Faculty & Staff Book Recommendations
Happy New Year to our Minnesota Law community! We asked our faculty and staff to recommend their favorite books from the past year. This truly eclectic list has something for everyone—from Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction and nonfiction to law and politics, history, science, and much, much more. Start 2024 off with some thought-provoking reading based on these recommendations and thank you for being a part of our Minnesota Law community!
Professor Nick Bednar
Title: Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty: The Forgotten Goals of Constitutional Reform after the Civil War
Author: Mark Graber
“The publication of Punish Treason, Reward Loyalty comes right as federal and state courts must decide how Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment applies to the 2024 presidential election. Graber offers a compelling account of why the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment chose to include this provision, concluding that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to reward loyalty, particularly the loyalty of white men who remained faithful to the Union during the Civil War.”
Professor Matt Bodie
Title: The Quantified Worker: Law and Technology in the Modern Workplace
Author: Ifeoma Ajunwa
From the publisher: “The information revolution has ushered in a data-driven reorganization of the workplace. Big data and AI are used to surveil workers and shift risk. Workplace wellness programs appraise our health. Personality job tests calibrate our mental state. The monitoring of social media and surveillance of the workplace measure our social behavior. With rich historical sources and contemporary examples, The Quantified Worker explores how the workforce science of today goes far beyond increasing efficiency and threatens to erase individual personhood. With exhaustive detail, Ifeoma Ajunwa shows how different forms of worker quantification are enabled, facilitated, and driven by technological advances. Timely and eye-opening, The Quantified Worker advocates for changes in the law that will mitigate the ill effects of the modern workplace.”
Professor June Carbone
Title: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past
Author: David Reich
“The book provides a fascinating new account of what DNA studies can tell us about human origins, providing insights, for example, about how the original human hunter-gatherers in Europe were more closely related to the indigenous people of the Americas than to modern Europeans and how the original Europeans were wiped out by the people of the steppes, roughly 5000 years ago. They disappeared, apparently, more because of disease than genocide -- diseases associated with animal domestication.A fascinating and at times controversial account of human history.”
Professor Carol Chomsky
Title: Demon Copperhead
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
“Kingsolver is great at developing vibrant characters, and Demon Copperhead is one of her best. Based loosely on David Copperfield, the book is a powerful depiction of life in Appalachia as it describes a never-ending series of challenges for the main character (abusive and exploitative upbringing by parents, foster parents, and schools, drug addiction, physical injury). But the book is also funny and engaging, largely because of Demon's wise and caustic voice.”
Jennifer Claybourne, Project Specialist, Dean’s Office
Title: Black Cake
Author: Charmaine Wilkerson
“What I enjoyed about the book was how it crosses time and boundaries with family secrets, pain and happiness mixed along the way. Told from different narrators' points of view you see the complexity of family and what can pull them apart or bring them together.”
Professor Prentiss Cox
Title: The Midnight Library
Author: Matt Haig
From the publisher: “In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig's enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.”
Professor Charlotte Garden
Title: On the Line: A Story of Class, Solidarity, and Two Women’s Epic Fight to Build a Union
Author: Daisy Pitkin
“Pitkin is what’s known as an “outside organizer,” and this book is a memoir of her work to unionize industrial laundry facilities in Arizona. The book centers Pitkin's relationship to the immigrant worker leading the campaign from the inside—and it brings to life the workers’ struggle and their care for one another, but also tells a story about dysfunctional labor law and a sometimes-dysfunctional labor movement.”
Dena Gergen, Human Resources Director
Title: The Woman They Could Not Silence
Author: Kate Moore
“This is a true story of resilience, advocacy, and the fight for women's rights. The story is well-researched and shares the amazing story of Elizabeth Packard, an educated, strong, and focused woman who fights for herself and all other women to be considered a person outside of marriage and to have their own thoughts and opinions that may vary from their husbands.”
Professor Ryan Greenwood
Title: Henry III: Reform, Rebellion, Civil War, Settlement, 1258-1272
Author: David Carpenter
“It is volume two of the fullest account available of an interesting English monarch, Henry III. The writing is engaging, despite the length, and treats some of the complex effects of civil war and aspects of post-conflict justice that were unknown before Carpenter's book. Great for anyone who likes English history.”
Professor Jill Hasday
Title: Simple Justice: The History of Brown v. Board of Education and Black America’s Struggle for Equality
Author: Richard Kluger
From the publisher: “Simple Justice is generally regarded as the classic account of the U.S. Supreme Court's epochal decision outlawing racial segregation and the centerpiece of African-Americans' ongoing crusade for equal justice under law. The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education brought centuries of legal segregation in this country to an end. It was and remains, beyond question, one of the truly significant events in American history, "probably the most important American government act of any kind since the Emancipation Proclamation," in the view of constitutional scholar Louis H. Pollak. The Brown decision climaxed along, torturous battle for black equality in education, making hard law out of vague principles and opening the way for the broad civil rights upheavals of the 1960s and beyond.”
Professor Claire Hill
Title: Small World
Author: Jonathan Evison
“This is in a genre that is hard to do well-parallel/related stories that span continents and time. The people are richly drawn individuals but also exemplars of their times and places. A terrific and very informative read.”
Amanda Furst, Assistant Dean and Chief of Staff
Title: Olga Dies Dreaming
Author: Xochitl Gonzalez
From the publisher: "Set against the backdrop of New York City in the months surrounding the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico's history, [this] is a story that examines political corruption, familial strife, and the very notion of the American dream--all while asking what it really means to weather a storm."
Mackenzie Heinrichs, Immigration & Human Rights Clinical Legal Fellow
Title: Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
Author: Erica Armstrong Dunbar
From the publisher: “When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he brought along nine slaves, including Ona Judge. As the President grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn’t abide: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire.Though Ona Judge lived a life of relative comfort, she was denied freedom. So, when the opportunity presented itself one clear and pleasant spring day in Philadelphia, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property.”
Robin Ingli, Assistant Dean of Admissions
Title: Lessons in Chemistry*
Author: Bonnie Gramus
“I loved it for the quirky characters who are flawed, funny, and resilient. Great writing, which made me laugh out loud at times, and yet cringe at how women were treated in the 1950s-60s.”
* This book was also recommended by Kara Galvin, director of International and Graduate Programs
Professor Emeritus Maury Landsman
Title: Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Author: James McBride
From the publisher: “In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows.”
Professor Karen Lundquist
Title: The Neapolitan Novels
Author: Elena Ferrante
From the publisher: “Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, the four Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante follow Elena and Lila, from their rough-edged upbringing in Naples, Italy, not long after WWII, through the many stages of their lives―and along paths that diverge wildly. Sometimes they are separated by jealousy or hostility or physical distance, but the bond between them is unbreakable, for better or for worse.”
Professor Brett McDonnell
Title: The World According to Joan Didion
Author: Evelyn McDonnell
“My choice is nepotistic since Evelyn is my sister, but I really enjoyed the book. Didion is the great chronicler of modern California, and Evelyn and I were both born there and she now lives there, after spending over a decade in New York City in her early adulthood, just like Didion did. The book isn't a straightforward biography, but rather a meditation on Didion's life and work, structured in chapters each focused on a different item that had special meaning for Didion, like notebooks, typewriters, and snakes. As a bonus (though perhaps breaking the one-recommendation rule), the book worked as a spur to me to finally read some of Didion's works, especially "The Year of Magical Thinking," an elegant but wrenching account of grief.”
Interim Dean William McGeveran
Title: Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition
Author: Daniel Okrent
"Masterful historical narrative, weaving together many disparate factors that drove the crazy national decision to ban alcohol, including racism and hostility to immigrants, the creation of the income tax, and a pioneer of single-issue political organizing. (Spoiler alert: it didn't work.)"
Professor Stephen Meili
Title: The Naked Don't Fear the Water: An Underground Journey with Afghan Refugees
Author: Matthieu Aikins
“A non-fictional account of Afghan refugee migration to Europe. Told compellingly, but without over-sentimentality, by a journalist who makes much of the same journey himself.”
Professor JaneAnne Murray
Title: Politics on the Edge (published in America as How not to be a politician).
Author: Rory Stewart
“A wise and witty memoir by a British MP about how dysfunctional politics has become (and it could have easily been written about the US Congress). As an added bonus, he reads the audiobook himself.”
Professor Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Title: The Ghost Limb: Alternative Protestants and the Spirit of 1798
Author: Claire Mitchell
“This book is a part memoir, part historical telling of one strand of the conflict experience and identity in Northern Ireland recounted by a group of contemporary Northern Ireland Protestants. It traces the steps of the United Irishmen who worked for the unity of Protestant, Catholic, and dissenter over two hundred years ago and finds that spirit alive today, existing alongside the unresolved contradictions of post-Brexit, post-peace treaty Northern Ireland. In a still-divided post-conflict society, this is a book of generosity, unexpectedness, and hope. It is a book about relationship to place, relationships between Protestants and Catholics, and so much more. For me, it illustrates that post-conflict places are porous and unexpected and that the beating heart of the promise for a shared future on the island of Ireland is alive and well. Lyrical, poetic, feminist in sensibility and words this was a joy to read.”
Kiri Somermeyer, Executive Director, Corporate Institute
Title: The Covenant of Water
Author: Abraham Verghese
“Like many, I loved the Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. The 750 pages fly by as you become immersed in three generations of a fascinating and endearing South Indian family spanning from 1900-1970. Verghese is a doctor and professor and I loved how the medical world interplayed with family drama and historical fiction.”
Professor Robert Stein
Title: And there was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle
Author: Jon Meacham
From the publisher: “A president who governed a divided country has much to teach us in a twenty-first-century moment of polarization and political crisis. Hated and hailed, excoriated and revered, Abraham Lincoln was at the pinnacle of American power when implacable secessionists gave no quarter in a clash of visions bound up with money, race, identity, and faith. In him we can see the possibilities of the presidency as well as its limitations.”
Professor Paul Vaaler
Title: Into the Bright Sunshine: Young Hubert Humphrey and the Fight for Civil Right
Author: Samuel G. Freedman
“It's a fascinating yarn about the making of Minnesota's greatest politician and his entry onto the national stage as an early champion of civil rights in the 1940s.”
Monica Wittstock, Interim Director of Communications
Title: Tom Lake
Author: Ann Patchett
“This is a lovely story of three grown daughters who are isolating with their parents on the family’s Michigan cherry orchard during the pandemic. The daughters convince their mother to share a story from her past as they harvest cherries and try to ward off the boredom and panic caused by the uncertainty of the pandemic. As the story unfolds, you forget there even is a pandemic unless it’s mentioned. The past weaves seamlessly with the present thanks to Patchett’s richly written dialogue and excellent character development – and a gorgeous twist to keep it interesting. Bonus: the audiobook is narrated by Meryl Streep and it is fantastic, familiar, and elegant. The narration is masterful in its own right.”
Jay Wong, Assistant Dean of Students
Title: They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us
Author: Hanif Abdurraqib
“Even though I linked the physical book, I don't think I've listened to a better audiobook. The author narrates through spoken word poetry this entire book, which is a collection of essays telling stories of music and culture while presenting much larger worldly issues. There are moments throughout this book that the air will escape your lungs as his words punch you in the gut, reminding you just how much you have to grow, learn, and listen.”
