The Duke University Center for International Studies recently asked several Duke faculty members to recommend works that they felt would be “good to think with.” We were looking for books, movies and other works that would deepen our understanding of the cultural, philosophical and historical roots of the critical global issues.
Times of crisis bring countless suggestions for fixes. Hundreds of governmental and non-governmental organizations have published position papers and recommendations in the last few months, geared to influencing the policies of the incoming administration, rebuilding the global economy and/or bringing peace to a world area. Rarely are these recommendations set into any kind of context that reflects on the history of the problems and earlier approaches to their resolution. So how do we read and think about them critically? One way is to broaden and deepen our understanding of the human condition. That’s what we’ve asked Duke faculty members to help us do.
Over the next few months, DUCIS will be posting their recommendations.
Update: On February 19, recommendations from Professors miriam cooke, Michael Gillespie, Ranjana Khanna and Bruce Lawrence, in addition to DukeEngage director, Eric Mlyn were added to the list.
Professor miriam cooke (Asian & Middle Eastern Studies) recommends:
- al-Kompars (‘The Extras’), a film by Nabil Maleh
Syrian director Nabil Maleh creates a dark allegory for life as prison in this seemingly slight tale of a lovers’ tryst.
Youssef Chahine’s 1958 classic, Bab el Hadid (‘Cairo Station’)
Egyptian director Yusuf Chahine’s masterpiece gives a glimpse into the life of Cairo’s destitute with their passions, ambitions and bitter disappointments.
- The Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun
This canonical text of proto-sociology written in 14th century North Africa examines the rise and fall of civilizations through a tribal lens.
Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman at Point Zero
On the eve of her execution for murdering her pimp, a prisoner finally grants the psychiatrist an interview. A psychological novel that investigates the impact of class-patriarchy on those born beyond the pale of privilege.
In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country by Etel Adnan
The Lebanese-American poet Adnan meditates on the meaning of migration and the duties of hospitality.
Professor Ariel Dorfman (DUCIS and Romance Studies) recommends:
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison (especially the first chapter) 
The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley
I teach this novel regularly in my class on Global Markets and Alternative Literature as perhaps the best book to force us, as it forces the protagonist, to deal with race in America’s past.
Professor Peter Feaver (Political Science) recommends:
“Rethinking the National Interest” by Secretary of State Conzoleeza Rice, in the July/August 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs:
It is a summation of Bush foreign policy as Bush foreign policy practitioners understood it and forms an excellent base-line against which to measure any Obama change.
Elliot Cohen’s Supreme Command
This is a good historical treatment of how other leaders have handled what will be one of the more difficult aspects of Obama’s new job (and one for which he has had very little preparation): Commander-in-Chief. Obama, like Bush and like his heroes, Lincoln and Roosevelt, will be a wartime president, and that imposes special constraints on how he interacts with the military.
Shadow Government, a new blog from the publishers of Foreign Policy.
This is a collection of foreign policy specialists (including yours truly) who have the benefit of insider experience but now have an outsider perspective.
Professor Michael Gillespie (Political Science; Philosophy; Director, Gerst Program in Political, Economic and Humanistic Studies) recommends:
blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Robert M. Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir: A Neuroscientist’s Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
A History of Warfare by John Keegan
Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School At A Time. by Greg Mortenson
Professor Judith Kelley (Political Science, Public Policy) recommends:
“Bridge to Freedom,” episode 6 of the PBS civil rights documentary Eyes on the Prize.
Professor Ranjana Khanna (English and Literature; Chair, Women’s Studies) recommends:
Nicole Loraux’s Divided City: On Memory and Forgetting in Ancient Athens
It’s an exquisitely written book which delves into the formation of the democratic state after the end of oligarchy. It’s a cautionary tale about how politics is formed through a kind of amnesia, and also how conflict and disharmony continue to exist in the democratic state even though that is not always acknowledged. It looks at how states are formed by what they refuse, and how unacknowledged strife and its forgetting is the underside of democracy.
Robin Kirk (Director, Duke Human Rights Center) recommends:
The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer.
This book gives an in-depth look at how torture was used in the “war on terror.”
Taxi to the Dark Side, a film by Alex Gibney
The Oscar-winning film is based on A Question of Torture, an examination of how the United States developed the techniques of sensory deprivation used to torture prisoners in places like Abu Ghraib and “black sites” in places like Afghanistan.
Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001
Describes the roots of today’s conflicts, showing how complex any solution must be.
A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Mary Ann Glendon
Elected in the year marking the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, President Obama might find some inspiration in the story of how many people came together in the shadow of World War II to create this essential document.
Professor Bruce Lawrence (Religion; Director, Duke Islamic Studies Center) recommends:
Martha Nussbaum’s The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India’s Future
I don’t agree with a lot of her arguments, or think that her evidence is beyond question, but she is provocative, and also articulate.
Toleration and Its Limits, edited by Jeremy Waldron and Melissa Williams
A variant, almost opposite perspective of Nussbaum’s book.
Vice Provost Gil Merkx (Director, DUCIS and Professor of Sociology) recommends:
The Great Crash, 1929, by John Kenneth Galbraith
This book by Harvard’s famous economist provides a witty and dramatic account of the follies that dragged America and the world into the great depression, and the sequence of events following the initial market crash. The parallels with the current economy are all too clear.
- Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000
A sobering account of how the economic costs of military empires led to their own destruction. It is scary that the lessons of this study apply so aptly to the United States today.
Eric Mlyn (Director, Duke Center for Civic Engagement/DukeEngage) recommends:
The Best and the Brightest by David Halberstam
Just a caution to the very confident and smart people who are joining the Obama Administration.
Lawrence Freedman’s The Evolution of U.S. Nuclear Strategy
Though written during the Cold War, it underscores even today the madness of the quest to make nuclear weapons usable military tools.
Reverend Dr. Sam Wells (Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Christian Ethics) recommends:
James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed
A brilliant book about what really matters in public policy.
John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus
Still the best book on Jesus and politics.
Ariel Dorfman, Barack Obama, democracy, diplomacy, foreign policy, governance, human rights, Inauguration
