book pick: Anton Treuer, Warrior Nation: A History of the Red Lake Ojibwe

Warrior Nation has deeply enriched my understanding and sharpened my appreciation of my cultural and political history as a tribal member of the Red Lake Nation. It pushed me to confront the subject of land in my creative research with a more critical eye, offering not just insights but a hard truth about my own embodied experiences, rooted in the context of our complicated history. The book is an uncompromising account of the Red Lake Ojibwe and exposes the ongoing urgency of preserving Indigenous histories across the Americas. It serves as a reminder that by honoring our past, we can carry its wisdom into the present to guide our collective future.

book pick: Richard Sennett, The Craftsman

It is very difficult to narrow down to a single influential book, but I'm choosing The Craftsman because, even though we live in an increasingly digital world, I still believe in and am committed to material experiences. We explore material through making objects and experience material craft (or lack thereof) in the designs and creations of others, from a desk chair to a sky scraper. Material practice is at the core of my work, and I believe that crafting the material world around us is still vital to our wellbeing as individuals and as a society.

book pick: Michael Stone and Paul Goldbart, Mathematics for Physics

An influential book was Mathematics for Physics by Michael Stone and Paul Goldbart, in part because we as students had to go through insightful and beautiful homework problems whose solutions were not available yet, as the book published years after I took that course.

book pick: Rosanna Xia, California Against the Sea

This book is a comprehensive window into the challenges coastal communities face with sea level rise that maintains a hopeful tone.

book pick: Jennifer L. Roberts, Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History

Jennifer Roberts writes a wildly creative history of major postwar American artist Robert Smithson, who is most famous for his Spiral Jetty in Utah's Great Salt Lake. Jennifer Roberts engages the fascinating and bizarre threads that Smithson brings together in his art, from crystallography and cybernetic theory to the transcontinental railroad and the politics of manifest destiny. Expansive, provocative, and highly original, this book demonstrates the unique interdisciplinary potential of art history.

book pick: Erin Meyer, The Culture Map

The Culture Map by Erin Meyer is a great book to help us gain cultural understanding and knowledge for communicating and leading in a global environment. There are so many great books out there that deal with cultural competence and humility, but this book gives information that is readily accessible and easy to apply in our personal and professional lives.

book pick: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian: Or The Evening Redness in the West

This book captures the violence, beauty, and immediateness of hurtling forward through unknown and unknowable terrain.

book pick: Richard Dawkins, Selfish Gene

I read this as an undergraduate 35 years ago, and I consider it as a starting point for my academic career.

book pick: C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength

In many ways, literary scholar C.S. Lewis modeled for me and taught me how to be an excellent academic. The third book in his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, not only informed my own thinking about education policy and philosophy, which is my particular discipline, but also helped form me into a person integrity and to care about the right things as an academic—things like truth, goodness, and intellectual virtue.

book pick: J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter Series

The tale of the boy wizard and his scar helped shape my childhood and adolescence. The books fueled my love of reading, and consequently my own desire to teach at school, because school can make everything more interesting—for teachers, for students, for everybody involved.

book pick: Maren Goltz and Herta Müller, Richard Mühlfeld der Brahms Klarinettist

This book reveals the intricate details of the life of Richard Mühlfeld, the star musician of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, whose exceptional playing inspired the renowned composer Johannes Brahms to come out of retirement and compose four clarinet masterpieces. It also includes, for the first time, the full, unabridged biography written by Richard's own brother, Christian Mühlfeld.

book pick: Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows

I chose this book because first, I don't like bright lights. More seriously, it is about appreciating that which is shadowed, understated, or ephemeral. In current scientific research, all of the bright, shiny, obvious things are understood already, so I get to appreciate and focus on that which remains hidden.

book pick: J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians

The book explores the divergent, durable, and often unanticipated ways that colonial violence can affect individuals.

book pick: Rania Ghosn and El Hadi, Geostories: Another Architecture for the Environment

This book explores the challenges and opportunities for architects to address the climate crisis in the design of the built environment through wonderfully illustrated speculative design proposals that inspire imagination and excitement in myself and my students.

book pick: Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers

Gladwell introduced the "10,000-Hour Rule" to emphasize the importance of practice and perseverance. However, he examined the hidden factors contributing to success, arguing that talent, hard work, and perseverance alone aren't sufficient, highlighting how cultural background, family, and unique opportunities significantly influence achievement.

book pick: Oermann, DeGagne and Phillips, Teaching in Nursing and Role of the Educator

This book provides evidence of the specialized knowledge and competencies, beyond clinical practice, required to be an effective, competent nurse educator to prepare the next generation of providers.

book pick: Akhil Amar, America's Unwritten Constitution

Professor Amar writes about the Constitution and the history of that compromise in a way that is accessible to the general public.

book pick: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

It is a great book for people who are beginners on philosophy. The book presents various leading philosophical theories though the life stories of the philosophers who developed those theories. This makes the book very entertaining to read. The writing of the book is also elegant and intriguing. Overall, I think it is a book that can make one fall in love with philosophy.

book pick: David Lewin, Studies in Music with Text

This book was written by my dissertation advisor, and most of the chapters are on topics that he assigned for a class that I took during graduate school. This book goes beyond just examining the relationship between music and text. It revels in their connections and challenges. Lewin's writing is a model of how to engage readers at all levels; some parts are perfect for non-musicians, and other parts are extremely challenging for music theorists. It is a reminder of how deeply one can think about the arts, and how much it matters.

book pick: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit

The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg was influential to me in showing that people do many things without conscious intent, and many of our processes and actions are reflexive rather than decision based. I have found this valuable in informing me personally how to make choices. I also teach this to my students in design class to show them that when designing an engineering system, we have to consider the human/machine interface, and that human behavior will have a big impact on how people interact with a design.

book pick: Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

One of the questions the book explores is whether a girl's identity and worth are primarily a product of her appearance. The book's emphatic message to me, a young girl, that who I was on the inside -- my thoughts, personality, intellect, sense of humor, and opinions -- was what really mattered and made me who I was, was incredibly formative and has continued to resonate with and ground me at every stage of my life.

book pick: George Orwell, Animal Farm

This book reveals insights about the dangers of propaganda and abuse of power in politics, thus highlighting the need for citizens to engage the political system to advocate for themselves and others.

book pick: Vedavyasa, Bhagavad Gita

I chose the Bhagavad Gita for its eternal wisdom on navigating challenges and moral dilemmas, offering insights into duty (karma), selflessness, and spiritual growth that encourage personal reflection and create a practical framework for a meaningful life.

book pick: Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire

This was a book that I read when I was in junior high. It is the autobiography of an aerospace engineer, who later became the president of India. I believe that the book “told me” that it is ok to dream big. Another major takeaway from the book was that “most discoveries happen in resource-limited conditions,” and all human beings have unique qualities that can prosper under right environment.

book pick: Maya Angelou, I Shall Not Be Moved

On a cloudy night at Kitt Peak National Observatory, I read this book to pass the time. It struck me so deeply, to feel to some small degree, through her poetry, the experiences of those I had previously been unaware of in any meaningful way. Almost 30 years later, I can still recall what it felt like to read that poetry, so beautiful yet so haunting and raw. I hope it led me to a better understanding of my fellow women.

book pick: Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator's Dilemma

The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen profoundly influenced how I approach research and innovation. Its exploration of disruptive technologies challenged me to think critically about how established systems can stifle breakthrough ideas, a lesson that has guided me in developing and managing research. By embracing disruptive thinking, I've sought to push boundaries in my field, advancing current knowledge while creating opportunities for future discoveries.

book pick: Chloe Caldwell, Women

book pick: Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem Series

This is my favorite science fiction series. It is not only fascinating but also thought-provoking about humanity.

book pick: Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast, Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women

This book is deeply learned, generous in its scholarly citations, creative in its references, pleasantly grisly, and it also turned the field inside out. She leaves juicy little scholarly Easter eggs in her footnotes like some sort of medievalist Taylor Swift.

book pick: Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

I came across this book at a significant crossroads in my life. I was profoundly moved by it and saw within it how I wanted to show up and what I was seeking in the next phase of my life.

book pick: Troy Aikman, Things Change

The book influenced me as a kid that good and bad things can happen, even to our role models. Looking back, the book tells the story of how Troy Aikman overcame certain issues and used those experiences as an opportunity to grow as a person and football player.

book pick: Alexandru Buium, Arithmetic Differential Equations

This book is a technical but far reaching foundational text laying out the remarkable theory of arithmetic differential equations. It summarizes and expands upon about 20 years of literature, and still remains the unique reference point for the subject.

book pick: Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ

On the surface, it may seem like this choice has nothing to do with my career and research. However, the opposite is true. Former athiest and award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune Lee Strobel set out initially to disprove the existence of God. His logical and systematic research brought him to the conclusion that not only does God exist, but that His son, Jesus Christ, in the most profound act of love, was indeed sent to die for the sins of mankind, reuniting creation with the Creator. This book aided in confirming my faith in early adulthood at the point where I desired to ensure my faith was my own and not necessarily that of my parents.

book pick: Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park

Dinosaurs, gene editing, the mathematics of “chaos theory”…. I probably didn't understand all of the details, but this book had it all when I was in my middle school years and was a big influence in building my interest in those fields of science and engineering. The movie was great, but it was the book that really left an impression on me.

book pick: James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner, The Truth About Leadership

I chose this book because I believe it highlights the most important truths of leadership in a simplistic way. The leadership truths are applicable across disciplines, generations, and locations. The aspects of leadership highlighted in the book are what I strive to be as a leader in nursing education.

book pick: Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

The story illustrated and validated for me a way of navigating and thinking about life to be free.

book pick: Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life

My well-worn copy of this book has seen me through many iterations of my feminism while navigating institutions, becoming a mother, publishing a book, and resisting horrifying political realities. In the face of ongoing feminist backlash, it has given me fortitude and the patience to press on.

book pick: Charles Kostelnick, Michael Hassett, Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions

Of all the scholarly texts I've read in my areas of study, Shaping Information provides the most detailed, compelling, and useful way of tackling the question of visual design and how it relates to the sharing of information. It is an inspiration for me as a scholar and a wonderful example of applied theoretical scholarship.

book pick: Joel Garreau, The Nine Nations of North America

It was foundational in my understanding of how a region's historical economy and culture permeate through economic and political development, touching all areas of society.

book pick: Michael Lewis, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game

The book is only nominally about baseball. It's really about the benefits of systematic thinking and using data to answer questions.

book pick: Clarence Johnson, Kelly

Kelly by Clarence "Kelly" Johnson is a book I read early in my engineering career. This is the autobiography of arguably the greatest design engineer of the prior century and longtime manager of the Lockheed Skunk Works. Kelly Johnson was the driving force behind the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird and many other impressive works. The information conveyed in this book influenced my personal approach to engineering design and management greatly.

book pick: William Corsaro, We're Friends, Right?: Inside Kids' Culture

As a childhood studies scholar, Corsaro's work, specifically his book, We're Friends, Right?: Inside Kids' Culture, was not only integral to my thinking about children and their art, but also the ethics of being with, attending to, and representationally caring for this work.

book pick: Terry Felber, The Legend of the Monk and the Merchant

There are two reasons I chose this book. First, it articulated to me the importance of understanding how all manners of work, particularly the business marketplace, can be purpose-driven and effect positive impacts on society and human advancement. Second, having been encouraged by my parents to avidly read, my father and I had very insightful conversations and engaging discourses based on the content of this book. I will never forget it.

book pick: Damen Zahariades, The Art of Saying No

This book talks about how to stand your ground, reclaim your time and energy, and refuse to be taken for granted.

book pick: Dolph Schluter, The Ecology of Adaptive Radiations

This book influenced me heavily as a graduate student when I began my research career and it continues to be influential to me now as a professor because of how clearly the ideas are presented. In re-reading the book each time, I also realize I have made a small contribution to many of the ideas formulated in this book, where I first learned of them.

book pick: Susan Burton and Cari Lynn, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

I regularly assign this book to my students. It is a powerful memoir by someone who has survived poverty, abuse, addiction, and incarceration. It is also an incredibly informative guide on how one must strategize, communicate, network, and persevere to overcome barriers and to make real, positive changes in one's community, state, and country.

book pick: Robert Munsch, The Paper Bag Princess

I chose The Paper Bag Princess because it takes what society has taught girls, in particular, and turns it on its head. As a mom to two girls, this book reminds them they can be their own hero. They don't have to meet any societal standards, they don't require any rescue, and they can take care of themselves. The message of independence resonates deeply with my own values and goals throughout my career. I hope this book is enjoyed by many more generations of people who have faced adversity or social injustice.

book pick: Caroline Criado Pérez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

This wasn't a book that made me find my field, it's just a book that I've gone back to and stewed over. I think it challenges what the status quo is and is it fair or equal?

book pick: Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being

Sharpe's work inspires me to stay on the path of truth-telling for Black freedom and liberation. In the Wake connects the past and the present in a critical and accessible way.

book pick: Francis Collins, The Language of God

This book integrates science and faith - two things that are very important to me. It is the personal memoir of Dr. Francis Collins, who was the Director of the Human Genome Project. He documents his path to mapping the human genome alongside his parallel faith journey. The book includes one of my all-time favorite quotes: "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory."

book pick: Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"DON'T PANIC" are the immortal words that appear across the cover of the Guide. Whether consciously or not, these words have guided me through the trials of both my personal and professional life. And, while I have not been kicked off my home planet to make way for an interstellar highway, the fantastical universe presented by Douglas Adams has always seeded my imagination and given me solace that no matter how hard things are to understand or accomplish, the universe is even funnier! I first read this series of books through high school and college, and now I revel in joking with my kids about things like the Babel fish, the Infinite Improbability Drive, and the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. By weaving humor into the complications of existing and possibly even thriving in an unimaginably vast and diverse universe, Adams creates a separate guide, of sorts, for navigating modern society, for which I like to think I have adapted in my own interactions with family, friends, and colleagues.

book pick: Dorothy M. Needham, Machina Carnis

Machina Carnis, authored by Dorothy Needham, is a seminal text that remains highly influential in the field of muscle biology and biochemistry. Needham's exhaustive exploration of the biochemical processes underlying muscle contraction and energy metabolism provides a foundational understanding that continues to inform contemporary research. As a professor specializing in muscle biology, I am particularly struck by the text's depth and clarity in tracing the historical developments that led to our current knowledge of cellular respiration and metabolic pathways in muscle tissue. Needham's work not only elucidates the intricate molecular mechanisms of energy production but also underscores the interdisciplinary collaboration that has been essential in advancing this field. Her meticulous research in Machina Carnis has been pivotal in shaping how we conceptualize the machinery of life, making it an indispensable resource for students and scholars in physiology, biochemistry, and beyond.

book pick: Angelo Mascarenhas, Spontaneous Ordering in Semiconductor Alloys, Edited

Inspired me to do in-depth study for Short Range Ordering (SRO) in SiGeSn materials that opens the door for a new venue of bandgap engineering through SRO engineering.

book pick: Cixin Liu, The Three-Body Problem (Trilogy)

The most influential hard science fiction in China, offering a profound and thought-provoking narrative about humanity's place in the universe.

book pick: Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

I read this book when I was a fresh assistant professor. The chapter “Don't Leave before you Leave” really resonated with me, where the author talks about how women forgo career advancement for family too far in advance. At the time, I was also thinking about having children, and already started to plan what not to take on before I was even pregnant. This book was enlightening and helped me navigate the stressful times before tenure.