Books Winter Book Recommendations 2025 Need a book or two for long winter nights, your travels, or that holiday gift? The Tufts community offers more than 25 choices by Books , School of Arts and Sciences , Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Share When the sun sets so early, it means there’s even more time for curling up on the couch with a good book. Luckily, members of the Tufts community have great recommendations, something to match most anyone’s taste. In the fiction department, there are novels about family dramas and travels to hell, an alternative history of Fagin from Oliver Twist, the rip-roaring tales of the Count of Monte Cristo, a chronicle of life on an island off Scotland in 825, murder mysteries, and a dash or two of science fiction. On the nonfiction side, we have histories of the tragedies of Kent State and Emmett Till’s murder, a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic memoir of an author’s Chinese family, a new view of the Renaissance, a recounting of how one language took over half the world, show business memoirs by Al Pacino and Shonda Rhimes, and a memoir that tries to explain the state of America. Be sure to also check out the recommendations from a lively group of Tufts authors—faculty and alumni—in our Bookish series , as they chat about their own books, the ones they are reading, and the ones they keep going back to. Dive in and enjoy. And for faculty, staff, and students, don’t forget that many of these books are available at the Tufts libraries . If you have book recommendations to add to the list, write to us at now@tufts.edu and we’ll post an update. FICTION Expand Collapse modal Between Two Fires, by Christopher Buehlman. Between Two Fires is set in 14th-century France during the chaos of the Black Death, and follows a fallen knight, a priest, and a mysterious young girl as they journey through a world undone by plague and war. The story mixes history with the supernatural, showing both the worst and best of humanity in a time of fear and loss. I recommend this book because it is unsettling in the best way. It captures how people hold on to purpose when everything around them is falling apart. It is beautifully written, often brutal, and surprisingly tender. In its own strange way, it is a book about faith, endurance, and what it means to keep moving forward when the world feels uncertain. —Ayanna Thomas, dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Expand Collapse modal The Book of I, by David Greig. It’s spring in the year 825 off the west coast of Scotland, and Viking raiders are drawn to a monastery on the island of I (“ee”). They kill everyone, take what isn’t nailed down, and haul off before the sun sets. But three survivors surface: Grimur, an older raider who got so drunk on mead that his mates thought he’d died and buried him in a shallow grave; Una, a beekeeper and mead maker, who is relieved that her brutal husband has been killed; and Brother Martin, a young monk who hid from the raiders at the bottom of the outhouse. Martin is filled with remorse at his cowardice; Grimur has his own sadnesses; and Una, who hasn’t spoken for 10 years, comes back to life like the flowering fields. The three live a peaceful existence—the brutal scene of death passes over to quotidian day-to-day existence, rebuilding the destroyed church, making mead, saying daily prayers. But then the raiders come back. The setting is beautifully evoked in spare, poetic prose, building a vision of a world long ago and far away, with a worldview so foreign to our own. There’s humor aplenty, too, despite the casual brutality. This is a remarkable novel, all in only 156 pages. —Taylor McNeil, senior news and audience engagement editor, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal Cécé, by Emmelie Prophète, translated from the French by Aidan Rooney. Cécé is short for Célia, who as we first meet her is living with her grandmother, who raised her, in the Cité of Divine Power, a slum in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that is essentially a city of its own, lawless and run by gangsters. Her grandmother dies, leaving Cécé to fend for herself as a young woman, caring for her alcohol-ravaged uncle, who mutely lives in a spare room. Soon Cécé acquires a smartphone, and is posting to Facebook, mostly photos of the dead bodies that litter the cité. She navigates around the young men who are in gangs that rule the cité; you become the leader by killing the leader, and then you are next in line to be killed. Cécé stumbles into being an influencer; when white foreigners offer to pay for her photos of the dead, she demands double the price offered, and gets it. She’s an operator, and a survivor. Cécé’s days are mostly empty of hope, and yet she and her neighbors keep going, despite no running water, intermittent stolen electricity, and poor food. Strikingly, there’s almost never despair; people keep going despite the future looking as grim as the present. Prophète, a one-time Haitian justice minister, director of the national library, and diplomat, clearly brings a deep sympathy and understanding to the lives of ordinary Haitians. This is a small book physically and only 212 pages, but it created a whole world that I will remember for a long time. —Taylor McNeil, senior news and audience engagement editor, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal The City, by Valerian Pidmohylnyi. Recently translated into English for the first time, Misto [The City] is an engrossing read that critics have called a modernist masterpiece. Set in the 1920s Soviet Ukraine, it captures the energy, disorientation, and promise of urban life in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv during a brief period of artistic flourishing and relative openness, before famine, terror, and repression extinguished that world and took the author as one of the victims. Published in 1928, The City follows Stepan, a young man from the countryside who arrives in Kyiv determined to study and “improve himself,” only to find himself transformed by the city’s temptations and contradictions as he moves through student hostels, literary circles, and shifting romantic entanglements. What I especially like about the novel is its multidimensional portrayal of Ukrainian society of the time. This lens on Ukrainian society remains largely unknown to Western readers and even to the readers in Ukraine who grew up in the Soviet period, when Pidmohylny’s works were banned. In The City, life in Kyiv is seductive, disorienting, cruel, and full of possibility. Pidmohylnyi captures the tensions between rural and urban identities, tradition and modernity, and the dreams promised by the early Soviet project and the grim reality that would soon follow. Pidmohylnyi, one of the most prominent Ukrainian modernist writers, translators, and literary scholars of the early 20th century, was swept up in Stalin’s assault on the generation of cultural figures formed in the 1920s—later known in Ukraine as the Executed Renaissance. Arrested on fabricated charges, he was executed in 1937. Reading The City today thus feels doubly poignant: it offers not only a window into a society on the verge of catastrophe, but also a voice that nearly vanished from literary history. In light of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine, The City is also timely in its reminder that Ukraine’s cultural modernity, cities, artists, and intellectual traditions have long existed in defiance of efforts to suppress them. The City is a testament to that enduring resilience. —Oxana Shevel, associate professor, Department of Political Science, School of Art and Sciences Expand Collapse modal The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas. Young sailor Edmond Dantes has a wonderful life: He has just earned the captain’s commission that will enable him to marry his childhood sweetheart, Mercedes. However, jealous friends and an unlucky encounter with Napoleon Bonaparte cause him to be sent away to a prison fortress, innocent but with apparently no hope of clearing his name or seeking vengeance. I was captivated by Alexandre Dumas’ revenge story—it’s a classic for a reason. At about 1,200 pages, the book is a doorstop. Don’t let that intimidate you; there’s action on every page. Dumas blends his trademark adventure style—pirates, masquerades, hidden treasure, and doomed romance—with historical fiction, social critique, and biting humor. It was published serially and there are benefits to approaching it like a dense season of television. It was fascinating to read as Edmond’s plan unfolds and he learns the true cost of vengeance. —Robin Symton, assistant director, Office of Media Relations Expand Collapse modal Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman. When aliens hijack Earth and transform it into a deadly dungeon-crawler game show broadcast across the galaxy, Carl’s only goals are survival and saving Princess Donut—his ex-girlfriend's prize-winning cat. What starts as a bizarre premise quickly becomes an unexpectedly gripping adventure that balances apocalyptic stakes with genuine humor. Dinniman has created a world where game mechanics meet actual character development, and where the absurdity of fighting monsters for intergalactic viewers sits neatly with the very real humanity of Carl’s journey. The relationship between Carl and Donut (who gains the ability to communicate and develops quite the diva personality) is touching, and the supporting cast of fellow crawler survivors adds emotional depth to what could have been just another LitRPG. This book will make you laugh, keep you up way too late turning pages, and might even make you seriously consider naming your next pet for deep fried dough. Fair warning: once you start, the entire series becomes dangerously bingeable. —Kristin Ziska Strange, associate director of faculty development & instructional design, Tufts Technology Services Expand Collapse modal The Elements, by John Boyne. I’ve read every novel by John Boyne and while I’m not sure anything can top The Heart’s Invisible Furies, his innovative new novel The Elements is a very close second, and an excellent place to start for folks new to the prolific Irish author. The Elements presents four linked stories, each with the trauma of sexual abuse at its center. The first narrative focuses on the enabler, and subsequent ones focus on the accomplice, the perpetrator, and, finally, the victim. Boyne invokes the classical elements across the four stories, using earth, air, fire, and water as both metaphors as well as clever plot devices. He devotes equal energy to compelling plots and deeply developed characters, and his ability to elicit empathy for some very damaged individuals is remarkable. The phrase “epic saga” has been used in a few reviews to describe the novel; while I understand that point of view, it’s far more accessible—and human—than that phrase suggests. I lost a lot of sleep this fall to its propulsive power and my inability to put it down. But it was worth every struggle to get my eyes open the following morning after those late nights. It’s the strongest literary fiction I have read all year. —Dave Nuscher, executive director, content and planning, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal Fagin the Thief, by Allison Epstein.I’ve always thought it curious that Oliver Twist, the Dickens novel that has somehow cemented a place in the public imagination as the basis for wholesome family entertainment—including a lively stage musical and Oscar-winning film, and several animated versions featuring anthropomorphic cats and dogs—also includes one of the ugliest examples of antisemitism in English literature. I’m talking, of course, about the character of Fagin, the notorious criminal who schools youngsters in the art of the pickpocket, and who, Dickens reminds us several hundred times throughout the original text, is a Jew. In her novel, Epstein revisits the character, and while she does not rehabilitate Fagin, she humanizes him, provides context—and creates an enormously engaging story with deeply drawn characters. The first thing Epstein sets about doing is giving Fagin a first name—Jacob—and a backstory. He is the awkward son of an impoverished seamstress; his father, similarly a thief, has been hanged before he was born. He’s shunned by others in the squalid Jewish quarter of London; when he ventures into the wider world, the reception is even worse. But he turns out to be an exceptional pickpocket, and that’s enough to keep him alive. After he loses the few people to whom he’s become attached, keeping alive—at any price—becomes the core of his world. And then things become complicated when he uncharacteristically takes in an abused child who will grow up to become the violent sociopath Bill Sikes. Epstein does not erase the antisemitism of Oliver Twist by making Fagin a misunderstood victim at the mercy of his society. She does present a complicated, deeply flawed but extraordinarily human character. Epstein’s plot does not hew exactly to Dickens’; once Fagin and Oliver cross paths, it’s not long before the story continues in its own direction, so don’t expect to know how it all turns out, even if you’ve read the book or seen any of the many adaptations. Epstein does not attempt to imitate Dickens’ prose, but her writing hits the right tone, and her scenes of Regency-era London are delightful. —Helene Ragovin, senior content creator and editor, University Communications and Marketing. Expand Collapse modal Katabasis by R. F. Kuang. Katabasis follows Alice Law, a graduate student in analytic magic at Cambridge, and her rival Peter Murdoch as they travel into hell to retrieve the soul of their advisor after a spell goes wrong. On the surface it is a strange and gripping fantasy adventure, but it is also very much about the culture of academia, how ambition can twist people, and how mentors can both shape and harm the students who depend on them. The book speaks directly to the pressures that many students and faculty feel, including the pull of prestige, the cost of overwork, and the messy reality of power in academic life. It is smart, dark, and often very funny, and it invites us to think about what kind of academic community we want to build and what we owe to one another as we do that together. —Ayanna Thomas, dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Expand Collapse modal Kings of the Wyld, by Nicholas Eames. Imagine if your favorite aging rock band got back together for one last tour—except instead of guitars, they’re wielding swords, and instead of sold-out stadiums, they’re fighting through hordes of monsters. Kings of the Wyld follows Saga, a legendary mercenary band that reunites decades after their glory days when one member’s daughter is trapped in a besieged city. What could be a typical epic fantasy adventure becomes something far more meaningful: a story about friendship, fatherhood, aging, and what it means to be a hero when your knees creak and your best days are supposedly (and supposed to be) behind you. Eames writes with infectious joy and humor, creating a world where mercenary bands are treated like rock stars, complete with managers, groupies, and rival acts. But beneath the clever premise and laugh-out-loud moments lies genuine heart—these characters feel real, their bonds feel earned, and their journey will resonate with anyone who’s ever wondered if they’ve still got it (despite the protests of their lower back). This book is a love letter to both classic fantasy adventures and the enduring power of showing up for the people who matter most. —Kristin Ziska Strange, associate director of faculty development & instructional design, Tufts Technology Services Expand Collapse modal The Measure, by Nikki Erlick. One morning, in a world not unlike our own, small, identical boxes come falling from the sky and land at the doorsteps of everyone who is 22 years old and older. Inside each box is an indestructible string that reveals the length of a person’s life—the longer the string, the longer the lifespan. Though there’s no timestamp or countdown, these strings alone are enough to change everything. The Measure follows eight characters figuring out how they want to continue their lives after the boxes are delivered, while navigating new government policies and judgements from society. This is a thought-provoking novel about prejudice and inequality, but also focused on the importance of empathy and joy despite life’s fragility. If you received this box, would you open it to see your fate? And if your string was short, would you tell your loved ones? I read this book when it first came out three years ago, and I still haven’t stopped thinking about it. —Anita Nham, associate director of alumni engagement, The Fletcher School Expand Collapse modal Not Quite Dead Yet, by Holly Jackson. Can you imagine having to solve your own murder? This book follows a woman who must unravel the whodunit behind her own demise before she succumbs to injuries she received from an attempt on her life. In Woodstock, Vermont, 27-year-old Jet puts off everything, determined that she’ll find the time to truly begin her life later. But, on Halloween night, she is violently attacked by an intruder in her family home. Jet suffers a head injury that will, in a week’s time, trigger a fatal aneurism. Instead of undergoing a risky operation for a slim chance of survival, Jet opts to take the few days she has left alive to solve her own murder. This thriller is untraditional: Jet puts herself in risky situations to find her murderer, but lacks the fear a narrator would typically have, as the worst thing that could happen to her has already occurred. But tensions still stay high as Jet’s condition deteriorates and she stays firm in her path to find out which person in her life took her future away from her. Doubting everyone in Woodstock, Jet goes on a journey of finally doing something with her life as time runs out. I loved how this book dealt with ideas of mortality and with grappling about how you should spend your life, even in its darkest hours. —Haley Lerner, content creator/editor, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal The Rose Code, by Kate Quinn. I have loved reading historical fiction for many years, and The Rose Code is now one of my favorites in the genre. The story follows three women from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds—Osla, Mab, and Beth—who’ve each been called to be secret codebreakers at Bletchley Park in World War II-era England. The majority of Bletchley Park’s employees were women who led efforts translate and decode enemy messages and built codebreaking machinery during the war. The Rose Code tells Osla, Mab, and Beth’s experiences at Bletchley Park—and how the work they did changed their life goals and affected their relationships with each other as well as their families and loved ones as they meet all sorts of people, both good and bad, along the way. I not only found this story and the history behind it fascinating, but was also compelled by how masterfully author Kate Quinn weaved the perspectives of the three main characters—allowing each of the women’s voices, personalities, and quirks to shine through. Quinn also uses chapter breaks to occasionally jump ahead to 1947, a few years after the events at Bletchley Park, where it’s revealed that something occurred at Bletchley Park that led to Osla, Mab, and Beth becoming estranged, and that they are being urged to come back together to find someone who betrayed them. These jump-forwards are sprinkled throughout the text like clues and kept me guessing and curious about what happened. The Rose Code is a page-turner and I learned a lot of important history along the way. —Sara Norberg, digital content production specialist, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal See What I Have Done, by Sarah Schmidt. Spooky season may have given way to the long winter months, but if you’re like me and still love a book that sends a chill down your spine, I can’t recommend See What I Have Done enough. This historical fiction reimagines the tense days surrounding the infamous Lizzie Borden murders and introduces the oppressive, decaying world of the Borden household. Narrated by Lizzie, her sister Emma, their weary maid Bridget, and a violent outsider Benjamin, each perspective is as revealing as it is unsettling. Schmidt takes a story so well-known that it has its own crass rhyme and transforms it, exposing a profoundly dysfunctional family at the heart of the legend. Readers are thrust into the house alongside its inhabitants with no way out. But that is exactly where the truth lies. Lizzie is not written as a caricature; she is a small, stunted figure constrained by gender, power, and social expectations. Emma’s longing for independence, Bridget’s quiet rage, and Benjamin’s menace all combine to create an atmosphere that is intimate and suffocating. What makes this retelling irresistible is that we all know the outcome, yet Schmidt’s writing makes it impossible not to hold your breath as you begin to understand the desperation that led to tragedy. Every small gesture, overheard remark, and silent observation begs the question of whose story is told, and believed, long after the novel’s last page. A perfect winter read, this book is claustrophobic, clever, and just unnerving enough to make even the warmest reading nook feel a little colder. —Shanley Daly, senior events coordinator, Tisch College Expand Collapse modal An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon. The events in this book take place on the spaceship Matilda. For several generations the ship has been transporting the last of humanity to a mythical promised land after Earth became uninhabitable, with no end to the journey in sight. The ship’s leaders formed a society where passengers are stratified along racial lines. Those on the lower rungs of society are living on the lower decks in subjugation, are deprived of food, heat, and other necessities, and endure cruel behavioral and moral restrictions. It is a dystopian book with a neurodivergent main character and gender and otherwise nonconforming central characters. This is not a happy book; it has painful nightmarish scenes and insights from the point of view of people born into slavery vs. those born into privilege. It is worth reading if you like sci-fi and are contemplating failings of humanity and ways to continue to move forward those failings notwithstanding. —Zoya Davis-Hamilton, associate vice provost, research administration, Office of the Vice Provost for Research POETRY Expand Collapse modal Stay Dead, by Natalie Shapero. In her latest collection of poems, Shapero is indeed focused on death, in the way she has been in previous books: as a subject of irony, with a twinge of despair, and more than a dose of mordant humor. Open a random page and you’ll see it: “Whether or not to inform the dead, I can’t make / up my mind. I just know how I am with them: the same / as with the living. With all they are going through, how can / I foist on them my sorrows?” Many of the poems are set in the world of actors and acting—Shapero, a former Tufts professor, is now living in Los Angeles—but it’s less about a career in acting than what putting on a front does to one. She’s as clever and self-deprecating as ever, and even provides notes at the end explaining context for some of the pieces of her poems. I don’t pretend to fully understand everything here, but I get the sense that Shapero is a deep feeler and suffers more than her sometimes glib persona suggests; many of these poems go to the heart of things. —Taylor McNeil, senior news and audience engagement editor, University Communications and Marketing NONFICTION Expand Collapse modal American Bloods, by John Kaag. I love books about old houses. Technically, John Kaag’s American Bloods isn’t a book about an old house, but it starts in one. Kaag and his family have moved into a circa 1745 farmhouse in Concord, Massachusetts, where he finds intriguing old papers in a secret room, and has a chance encounter with a wild creature that might or might not have been real. These events lead him to pursue the story of the original inhabitant of his home, Josiah Blood. It turns out that the Blood family, among the earliest white inhabitants of Concord, claimed quite a lot of the acreage in that part of the world. And it also turns out that members of this family across several generations are entwined in different ways with many influential Americans (including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Victoria Woodhull, John Brown, and William James), and entangled in many significant moments in American history. Kaag, a philosopher by training, not only ties the Blood family to the thought and social movements of the times in which they lived, he also paints a compelling portrait of some pretty wild characters. There’s Thomas Blood, who attempted to steal the British crown jewels in 1671 (the recent Louvre thieves proved less clumsy but no more effective); Thaddeus Blood, who in odd ways seems to have inspired Ralph Waldo Emerson; Perez Blood, a hermit who lived out in the woods and made his own observatory in the 19th century to study the heavens; Aretas Blood, a railroad industrialist who becomes extremely wealthy during the Civil War; James Clinton Blood, enamored of spiritualist and presidential candidate Victoria Woodhull, and others. Kaag’s thoughtful, interdisciplinary approach helps us to see how this one family intersected with many American political, intellectual, and spiritual movements. His lively writing gives the book an almost novelistic feel. —Julie Dobrow, distinguished senior lecturer, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development; director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Expand Collapse modal The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, by Wright Thompson. The Barn is an essential book in the understanding of American history. Thompson uses the physical location of the brutal murder of Emmett Till in rural Mississippi to reveal a history that is not just overlooked, but actively obscured. Using the barn as physical marker, he tracks the introduction of slavery into the Deep South, the long-term effects of the slave economy, Reconstruction, and the great migration of African Americans to the industrialized North. Throughout, he interweaves his own family’s deep ties to the region to highlight how the murder of Till was covered up and the story erased from collective memory and eventually brought forward once again. The Barn highlights how important it is to understand our American story from different viewpoints and that traditional history is not the only account to be told. —Stephen Muzrall, senior director of development and alumni engagement, School of Dental Medicine Expand Collapse modal Emerson’s Daughters, by Kate Culkin. There have been many books written about Ralph Waldo Emerson, but one of the things that is most interesting about Culkin’s new dual biography is that while Waldo looms large in her book, he is not the central character. There are two central characters: Waldo’s two daughters, Ellen Tucker Emerson, and Edith Emerson Forbes. It turns out that Ellen and Edith would be incredibly influential in curating the family papers, and in establishing how history would reflect the legacies of both their very famous father and their not-so-famous mother, who probably should be more remembered than she is. The sisters had extremely different personalities and led very different lives. Ellen was religious and conservative, never married, and hewed closely to the home she never truly left and managed for much of her life. Edith was far more social, married into the wealthy Forbes family, became mother to eight children (several of whom would die tragically young), and traveled the world. The sisters had a decades-long intensive correspondence, from which Culkin drew extensively. These letters document not only their comings and goings, but comment on many important people with whom their families intersected, describe in detail both small domestic moments and large national ones, and reflect on their parents and their respective contributions. Culkin’s wonderful preface to the book suggests that this is a biography of sisterhood, of a correspondence, of a family history, and of two imperfect women. And she delivers on each of these counts. Highly readable, very informative, and extremely well-documented, this is an important addition to the large body of work about the Emersons—especially because the legacies of Ellen and Edith Emerson go well beyond the different kinds of support they provided for their famous daddy. —Julie Dobrow, distinguished senior lecturer, Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development; director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies Expand Collapse modal Feeding Ghosts, by Tessa Hulls. After reading a review of Feeding Ghosts, I requested it from the library and then forgot about it until I received notice that it was available. When I opened the book, I found that I also hadn’t read the review carefully—something about the Chinese Cultural Revolution in graphic memoir form. That’s not completely incorrect, but it’s far from describing the full scope of Feeding Ghosts, a search through time, and across the world, for the source of the intergenerational trauma that affected the author, her mother Rose, and her grandmother Sun Yi. To follow through on what she thought was a simpler project, Hulls needed to learn to draw (she is a painter) and to speak basic Chinese. Her determination is inspiring, and it wasn’t long before the book and its amazing drawings pulled me in. It’s difficult to describe all the features that make this Pulitzer Prize-winner unique. It was unlike any graphic memoir I had read before, merging the personal stories, the relevant history, and the underlying psychology that the family experienced, all presented in visual form. A long journey for the family became a 10-year project for Hulls, one that would have been compelling as a traditional memoir, while the densely packed illustrations raise the book to something extraordinary. —Jessica Daniels, director, PhD Program, The Fletcher School Expand Collapse modal Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age, by Ada Palmer. We think of the Renaissance as a single period, the blooming of art and science, the rebirth of Europe after the Dark Ages. Wrong, says Palmer, arguing it was far more complicated and fascinating than that. A history professor at the University of Chicago—and sci-fi author—she leads us through the many interpretations of the Renaissance across the ages, making the point that how we look at things determines what we see. Was Lorenzo de Medici a good guy or a bad guy? Yes, she answers. While we might imagine it a Golden Age, the folks alive in the heart of the Renaissance (1450-1550 Italy) thought they were living through the apocalypse. Almost constant warfare, plague killing off family and friends with appalling regularity, rule of law only applied to those without power, wealth, or connections—a friend urged Machiavelli to write about their times because people in the future wouldn’t otherwise believe how bad it was. The heart of the book is almost 300 pages narrating the lives of 15 Renaissance individuals, and Palmer is a terrific storyteller, bringing them and their times fully to immersive life. We meet the de Medicis, the Borgias, the mostly venal popes (including Battle Pope I and Battle Pope II, as Palmer calls them), and a few strong women amid the usual men. They become very real to us, and their action-filled lives and loves are shockingly modern at times. Politics was brutal, life was brutal—but also fun and stimulating and astounding (painters like Michaelangelo had to get inspiration from somewhere). We learn that to understand what’s happening around us even now, we have to “examine our world deeply, and seek to understand the secret causes and hidden motion of things,” as Palmer says. —Taylor McNeil, senior news and audience engagement editor, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal Kent State: An American Tragedy, by Brian VanDeMark. I previously knew in broad brush strokes what happened at Kent State University on May 4, 1970, when Ohio National Guard Troops killed four student anti-war protesters and wounded several others. But I had no idea how much I did not know about the events leading up to that day, what occurred on that day itself, and what happened afterwards until I read Kent State: An American Tragedy . As I learned about the complexity of the mounting tensions across the country and at Kent in particular, I couldn’t help but think about our current political moment, where National Guard troops, members of the military, and ICE agents are having increasingly tense interactions with Americans in cities and towns across the country. For example, as I learned about the fateful decision to supply troops with live ammunition that day—despite many leaders at the time acknowledging that doing so was inappropriate for protest control measures—I wonder about live ammunition being present in our cities today as people engage in political protest. As I read about the vicious hate mail that parents of the slain students received for many years, and about how many people supported the violent crackdown at Kent State that day, I was reminded that the intense hostility that often characterizes our politics now is hardly unique. And as I read about the lasting impact of the events that day, including the impact on the National Guard troops themselves, I realized that it’s easy for people on the sidelines to move on, or to forget, or to act with such confidence that their view of what should happen next is the right one, yet perhaps what they need to do most of all is remember that people involved in traumatic events like these are never the same. I hope that what stays with me from reading this book is an effort to prioritize humility and compassion as I try to make sense of highly charged political events. —Deborah J. Schildkraut, John Richard Skuse, Class of 1941, Professor of Political Science, School of Arts and Sciences Expand Collapse modal Night Flyer: Harriet Tubman and the Faith Dreams of a Free People, by Tiya Miles. Harriet Tubman, like other historical figures who become powerful symbols, has become a flattened image in our memory. Tiya Miles seeks to recapture Tubman the full person by tracing her life across the landscapes she lived. Miles shows how Tubman experienced the land she lived on as a slave and then traversed while freeing herself and others. Most revealing is Miles’ exploration Tubman’s deep religiosity, often obscured, which clarifies a basic part of life and powerful motivator. Occasionally, Tubman gets lost in contemporary analysis of landscape and ecology, and her maneuverings on the human terrain she had to navigate by understanding who her friends and enemies were is overlooked. Still, Miles shows Tubman to be human, which makes her accomplishments all the more remarkable. —David Ekbladh, professor, Department of History Expand Collapse modal Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America, by Beth Macy. The title of the novel by Thomas Wolfe You Can’t Go Home Again, published posthumously in 1940, refers to the ways in which time changes places and people, and the consequences for someone who would want to return to a small hometown. Eight decades later, Beth Macy finds that she, too, feels like an outsider when returning to her hometown of Urbana, Ohio. The town has been scarred by the shuttering of the town’s major factory and the scourge of drugs. This powerful book is part memoir and part analysis of the downward spiral of Urbana. She writes about the opportunities she had, even as a poor child, through the support of her mother, her friends, and her teachers. That support, and a Pell Grant, enabled her to realize her dream of attending college, which led to her career as a journalist and best-selling author. But the Urbana of the 2020s is not the one in which she was raised. She writes about the diminished opportunities facing the young people in that town today, and the poisoning of discourse through conspiracy theories that offer someone to blame. For those of us who, like Beth, currently live in relatively wealthy blue communities but hail from towns that have spiraled down, this book resonates in its empathetic and incisive portrait of the difficulties and challenges facing those cities and towns, and our fellow citizens who live in them. —Michael W. Klein, William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs, Fletcher School Expand Collapse modal Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney. Thanks to new techniques of tracing ancient DNA, it’s now thought that Indo-European languages—which span everything from English and Italian to Russian and Hindi—all stem from a proto Indo-European language spoken by a steppe people from north of the Black Sea beginning about 5,500 years ago. We call those people the Yamnaya, after a location where their remains were first found; it is certainly not what they called themselves. The evidence for this origin story? It’s based on linguistic analysis (similar sounding words for the same thing across vast reaches of time and space), the archaeological record, and especially the work showing that most Indo-European language speakers have Yamnaya DNA. They got around, those Yamnaya. It’s a fascinating story of how people migrated over many thousands of miles and mixed frequently. Two examples of the transforming languages: Celtic arose and was spoken in middle Europe, morphed and got pushed to the edges, ending up in the British isles; Germanic led to West Germanic to Old English to English, always changing. In a time of hard and fast borders and fear of immigrants, Proto is a reminder that homo sapiens have always been on the move and have always been mixing, and that language, like life, is about constant change. —Taylor McNeil, senior news and audience engagement editor, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal Sonny Boy, by Al Pacino. It’s hard to imagine a time when Al Pacino wasn’t a legend of stage and screen. He made his mark in the New York avant-garde theater scene before starring in some of the most iconic films of the 20th century: TheGodfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Scarface, among many others. But the opening pages of his 2024 memoir Sonny Boy are nothing but tender reminiscences of his childhood in the South Bronx, where he got his extremely humble start. Raised by an adoring single mother and grandparents in a tenement, young Al spent his days roaming the neighborhood with a pack of scrappy, mischievous kids from the block. His burning, deep passion for acting came later, first sparked by a teacher who helped him get into New York’s famed High School of Performing Arts. In an almost conversational style, Pacino shares with his readers an array of his wonderful stories. Two of my favorite moments are when he played Shylock in a Shakespeare in the Park production of The Merchant of Venice, and when he spoke with such warmth and affection for the late, great Diane Keaton. Sonny Boy offers a close-up look into his creative and colorful life. —Julia Keith, senior program administrator, International Center Expand Collapse modal Who Is Government, by Michael Lewis. This isn’t just a book—it’s a reframing of what public service means. Through a mosaic of essays and profiles, Lewis and his collaborators spotlight a sampling of federal employees whose work is both invisible and indispensable. These aren’t faceless bureaucrats—they’re engineers preventing mine collapses, archivists preserving national memory, and cemetery administrators redefining dignity. The book’s power lies in its refusal to romanticize or vilify government; instead, it humanizes it. Each story reveals how expertise, compassion, and quiet persistence shape the infrastructure of justice, safety, and continuity. As our nation considers the role and size of government, this book helps us reflect on what we might be losing. Lewis’s signature storytelling—clear-eyed, empathetic, and often slyly humorous—makes complex systems feel personal. In an era of cynicism, Who Is Government reminds us that the soul of democracy lives not in rhetoric, but in the daily labor of those who choose service over spectacle. —Rhonda Siciliano, assistant director of media relations, University Communications and Marketing Expand Collapse modal Year of Yes, by Shonda Rhimes. This is a book I continue to recommend, even years after first reading it, and long after passing my first copy along to a friend. Written by the creative force behind Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, How to Get Away with Murder, and later Bridgerton, it offers more than just behind-the-scenes anecdotes and success from Shondaland. It’s a candid, relatable, often funny, and surprisingly vulnerable reflection on a pivotal year in Rhimes’s life. The premise is as simple as it sounds. After her sister casually points out that she “never says yes to anything,” Rhimes challenges herself to say yes to the opportunities, experiences, and fears she had long avoided. This includes everything from delivering high-profile commencement speeches to committing to a healthier lifestyle to embracing authenticity in her personal and professional life. What makes the book resonate is how honestly she shares the discomfort, resistance, and unexpected joy that came with opening herself to possibility. If you’re reflecting on an opening of change and transformation in your life, this could be that spark of inspiration you need. Year of Yes is ultimately about self-discovery and reflection. It’s about saying yes to growth and yes to oneself, but also about learning when to say no to the things that don’t add value to your life. I recently heard Rhimes discuss the book on a podcast, and it reignited the excitement I felt when I first read it after the second cross-country move in my career. It’s empowering, engaging, and worth revisiting at any stage in life. —Meredith Hicks-Ogburn, talent acquisition specialist, Human Resources Source: https://now.tufts.edu/2025/12/01/winter-book-recommendations-2025