Summer Reading Recommendations from staff

Susan Taylor
professor of English as an international language

"I am extremely excited about reading Marlo Morgan's 'Mutant Message Down
Under,' which is in much the same vein as James Redfield's 'Celestine
Prophecy' - both telling us that there are spiritual rewards and survival
strategies for mankind in stopping to think about who and why we are, and
how we human beings fit into the bigger picture. Morgan walked with the
aborigines in Australia twice - a rare privilege for a white woman - and
shares with them their belief that civilization has caused most of the
world's people to become 'mutants.' The aborigines, close to the earth and
its ways, for 50,000 (can it be?) years, may be thought to be the Real
People, and they hoped that Morgan would give their message to the
non-aboriginal world.

"She has done a masterful job. I was tipped off by her interview on WILL-AM
(580)."


Fran Bond
editor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications

"I just finished - in fact I'm shortly going to re-read its epilogue -
'Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman,' by James Gleick (the
author of "Chaos")." Bond said she would "very definitely" recommend the
book - "especially to those who are interested in modern science - because
I consider it the best biography I've read to this point. (And I've read a
lot of biographies!).

"It's really two books in one - quantum physics (in lay terms) and
Feynman's life - masterfully interwoven into a fine read. One of my heroes
of modern science, Feynman looms even larger after this. He comes across as
a true genius as well as a man who practiced 'aggressive dopiness' (his own
words) along with Nobel-quality science on many fronts. A book you really
miss when it's finished."

On Bond's "to-read" list: "Michelangelo: A Self-portrait," by Robert J.
Clements.