Washington College Alumni Magazine Spring 2012 : Page 3
MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT WWW.WASHCOLL.EDU Reading For Pleasure BY MITCHELL B. REISS PHOTO THIS PAGE: JIM GRAHAM ’81; PHOTO OPPOSITE: LOIS KITZ GREAT LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION broadens and deepens a lifelong appreciation for reading that ideally begins at an early age. For me, books became a refuge and a lifeline to other worlds when, at age nine, I spent a year in bed recouping a degenerative hip. For all of us over a certain age, it may have been easier to find time to read back then, without the almost infinite electronic dis-tractions now available. This semester I am teaching a course on some of the challenges the United States faces around the world. I read a lot of books about terrorism, weapons proliferation, climate change and a rising China. But when I need to relax and to reengage my imagination, I return to reading just for fun. This past year I’ve read a number of books somehow connected to the College. Adam Goodheart’s national bestseller, 1861: The Civil War Awakened, offers a fresh perspective for even the most dedicated civil war buff. I also pored through Ron Chernow’s award-winning biography, George Washington: A Life. Relying on new source materials, Chernow, the inaugural George Washington Book Prize winner, offers the most complete picture yet of our iconic founding father. At the other end of the spectrum, I escaped into a couple of nov-els, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi and Nick Flynn’s The Ticking is the Bomb. Martel invents the fabulous tale of Pi, a young orphan cast adrift on the ocean with only a Bengali tiger for company. Can Pi use his wits to fend off the tiger and keep himself alive until they find land? Flynn’s book was selected as required reading for our first-year students, and he is visiting campus in April during Sophie Kerr Weekend. Different in style from a standard novel, The Ticking is the Bomb is a very personal story of fatherhood in the shadow of 9/11. In terms of sheer reading pleasure, it was hard to beat a trilogy by Suzanne Collins— The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay. Written for teenagers, it describes a dystopian future where con-testants from outlying districts are sent to fight to the death for the amusement of the masses. The contest, combining the pomp of the Olympics with the gore of the Roman Coliseum, produces a young heroine who rallies the districts and leads an uprising. I dare anyone to read the first book and not immediately rush to finish the other two. SPRING 2012 A Finally, two books rooted on the Eastern Shore deserve special mention. William W. Warner won the Pulitzer Prize in 1977 for Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay, but the book was totally new to me. And what a tale he tells of our blessed environmental inheritance with its extraordinary bounty of crabs and oysters. Frank Deford, who received the honorary degree at Commencement 2011, unspools a lovely story in Bliss Remembered of a young girl, Sydney Stringfellow, who learns how to swim in the Chester River. Sydney becomes so proficient that she is selected to represent the United States in the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin, where she falls for a dashing Nazi officer. Should she stay in Hitler’s Germany? Is there a life for a German officer in America? Will they find true love in a world heading towards war? Ah, you’ll have to read the book to find out. When reading any book, we emerge changed from when we enter. We discover a new world, a new perspective, a new voice. Part of our job as educators is to introduce students to different types of authors and a variety of genres. Our goal, as always at Washington College, is to teach our students how to read critically, to think analytically about what is both stated and left unsaid, and to appreciate the craft and skill of good writing. And to convey, even WHEN I NEED TO RELAX AND TO REENGAGE MY IMAGINATION, I RETURN TO READING JUST FOR FUN. in this digital age, the liberating power—and the lifelong pleasure— of reading. Mitchell Reiss is the author of Negotiating With Evil: When to Talk to Terrorists and Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities. WASHINGTON COLLEGE MAGAZINE 3
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