution opened a new world to me, in which science could be, in addition to a set of facts, a way of thinking, a philosophy, a historical movement, and even a culture. Read more...

In PatagoniaIn Patagonia

Bruce Chatwin

Selected by Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian
Vice Provost for Library Affairs
Adjunct Associate Professor of History

In Patagonia, called 'a landmark in contemporary travel writing' by the Cambridge Companion to Travel Writing, fed my fascination with Argentina and its history as well as my strong interest in the movement of peoples, how and why individuals chose -- way before the days of instantaneous communication and easy transportation -- to travel long, long distances to live in places radically different from their homes, and how they accommodated and assimilated once there. Read more...

The Harried Leisure ClassThe Harried Leisure Class

Staffan Burenstam Linder

Selected by Anne Firor Scott, Professor Emeritus, Department of History

Since I have read, at a conservative estimate, 8,000 books in the past 80 years, several of which have had a profound influence on my thinking, how to choose? Somewhat arbitrarily, and with a wistful look at Virginia Woolf, George Eliot and other candidates, I fixed on Staffan Burenstam Linder, The Harried Leisure Class. Read more...



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Last modified November 18, 2011 10:46:44 AM EST