What Springs Faculty are Reading This Summer

As our students delve into their summer reading assignments, Head of School Dr. Sharon Howell asked Indian Springs School faculty to recommend a favorite summer read. Here’s what they said:

Dean of Students

Factfulness came onto my radar by way of [Springs student] Logan Mercer ‘19 this spring. I think few people would disagree that our world feels chaotic right now. This text was helpful for globalizing my sense of our issues and understanding the roles we have to take to continue to make things better. Instead of being dismissive of real issues in any one place, it gives us more information on a larger scale (and therefore context and perspective).

Hinton’s story is a good follow-up—maybe even follow-through—to last year’s all-school summer read, Just Mercy, by Bryan Stevenson. Hinton is a Birmingham native who was finally released after having spent 30 years on death row. He takes time in his narrative to illuminate the power of reading, the need for criminal justice reform, and the impact of love on his life.

College Advising Associate and SSD Coordinator

“Our son will be your son now,” they tell them. When I read those words in the review I knew this story would be different, and it is a contemporary tale of a tragic accident, a demand for justice, and a profound act of atonement with ancient roots in Native American culture.This story is about profound loss and the search for justice led by two families with broken hearts and their love for two little boys. It is also a story of trying to find and do the right thing.

Math

Its complex array of themes and wonderful storytelling made it stand out for me. In particular, the nuanced examination of the relationships between the male characters resonated with my 21 year old self. It stood apart from the stereotypical approach to male emotions I had been used to at that age. While it’s not exactly a light summer read, I would highly recommend it.

World Languages: Spanish

This book is my favorite in the series since it contains a mixture of more realistic political intrigue and classic escapist fantasy writing, which allows me to fully enjoy the summer but still reflect on current issues.

World Languages: Latin

It's a dense novel, weaving together ideas from history, philosophy, the medieval manuscript tradition, and Eco's academic field of semiotics. But since it's also a murder mystery, it's page-turning entertainment and is hard to put down. Pick it up if you'd like to escape Alabama's summer heat for an Italian monastery through a work that will challenge and possibly delight you.

Computer Science

It is a light 220-page read talking about, well, "the new industrial revolution" of individuals using the web and 3-D printing to create things.

English

Brockmeier adds (a little) fantasy to nonfiction in his third-person memoir of seventh grade in small-town Arkansas during the mid-1980s. Funny and poignant, authentic yet magical, Brockmeier's personal history showcases the strangeness and beauty of early adolescence.

Athletics

Comey does a good job discussing leadership and the importance of truth and the rule of law. He then ties it into the difficult decisions he had to make during the run up to the election. It has made the AG report this [late June] week very interesting.

World Languages: Chinese
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang

In December 1937, the Japanese army invaded the ancient city of Nanking, systematically raping, torturing, and murdering more than 300,000 Chinese civilians. This book tells the story from three perspectives: of the Japanese soldiers who performed it, of the Chinese civilians who endured it, and of a group of Europeans and Americans who refused to abandon the city and were able to create a safety zone that saved many.

Anabel Graff
Creative Writing (New faculty)

I wanted to send you off with stories of summer days spent studying painting in Florence, of finding your voice and finding yourself; of being stood up at a 6th grade dance, but ending with the boy next door anyway—stories about the visceral, and private, tragedies and triumphs of childhood, and girlhood in particular (for that book read Julie Orringer’s unforgettable collection How to Breathe Underwater, and don’t be disappointed), but when I learned of Springs’ reading theme, “Involvement,” I had to change track. Valeria Luiselli (The Story of My Teeth, Faces in the Crowd) in Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions writes about her experience working as a translator for undocumented Latin American children during the immigration crisis in 2014 through the 2016 election. The text, structured from the survey Luiselli used for her interviews, is a portrait of migration that interweaves personal narrative and political critique. Luiselli pulls the title from a question her young daughter asked when Luiselli recounted the stories of children recorded from court—children whose stories’ end Luiselli herself did not know. And, years later, we’re still asking, like Luiselli’s daughter, how this all ends. But my question, after you read this essay, is different—a question to take this summer’s reading theme to heart: what role will you choose to play in the story? Coffee House Press, Luiselli’s publisher, is offering this short book for $5 for a limited time—order it at: https://coffeehousepress.org/products/tell-me-how-it-ends

History

Rovelli is a theoretical physicist who explains how everything we thought we knew about time is essentially wrong and then tackles how it actually works and the most promising areas of future study in language similar to that used by the great faith and philosophy traditions. This short text (only four hours in audiobook format) beautifully explains the physics behind Einstein's quote, "The distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."   

Math

It was difficult to read at times because Cudjo’s story was often violent, heartbreaking, and ultimately, so lonely. However, it emphasized that emancipation was more than just a singular event; surviving the aftermath required tremendous grit to make a new life in a foreign country with few resources and no support.

History

This is the less well known of Obama’s two books. It was written before he was a politician and is about his relationship with his mostly absent father and his life as an outsider in the environments he’s lived in.

This memoir is about a successful man named Wes Moore who grew up in the West Baltimore slums and compares the direction of his life with that of the other Wes Moore, a man who shares his name, grew up down the street from him, and is serving hard time for crimes related to gang activity. The book explores the question of why the two Wes Moores from such similar backgrounds led such divergent lives.

This book came out a couple years ago and is about Vance returning to his Appalachian roots and exploring the causes and effects of social dysfunction in rural America.

Dore-Jean Heverly

This is a book about neuroscience and the ways in which mindfulness practice awakens different parts of the brain.

A novel about a woman apprentice to Sherlock Holmes. I enjoy all genres but mysteries are always a great escape and a way to see how logic and deduction are used. But mostly, the book brings together a mystery and an account of a friendship in an entertaining and suspenseful story.