A Reading List (for fun and insight)

Need some reading that’s not an assignment?

One of the best ways to unwind is picking up a good book that you aren’t required to read for class. The Cap & Co. team did some research on what books college and graduate students are enjoying and put together a short list for you all. To discovery (and reading for fun and insight)!

  1. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond

    “In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur ‘Genius’ Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as ‘wrenching and revelatory’ (The Nation), ‘vivid and unsettling’ (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.” — Evicted Book Website

  2. Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera

    “Signs Preceding the End of the World is one of the most arresting novels to be published in Spanish in the last ten years. Yuri Herrera does not simply write about the border between Mexico and the United States and those who cross it. He explores the crossings and translations people make in their minds and language as they move from one country to another, especially when there’s no going back.

    Traversing this lonely territory is Makina, a young woman who knows only too well how to survive in a violent, macho world. Leaving behind her life in Mexico to search for her brother, she is smuggled into the USA carrying a pair of secret messages – one from her mother and one from the Mexican underworld.” — Good Reads

  3. Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

    “At last, a book that shows you how to build—design—a life you can thrive in, at any age or stage.

    Designers create worlds and solve problems using design thinking. Look around your office or home–at the tablet or smartphone you may be holding or the chair you are sitting in. Everything in our lives was designed by someone. And every design starts with a problem that a designer or team of designers seeks to solve.

    In this book, Bill Burnett and Dave Evans show us how design thinking can help us create a life that is both meaningful and fulfilling, regardless of who or where we are, what we do or have done for a living, or how young or old we are. The same design thinking responsible for amazing technology, products, and spaces can be used to design and build your career and your life, a life of fulfillment and joy, constantly creative and productive, one that always holds the possibility of surprise.” — Designing Your Life Official Website

  4. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

    “Spanning the globe and several centuries, The Gene is the story of the quest to decipher the master-code that makes and defines humans, that governs our form and function.

    Majestic in its ambition, and unflinching in its honesty, The Gene gives us a definitive account of the fundamental unit of heredity – and a vision of both humanity’s past and future.” — Good Reads

  5. The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett

    “The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.

    Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.” — Brit Bennett Official Website

 
 
For StudentsRachael Capua