Yeah, I know. I just put out a reading list for the spring. But there’s reading, and there’s reading, right? With stay-at-home orders in most states, we’re now doing the latter. And not a moment too soon, because we don’t need to mess around with coronavirus and COVID-19.
Lots of you are under stay-at-home orders! Even Florida now. As it happens, I live in Iowa and I’m not. This has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth among local liberals. But if you can’t – or won’t – leave the house, you’re probably looking for something to read.
Maybe I can help with that. Here’s what I’m reading under my personal stay-at-home order.
Stay-at-Home Reading List
1. Isaac Asimov – The Naked Sun
You might ask what a 1950s classic sci-fi robot story has to do with COVID-19. Maybe I’m just looking for something to take my mind off it?
As it happens, this story has a lot to do with the current crisis! It’s set on the planet Solaria, where society is slowly breaking down due to personal disconnection and the disintegration of in-person relationships. People no longer see one another in person, but only view each other through screens and 3-D personification.
Sound familiar? I’ll likely have more to say about The Naked Sun in a future post. But it’s a sequel to another book – The Caves of Steel – about automation in a future hyper-urban society. I wrote about the other book last year.
2. Émile Durkheim – The Division of Labor in Society
Yes, the classic work of French sociology. Durkheim more or less founded the field, and he’s one of the founders of social science in general. This book started as his doctoral dissertation, and all of you should probably read it at some point.
There are thousands of papers and books addressing Durkheim, and I can’t do justice to even a small part of that in a hundred words. But Durkheim’s basic approach is to argue for a very strong role for society – and, in particular, social facts – in explanations of the function and cause of social phenomena. Society is a thing of its own rather than a mere collection of individuals. In fact, society produces individuals much more so than vice-versa.
With regard to the title, Durkheim argues that the division of labor – by which he means the specialization of people into narrow jobs and social roles – is what produces social cohesion in ‘advanced’ societies. It’s what holds modern societies together. And it does so by putting people into relationships that allow them to navigate a densely populated, competitive world.
3. Umberto Eco – The Name of the Rose
And then there’s a medieval murder mystery. In fact, The Name of the Rose is one of the best-selling works of fiction ever published. It’s the debut novel of a semiotics professor named Umberto Eco, and it’s a mystery novel that never gets dull, a literary and philosophical work that never gets insufferable, and a work about religion that never makes you feel like you’re listening to Krista Tippett.
If you haven’t already read it, you should put it on your list.
4. Jessica Trisko Darden – Aiding and Abetting
Finally, there’s a book on foreign policy by a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Conservatism aside, there are things worth learning in this book.
Trisko Darden turns a critical eye toward U.S. humanitarian intervention, arguing that even benign and allegedly beneficial foreign aid increases violence in the nations to which we provide the aid. How? Oppressive governments use the aid to free up money to stockpile weapons, et al. She examines case studies from El Salvador to Indonesia to South Korea.
She gives us some things to think about when evaluating the Trump administration’s aid allocation in the coming months. Some of that aid should perhaps…stay-at-home?
Bonus: Karel Čapek – R.U.R.
As a sci-fi fan, I feel embarrassed to say it. But I haven’t read this book yet! Čapek is the author who invented and popularized the word ‘robot’! And he did so in the short play R.U.R. – Rossum’s Universal Robots. He was a European anti-fascist to boot.
I picked up the book last month on a visit to the National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library in Cedar Rapids. I was up there visiting the museum and buying gifts for some of my family members. Just a few things I could give some old Czechs at our (now canceled) family reunion in May.
Alas, the reunion will wait until next year. But the reading will not.
What Else to Read?
As I’m sure some of you are aware, this is one in a series of reading lists. Here are the others:
Summer 2019 (Part 1 and Part 2)
Winter 2020
Spring 2020
