Copy

Table of Contents

The academic year is coming to a close, we're congratulating the Class of 2019, and summer is well and truly upon us, which means it's time for summer reading. But what exactly is a summer read, anyway? Is it that long novel that you've been saving for the longer days? A good pulpy mystery for the beach? The Mueller Report? Whatever your definition may be, we've got you covered with suggestions, reading lists, new releases, and related events.

Should a summer read be lightweight and travel-ready? As partially shown here, we have
dozens of fresh summer reads and Co-op favs for every reader's taste, now available in paperback, including Alberto Manguel's recent (and packable) Packing My Library; Ben Austen's "smart, humanistic exploration of Cabrini-Green," (The Chicago Tribune) High-Risers; Randi Hutter Epstein's history of hormones in Aroused, and more. Or you can cool down at the Front Table, which lately has a lot to say about reading itself: below we feature Reading from Oxford's Very Short Introduction series, which should bring you up to speed for Steven Roger Fischer's A History of Reading from our Front Table a few weeks ago, or Manguel's treatise on the subject.

If this is all too meta for your summer break, our staff of esteemed booksellers is always happy to offer a few suggestions. Among our personal picks: Co-op Assistant Manager Alena Jones will be reading Helen Phillips' genre-bending The Need; Co-op Director Jeff Deutsch will be playing language games with Ingeborg Bachmann's Malina; and Bookseller Stéphanie awaits the new oral history of Robert Rauschenberg in August. Others will be taking on the classics, toting Anna Karenina, and re-reading Musil's modernist masterpiece The Man Without Qualities (again).

In other news, The
New York Times recently asked their non-book critics how they define the summer read. For chief movie critic (as well as Co-op member and past guest) A.O. Scott, "A fat collection of poetry is the best summer reading. You can read a poem, doze off for a while and then read it again, or find another if you’ve lost your place. A single poet in bulk is an ideal houseguest, perpetually interesting and never demanding." And while poetry's always in season at the Co-op, we're especially happy to lose ourselves in the work of poets Alison Rollins, who joins us next Sat. 6/22, and an author appearing on just about everyone's summer reading list, Ocean Vuong, who also appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers this week and who comes to the Co-op on Thur. 7/18 to discuss his much talked about novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. See details and RSVP here.

Indeed, whenever you're ready to break from the sun, you'll find simmering events lined up all summer long. The Chicago Tribune recently shared their "25 Hot Books of Summer," which includes Aug 9 - Fog by Kathryn Scanlan, whom we'll host just this week, along with Dani Shapiro, Rachel DeWoskin, et al. (see below). They're also on about The Queen by Josh Levin, who joined us last week and left behind signed stock, available now; a fine place to start, distract, or simply add to your summer reading, whatever it may be.

Front Table

On our Front Table this week, question the terms of pressing debates, including an argument that the opposition of "jobs vs. the environment" obscures the core crises of sustainability, a critique of the exclusion of infertility from feminist politics, and a fundamental reconsideration of the metrics of poverty. Find the following titles and more at semcoop.com.
Reimagining Livelihoods: Life beyond Economy, Society, and Environment
(University of Minnesota Press)
Ethan Miller

Much of the debate over sustainable development revolves around how to balance the competing demands of economic development, social well-being, and environmental protection. "Jobs vs. environment" is one of the many forms that such struggles take. Ethan Miller argues that the very terms of these debates are part of the problem. With a rich blend of ethnography and theory, he analyses recent questions of development in the state of Maine. Miller shows that the trio of economy, society, and environment produces a particular space of "common sense," but that these terms are neither innocent nor inevitable. They rather are a contingent, historically produced configuration, born from the throes of capitalist industrialism and colonialism. For Miller, they both fail to describe the actual world and pose a tremendous obstacle to enacting a truly sustainable future. Drawing on his own experience in environmental activism, Miller articulates a rich new framework for engaging with the challenges of building ecological livelihoods and for living together on an increasingly volatile Earth.

Quantum Computing for Everyone (MIT Press)
Chris Bernhardt

Quantum computing is a beautiful fusion of quantum physics and computer science, incorporating some of the most stunning ideas from twentieth-century physics into an entirely new way of thinking about computation. In this book, Chris Bernhardt offers an introduction to quantum computing that is accessible to anyone who is comfortable with high school mathematics. He explains qubits, entanglement, quantum teleportation, quantum algorithms, and other quantum-related topics as clearly as possible for the general reader. He simplifies the mathematics and provides elementary examples that illustrate both how the math works and what it means. Bernhardt further reviews standard topics in classical computing (bits, gates, and logic), and he then defines quantum gates, considers the speed of quantum algorithms, and describes the building of quantum computers. As he concludes, quantum computing and classical computing are not two distinct disciplines; quantum computing is rather the fundamental form of computing.

Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 2, 1928-29
(University of Illinois Press)
Simone de Beauvoir, trans. Barbara Klaw

"That's when everything started," Simone de Beauvoir wrote in a diary entry dated July 8, 1929. On that day, her relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre began. This second volume of Beauvoir's Diary of a Philosophy Student takes readers into smoky dorm rooms and inter-war Paris as it continues the feminist philosopher's coming-of-age story. It includes Beauvoir's famous sparring sessions with Sartre in the Luxembourg Gardens, as well as her friendships and academic challenges, the discovery of important future influences like Barrès and Hegel, and her early forays into formulating the problem of the Other. In addition to the diary, the editors provide invaluable supplementary material. A trove of footnotes and endnotes elaborates on virtually every reference made by Beauvoir, offering an atlas of her knowledge and education while at the same time allowing readers to share her intellectual and cultural milieu.

Reading: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press)
Belinda Jack

In the Very Short Introductions series, expert authors provide concise introductions to hundreds of subject areas, combining facts, analysis, perspective, and new ideas. In this volume, Belinda Jack explores the fascinating history of literacy, including the changing forms, contexts, and meanings of reading. For much of human history reading was the preserve of the elite. Technological innovations and the rise of public education in the late eighteenth century then brought a dramatic rise in literacy in many parts of the world. Established links between a nation's literacy levels and its economic success led to the promotion of reading for political ends, but reading also has been associated with subversive ideas, leading to forms of censorship. As Jack argues, reading is a collaborative act between an author and a reader, and one which can never be wholly controlled. Telling the story of reading, from the ancient world to digital reading and restrictions today, she explores why it is such an important aspect of our society.

Intimate Ties: Two Novellas (Archipelago Books)
Robert Musil, trans. Peter Wortsman

First published in 1911, Intimate Ties is Robert Musil's second book, consisting of two novellas, "The Culmination of Love" and "The Temptation of Silent Veronica." Each revolves around a troubled woman, contemplating weighty sexual and romantic decisions, as her memories of the past return to influence her present desires. Musil tracks the psyche of his protagonists in a blurring of impressions that is reflected in his experimental prose. Intimate Ties offers the reader an early glimpse of the high modernist style Musil would perfect in his magnum opus The Man Without Qualities.

The Seed: Infertility Is a Feminist Issue (Coach House Books)
Alexandra Kimball

In pop culture as much as in policy advocacy, the feminist movement has historically left infertile women out in the cold. This book traverses the chilly landscape of miscarriage, and the particular grief that accompanies the longing to make a family. Alexandra Kimball frames her analysis with own desire for a child, and brilliantly reveals the pain and loneliness of infertility, especially for a lifelong feminist. She marries perceptive analysis with deep reportage, and her findings reveal the lies, contradictions, and paradoxes behind the prevailing cultural attitudes regarding women's right to actively choose to have children. Braiding together feminist history, memoir, and reporting from the front lines of the battle for reproductive rights and technology, The Seed contributes to the development of a world where no woman is made to feel that her biology is her destiny.

Measuring Poverty around the World (Princeton University Press)
Anthony B. Atkinson

Economist Anthony Atkinson was a pioneer in the study of poverty and inequality. In his view, better measurement of poverty is essential for raising awareness, motivating action, and gauging progress. In this, his final book, Atkinson addresses these core questions of how poverty is - and should be - measured. He starts from first principles about the meaning of poverty, translates these into concrete measures, and analyzes the data to which the measures can be applied. Bringing together evidence about the nature and extent of poverty across the world and including case studies of sixty countries, he addresses multiple indicators of deprivation. Atkinson died before he was able to complete the book, but at his request it was edited for publication by two of his colleagues, John Micklewright and Andrea Brandolini. In addition, François Bourguignon and Nicholas Stern provide afterwords that address key issues from the unfinished chapters. The result is an essential contribution to efforts to alleviate poverty around the world.

Take your time. Browse each week's
Front Table at
semcoop.com/blog 

Featured Preorders

The Nickel Academy was a reform school for boys: juvenile offenders, wards of the state, orphans, runaways who’d lit out to get away from mothers who entertained men for money, or to escape rummy fathers who came into their rooms in the middle of the night. Some of them had stolen money, cussed at their teachers, or damaged public property. They told stories about bloody pool-hall fights or uncles who sold moonshine. A bunch of them were sent there for offenses they’d never heard of: malingering, mopery, incorrigibility. Words the boys didn’t understand, but what was the point when their meaning was clear enough: Nickel.

Read "The Match" by Colson Whitehead, adapted from his forthcoming novel, The Nickel Boys, the follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning The Underground Railroad. Preorder your copy and receive a signed first edition and limited edition bookmark, while supplies last. And read ahead with the following featured preorders and giveaways, forthcoming in July.


Speaking of Summer (Catapult)
Kalisha Buckhanon

In Kalisha Buckhanon's newest novel, Autumn Spencer's twin sister Summer walks to the roof of their shared Harlem brownstone on a cold December evening, and is never seen again. The door to the roof is locked, and no footsteps are found. Faced with authorities indifferent to another missing woman, Autumn must pursue answers on her own, all while grieving her mother's recent death. National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward hails Buckhanon's latest as "a powerful song about what it means to survive as a woman in America."
Preorder a signed copy today and celebrate the launch of Speaking of Summer, Tue. 7/30 at 57th Street Books.


The Pigeon HAS to Go to School! (Hyperion Books for Children)
Mo Willems

The Pigeon is back, and has some questions. Why does the Pigeon have to go to school? He already knows everything! And what if he doesn't like it? What if the teacher doesn't like him? What if he learns TOO MUCH!?! Ask not for whom the school bell rings; it rings for the Pigeon! Preorder today and receive a special Pigeon school folder (while supplies last)!

P.S. Sign up for our monthly children's newsletter, A Young Person's Guide to 57th Street Books, for more wondrously fun books and events for readers of all ages! 

Events 6/17-7/1

Fifteen years ago, Kathryn Scanlan found a stranger’s five-year diary at an estate auction in a small town in Illinois. The owner of the diary was eighty-six years old when she began recording the details of her life in the small book, a gift from her daughter and son-in-law. After reading and rereading the diary, studying and dissecting it, for the next fifteen years she played with the sentences that caught her attention, cutting, editing, arranging, and rearranging them into the composition that became Aug 9―Fog, a stark, elegiac account of unexpected pleasures and the progress of seasons. Please join us as we welcome Kathryn Scanlan in conversation with Maryse Meijer on Aug 9―Fog. Find details and RSVP HERE.


Tue. 6/18 6pm at the Co-op

What combination of memory, history, biology, experience, and that ineffable thing called the soul defines us? In the spring of 2016, through a genealogy website to which she had whimsically submitted her DNA for analysis, Dani Shapiro received the stunning news that her father was not her biological father; her entire history–the life she had lived–crumbled beneath her. Shapiro's resulting memoir is, in Jennifer Egan's words, “a gripping genetic detective story, and a meditation on the meaning of parenthood and family”; a book about the secrets we keep from one another in the name of love. Please join us as we welcome Dani Shapiro for a discussion of Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and LoveFind details and RSVP HERE.


Wed. 6/19 6pm at the Co-op
 

Writing on the Wall is a selection of more than 100 previously unpublished essays that deliver Mumia Abu-Jamal's essential perspectives on community, politics, power, and the possibilities of social change in the United States. From Rosa Parks to Edward Snowden, from the Trail of Tears to Ferguson, Missouri, Abu-Jamal addresses a sweeping range of contemporary and historical issues. In expert translations, Fullbright Scholar and Professor of History Johanna Fernandez proffers Abu-Jamal's "revolutionary love, revolutionary memory and revolutionary analysis" (Cornel West). Please join us for a conversation between Johanna Fernandez and Page May on Mumia Abu-Jamal's Writing on the Wall. Find details and RSVP HERE.


Wed. 6/19 6pm at 57th Street Books

Library of Small Catastrophes, Alison Rollins’ ambitious debut collection, interrogates the body and nation as storehouses of countless tragedies. Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges’ fascination with the library, Rollins uses the concept of the archive to offer a lyric history of the ways in which we process loss. “Memory is about the future, not the past,” she writes, and rather than shying away from the anger, anxiety, and mourning of her narrators, Rollins’ poetry seeks to challenge the status quo, engaging in a diverse, boundary-defying dialogue with an ever-present reminder of the ways race, sexuality, spirituality, violence, and American culture collide. Please join us for a conversation between Alison Rollins and Tara Betts on Library of Small Catastrophes. Find details and RSVP HERE.


Sat. 6/22 3pm at the Co-op
Rachel DeWoskin on Banshee - Gina Frangello
Mon. 6/17 6pm at the Co-op










 
Sean Johnson Andrews on The Cultural Production of Intellectual Property Rights: Law, Labor, and the Persistence of Primitive Accumulation
Fri. 6/21 6pm at the Co-op
Josh Denslow on Not Everyone is Special - with Kamil Ahsan
Thurs. 6/20 6pm at the Co-op








 
Joseph Marlin on Fading Ads of Chicago
Mon. 6/24 6pm at 57th Street Books



 
Read ahead: See a complete list of upcoming events at semcoop.com/event
Robert W. Fieseler on Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation

Presented in partnership with The Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago
Thurs. 6/20 6pm at 57th Street Books
Catherine Chung on The Tenth Muse and Aaron Shulman on The Age of Disenchantments

Thurs. 6/27 6pm at the Co-op










 

Flashback and Read Ahead

Last August we welcomed Andrew Shaffer to 57th Street Books for a conversation on the first book in his Obama Biden Mysteries series, Hope Never Dies. As he described the origins of the series:

"A week after they were out of office, I sent an email to my agent that just said 'Obama-Biden mystery' and she was like, 'Are you joking?' I said, 'I never joke. I did a book called How to Survive a Sharknado. Why would you think I’m joking!'"

Andrew kept the standing-room-only crowd in stitches (and we might also point out his synergistic T-shirt modeling in the photo above). In his second installment, Hope Rides Again, Obama and Biden reprise their detective roles as they chase Obama’s stolen cell phone through the streets of Chicago - and right into a vast conspiracy. Save the date and climb aboard as we welcome Andrew back to discuss Hope Rides Again. Find more details and RSVP here.
Tue. 7/9 6pm at 57th Street Books
More Events

Partner Events

Last year, 1.9 billion people watched Presiding Bishop Michael B. Curry tell a congregation of royals and celebrities that “love is the way.” St. James Cathedral, Chicago and the Seminary Co-op Bookstores are honored to host Presiding Bishop Curry, in conversation with Dean Dominic Barrington. In his new book The Power of Love: Sermons, Reflections, and Wisdom to Uplift and Inspire, Presiding Bishop Curry shares the full text of his captivating sermon at the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, plus an original introduction and four of his favorite sermons on the themes of love and social justice. Tickets purchased for $22.00 (plus service fees) come with a signed copy of The Power of Love.  Find more details and purchase your tickets here.

An Evening with Michael Curry
Wed. 7/31 6:30pm at St. James Cathedral | 65 E Huron St
Colin Asher on Never a Lovely so Real: The Life and Work of Nelson Algren
Tue. 6/25 6:30pm at the American Writers Museum | 180 N Michigan Ave

In Other Words

Subscribe to In Other Words, our forthcoming newsletter dedicated to celebrating foreign literature, new translations into English, and the extended conversation between our intercontinental displays, author events, and promotions.

Read with us

Copyright © 2019 Seminary Co-op Bookstores, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this email because you signed up for notifications from the Seminary Co-op Bookstores.

Our mailing address is:

Seminary Co-op Bookstores
5751 S. Woodlawn Ave.
Chicago, IL 60637


Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.