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MCC Daily Tribune

President's Wednesday Message

This week, Bill Gates released his five book summer reading list, which made me think more specifically about mine. Here are my five books:

  • Florida by Lauren Groff. This brand new collection of short stories by Groff, whose writing is luminous and whose observational powers are whip smart, is number one on my list.
  • Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America by James Forman, Jr. I'm part way through this remarkable and illuminating 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning history of mass incarceration of and by African-Americans.
  • Dreamland: the True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic by Sam Quinones. This reconstruction of how we got to this tragic place in the opioid epidemic is a few years old (2015) but remains the most recommended book I've found on the topic.
  • You Think It, I'll Say It by Curtis Sittenfeld. Another new collection of short stories by another of my favorite authors whose clear-eyed insight is coupled with a sharp wit and true humanistic impulse.
  • Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. Having been homeschooled by her fundamentalist, survivalist family, Westover went on to earn a bachelor's degree from BYU and doctorate from Cambridge.

I hope all of us find time this summer to finish our lists and then some!

What books are on your reading lists? Please share on the blog.

Anne Kress
Office of the President
06/13/2018