A monthly publication of Virtues & Vocations, Good Read highlights inspirational and engaging books about virtue, vocation, purpose, and the state of higher education.
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
December 2022
Claire Keegan’s Christmas novella, Small Things Like These, will not only draw your imagination into the lives of characters in an Irish town during Christmas week in the 1980s; it could also be an argument for liberal education. The main character, Bill Furlong, is a coal merchant with a large family and full days of hard work. Readers receive glimpses into his childhood, though, and someone who saw past status and class and encouraged him to read and think. Furlong’s internal life – questioning and reflecting on what he encounters in his ordinary days – along with his sense of empathy, leads to a decisive moment in the story. Hard as winter; hopeful as Christmas, this is the perfect story for this time of year.
Professions and Politics in Crisis by Mark L. Jones
November 2022
The legal profession is currently experiencing a crisis of well-being. According to a study of nearly 13,000 lawyers by the American Bar Association in 2016, 28% struggle with depression, 23% experience chronic stress, and as high as 36% qualify as problem drinkers, with all of these rates higher for lawyers less than 10 years removed from law school. As for law students, 17% experience depression, 14% struggle with severe anxiety, and 43% report binge drinking in the past two weeks. In response to this crisis, Mark L. Jones makes the case that rediscovering a deep sense of vocation in the legal profession is the key to helping lawyers live happy, flourishing lives.
In Professions and Politics in Crisis, Jones envisions a community based on the Thomistic Aristotelian vision of Alasdair Macintyre. Exploring how we can find purpose in our everyday lives by living for the common good of our community, Jones then turns to how thinking in these terms can provide lawyers with a new sense of meaning and purpose as legal professionals. While Jones focuses primarily on the legal profession, he notes that Macintyre’s philosophical approach can be applied to other professions as well. If the professions were to embrace such an approach, the emphasis on virtue would then start to have a wider societal influence, organically helping to confront not just a crisis of well-being in particular professions, but a crisis of well-being in our political culture as well.
The Virtues of Limits by David McPherson
October 2022
The virtues are often discussed in terms of human excellence and achievement, exploring all that flourishing human lives can accomplish. In his latest book, however, David McPherson considers the ways in which the virtues are about acknowledging our limitations. As finite creatures, there is only so much we can accomplish. Our limited time, energy, and resources mean that our days come with inescapable tradeoffs. Preparing for a career in medicine unavoidably prevents simultaneously preparing for a career in law, and spending time at work inevitably decreases the amount of time we can spend with family. Because of these constraints, those who lead excellent lives can only do so by recognizing their limits.
The Virtues of Limits examines a number of limiting virtues — humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty — along with the role that they play in setting existential, moral, political, and economic boundaries on lives well-lived. On McPherson’s account, all of the limiting virtues ask us to take up a stance of acceptance and appreciation towards the world. Not only do these virtues help us to live a flourishing life, but the limiting virtues are primary to the virtues of choosing and controlling, as “we first need to appreciate what is of value in order to know how to act or not act” (p. 20). Along with revealing the ways in which the virtue ethics tradition has always appreciated the central role of the limiting virtues, McPherson’s discussion also explores the ways these virtues can help us confront our most pressing ethical issues, including questions related to social justice, capitalism, patriotism, and genetic engineering. Human excellence is found not only in our accomplishments, but also in acceptance of our limitations as well.
Cultivating Virtue in the University Edited by Jonathan Brant, Edward Brooks, and Michael Lamb
September 2022
Cultivating Virtue in the University is a collection of essays from scholars in education, history, literature, philosophy, psychology, sociology, and theology, exploring the context, opportunities and challenges surrounding the ethical formation of college students. Jonathan Brant, Edward Brooks, and Michael Lamb not only edit the volume, they also provide a case for character education in universities as an introduction, and author an article detailing strategies for cultivating character in higher education. This volume is indispensable to anyone interested in making virtue central to a good education.
The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World by Andy Crouch
August 2022
“There is a kind of technology that is easily distinguishable from magic – a kind that involves us more and more deeply as persons rather than diminishing and sidelining us. This kind of technology elevates and dignifies human work, rather than reducing human beings to drones that only do the work the robots have not yet automated.” –The Life We’re Looking For, page 134
In The Life We’re Looking For: Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World, Andy Crouch considers the ways new technologies shape our world as well as the desires driving the design of new technologies. He gives examples not only of technological design choices, but also of the ways these driving forces lead to systems of work, such as the routes of Amazon delivery drivers, that are “optimized for speed and efficiency […but] also engineered with perfect indifference to many of the things that make for a flourishing life” (102). Crouch works on issues of theology and culture, so the book draws heavily from the Christian tradition, but it raises questions that will resonate with any readers who want to pursue a more humane vision for technology and work.
The Trayvon Generation by Elizabeth Alexander
May 2022
“I want my children – all of them – to thrive, to be fully alive. How do we measure what that means?” (73)
In The Trayvon Generation, a collection of essays interspersed with visual works of art, Elizabeth Alexander wrestles with the ways racism distorts what it means to be human. At the same time, her stories highlight how art can shape moral imagination, opening possibilities for flourishing even in the midst of unimaginable suffering. This book is about seeing clearly, remembering, and articulating what is true. It is short, but worth reading slowly, allowing one’s heart and imagination to be moved toward new ways of pursuing the good.
The Naked Don’t Fear the Water by Matthieu Aikins
April 2022
In The Naked Don’t Fear the Water, Matthieu Aikins recounts his experience traveling undercover with his Afghan friend, Omar, who hopes to resettle as a refugee in Europe. They journey on the smuggler’s road, buying passage through deserts, mountains and over the sea, and living in refugee camps and other makeshift communities along the way. As the narrative unfolds, ethical lines become murky. The borders, laws and systems that exist seem less solid, and the empathy one experiences for Omar and companions is an opportunity to exercise moral imagination, asking fundamental questions about what it means to be human. The migration crisis has only intensified since Omar and Matthieu set out in 2015. Reading their story is an opportunity to consider how a commitment to flourishing intersects with this politicized crisis.
The End of Burnout by Jonathan Malesic
March 2022
Former professor Jonathan Malesic’s new book, The End of Burnout, weaves his own story of academic burnout with the history, science, and philosophy of burnout as a concept. In the second half of the book, he considers alternatives to the current cultural conception of work. Different chapters highlight people who are outside the mainstream work culture, from Benedictine monks to artists to workers at a nonprofit in Dallas. While not every conclusion he makes is equally satisfying, the book asks good questions about what gives people dignity and how to live a life with purpose.
What Universities Owe Democracy by Ronald J. Daniels
February 2022
“We cannot be blithe about democracy’s prospects. It is incumbent upon our fellow citizens and our bulwark institutions to look unflinchingly and intensely at how we came to this place where our democracy feels as if it is coming undone. There is no better place to start this conversation, this self-reflection, than the university.” – page 250
Johns Hopkins president Ronald J. Daniels’ recent book, What Universities Owe Democracy, examines the relationship between universities and liberal democracy in America, arguing that colleges and universities are essential to the flourishing of democracy but have moved away from this role in the past couple decades and have a responsibility to recover this function. Daniels details how universities have contributed to democracy in four areas: social mobility, civic education, stewardship of facts, and cultivating pluralism. In addition to examining history, Daniels suggests how universities can recover the centrality of these roles in the present moment. This book is an important contribution to the conversation about the purpose of higher education, and is available for free via Project Muse.
Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown
December 2021
“Language is our portal to meaning-making, connection, healing, learning, and self-awareness. Having access to the right words can open up entire universes.”
One reason University of Houston professor Brene Brown’s books are bestsellers is that her writing is beautiful. She presents data on courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy with words that feel more like a story than a textbook. Her latest book, Atlas of the Heart, is designed to be physically beautiful as well. While not quite as large as a coffee-table book, it presents itself as if it belongs in that category with its rich and colorful illustrations, varied font sizes, and full page breakout quotes. It is a heavy book to hold, and while easy to read, exploring 87 different emotions and experiences is likely to tug at readers’ hearts along the way. This is a book that offers a thoughtful opportunity for reflection in a gift-worthy package.
This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a Wounded World by Norman Wirzba
November 2021
published October 2021
“Work is good when workers see how their efforts contribute to the thriving, beautification and celebration of the world.” –This Sacred Life, page 145
When I picked up Norman Wirzba’s new book, I expected to read a response to environmental crises like climate change and plastics in the ocean. While Wirzba is known for his work at the intersection of theology, philosophy and environmental studies, The Sacred Life is about far more than reckoning with the Anthropocene. The book explores what it means to be human and presents a vision for work, creativity, and relationships. It is a high view, where each chapter could be expanded into a full book; however, in bringing together history, philosophy and theology on issues ranging from transhumanism to exploitation to biology, Wirzba shows how these subjects are related, and provides a path toward flourishing.
No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear) by Kate Bowler
October 2021
published September 2021
Kate Bowler’s latest memoir, No Cure for Being Human (And Other Truths I Need to Hear), intersects with Virtues & Vocations’ emphasis on moral purpose in and beyond one’s profession. This second book about Bowler’s life after being diagnosed with stage IV cancer at age 35 particularly engages with the ways her heightened sense of mortality and uncertainty affected her professional identity. As the book describes Bowler grappling with whether her historical research was still a worthwhile pursuit, readers are prodded to consider why we work and what good work looks like in our limited lives. The narrative is also particularly relevant to people working in medicine, giving a patient’s perspective that enhances the conversation around healthcare and medicine in service of flourishing.
While the book opens questions of purpose, it does so gently, through a well told story that is at turns deep and funny. This is a quick but thoughtful read.
The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession by Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen
September 2021
“Medicine has lost its way because it lacks clarity about where the way should lead. We no longer have a shared public understanding of what medicine is for, of what the end of medicine is or should be.”
In The Way of Medicine, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen offer a teleological approach to medicine. They consider the good toward which medicine aims and place this good within a framework of human flourishing and traditional understands of the vocation of physician. They contrast the way of medicine to the provider services model, while acknowledging that the lived experiences of physicians do not fall neatly into one framework or another. In the process, they discuss how the way of medicine provides an antidote to physician burnout, and consider how it positions physicians to deal with some of the most pressing ethical issues of the day. While not every reader will agree with all their conclusions, The Way of Medicine is a thoughtful and important discussion of the practice and purpose of medicine.
A Round of Golf with My Father by William Damon
August 2021
published June 2021
Growing up, Stanford Education Professor William Damon believed his father had died in World War II. His father actually chose not to return, and established a new life and family for himself overseas. Over the years, there were clues that the family line about a deceased father was not true, but Damon chose to ignore them until a decade ago when his daughter called to share news of discoveries she had made when researching family history. That phone call led Damon to pursue the truth about his father. He details the process of his research in A Round of Golf with my Father.
Damon is best known for his work on moral purpose. Although one might imagine A Round of Golf with My Father as a departure from his previous books, he actually uses his family story as an opportunity to detail the process of “life-review” and how this psychological method for examining one’s life story can clarify issues of purpose and character. Rather than a straightforward account of Damon’s family story, the book unfolds with details about his father as examples of the concepts Damon has spent his career researching. It is a readable primer on the relationship between purpose, character, regret and gratitude that models a process of self-discovery through an engaging personal narrative.
A Burning: A Novel by Megha Majumdar
July 2021
For the summer newsletter, we decided to highlight a work of fiction.
“All I am guilty of, Purnendu, listen – all I am guilty of is being a coward.” – Jivan, p. 187
Megha Majumdar’s debut novel, A Burning, is classified in the “Mystery, Suspense and Thriller” category online, but this story is more about the three characters who narrate the book than about the trial at the center of the novel. As events unfold, each grapples with who they want to be and how they are viewed by society. They are faced with choices that test their convictions, commitments, and courage. While there are large, defining moments for each character, the book as a whole shows the ways in which the everyday decisions we make ultimately inform who we choose to be at decisive moments. On the other hand, the book also details sweeping systems of injustice so vividly that readers are likely to wonder, along with the characters, whether cowardice or courage even matter. This is, as labeled, a fast-paced book; it is not “light” summer reading. The fire in Majumdar’s novel shines light on some extremely dark places, and those images will remain seared in the reader’s imagination long after the last page of A Burning.
Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life by Zena Hitz
June 2021
“If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far from pointless wheel spinning as are the forms of tenderness we owe our children or grandchildren.” – Zena Hitz, Lost in Thought
Lost in Thought begins with Zena Hitz’s own story about feeling both useless and consumed with status as an academic. She writes about her journey back to a love of learning for its own sake, and then transitions to an examination of why an intellectual life is a good and worthy pursuit. She examines the purpose of learning through stories of individuals, from Malcolm X to Augustine. As she explores the intellectual life, she draws out questions of what it means to be human and what is good. This is not a comprehensive portrait of human flourishing or virtuebut a deep dive into one important component of life–one which is easily neglected. For anyone involved in education or who feels tempted to measure worth by utility, Lost in Thought is a pleasant read that makes a good case for the rewards of an intellectual life.
How to Change: The Science of Getting from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Katy Milkman
May 2021
Katy Milkman is an engineer turned behavioral economist who co-directs the Behavior Change for Good Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania with Angela Duckworth. In Milkman’s new book, How to Change, she tells a story about the first time she realized that perhaps she could change her own habits if she tackled her inability to change as if it were an engineering problem. Her success with this approach led her into behavioral economics, and she is now a leading expert in the field.
Because developing virtue involves cultivating habits, How to Change is a helpful guide to becoming more effective and efficient in pursuing good. It does not define moral purpose or character, but assumes that readers want to make changes that align with good ends. Indeed, at one point Milkman cautions that her findings on social conformity could be used for harm as well as good, and admonishes readers to practice discernment and moral courage if they sense others are using the tactics to coerce them. While not explicitly about virtue, How to Change provides practical guidance and insights into psychology that can help individuals who have reflected on moral purpose put intentions into practice.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future by Elizabeth Kolbert
April 2021
At the conclusion of Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert writes,“This has been a book about people trying to solve problems created by people trying to solve problems” (200). While that summary is an accurate description of the uniting thread in the book, it does not capture the compelling narrative that precedes it. Under a White Sky is certainly looking at some of the massive problems of the Anthropocene, but it does so through stories that tie the large issues facing humanity to the everyday experiences of individuals who are baking fish candy to catch carp or pulling carbon from the air and transforming it into stone.
Many of the individuals in these stories are scientists and engineers. The US Army Corps of Engineers is a prominent character in more than one section of the book. At Virtues & Vocations, we often discuss the ways in which “good” engineering requires more than technical competence. Under a White Sky make a case for virtue in engineering without using those terms. Creating a technical solution to a single problem has a history of creating other problems, and yet, our future depends on these solutions. What are the habits of mind that must be cultivated if we are to implement solutions wisely? What does it look like to empathize with all stakeholders (not just human), to desire beauty, to pursue justice? How do we teach creativity and courage along with humility? What does practical wisdom look like when the tradeoffs are large and the urgency increasing? Kolbert does not answer these questions for us, but her latest book moves us toward asking the questions that matter most.
Vallor’s Technomoral Virtues: A Critical Update for Virtue Ethics
March 2021
Review by Jolynn Dellinger
Visiting Lecturer and Kenan Senior Fellow, The Kenan Institute for Ethics
In Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting, Shannon Vallor provides a critical, contemporary update to Aristotelian virtue ethics, deftly adapting that foundational ethical framework to the realities of our technological, data-driven era. Pursuing the question, “How can humans hope to live well in a world made increasingly more complex and unpredictable by emerging technologies?” Vallor draws on Western philosophical traditions, and Confucian and Buddhist ethics to offer a thought-provoking explication of twelve “technomoral” virtues: honesty, self-control, humility, justice, courage, empathy, care, civility, flexibility, perspective, magnanimity and technomoral wisdom. She then examines these virtues in specific modern contexts including social media, surveillance, and robots at war and at home, providing practical analyses to elucidate her theoretical and conceptual work.
Much of the conversation at the intersection of technology and ethics addresses the role emerging technologies play in our individual lives and in the evolution of society as a whole. This conversation, in turn, necessitates an understanding of the importance of our role as human beings in the creation, design, implementation, use, adoption and proliferation of these technologies. At every step of innovation, we have choices to make. Vallor’s book provides thoughtful, “technosocially”-informed insight as to the values and moral habits we need to cultivate to help guide those choices. I recommend this book as an enlightening read but also as a reference book and resource.
“Technologies are not stone tablets delivered from on high. They are malleable human creations that can be reshaped in the service of living well if our collective will demands it” (174). Reading this book can help us rise to this challenge — as individuals, as a society, and as citizens of a globally interdependent, connected world. So… what should we demand, together, to create the future we want?
Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to A Future Worth Wanting, Oxford University Press (2016)
Think Again by Adam Grant
February 2021
Think Again by Adam Grant explores why and how we should aim to be flexible thinkers. Through stories and easy-to-read social science summaries, Grant makes the case that it is beneficial to ourselves and society for us to think like scientists, holding our beliefs humbly and with a willingness to test them, as a scientist does a hypothesis. He explains how to practice this habit of mind, and how to convince others to rethink their ideas without creating hostility. Toward the end of the book, Grant gives practical advice for how these ideas could transform our classrooms and workplaces, and why this would be good for all of us. Think Again, at the end of a year when “we’ve all had to put our mental pliability to the test” and when polarization continues to wreak havoc, offers an encouragement in navigating the present instability and a path toward defusing the charged landscape of polarized opinions.
“I believe good teachers introduce new thoughts, but great teachers introduce new ways of thinking.” -Adam Grant (page 203 of Think Again)
In Shock by Rana Awdish
January 2021
“I knew instinctively that if pain of that magnitude continued, it would kill me.”
In Shock begins with a nail-biter: the pregnant woman on the gurney is in excruciating pain and crashing fast. On the edge of consciousness, she hears someone above her say,
“We’re losing her.”
“Guys! She’s circling the drain here!”
She has the out-of-body experience, sees herself from above, the medical team working furiously around her, the glare of surgical lights on metal table and ceramic tile.
And then she sinks below the surface…
In this beautiful memoir, Rana Awdish, MD, tells her story of becoming a dying patient, enduring multiple organ failures and major surgeries, and being treated by highly-skilled but emotionally detached doctors in the very hospital where she is an attending physician. Her experience with critical illness dismantles the understanding of disease and healing she built in medical school, residency, and practice. Before she could truly learn to heal others, she had to learn from her own fragile and resilient body what it means to be sick.
In Shock: My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope is a riveting and intimate medical thriller; it also takes a critical look at Western medicine, how we prepare doctors, and our current standards of care. Awdish calls for a new paradigm that places compassion and emotional connection at the center of the doctor-patient relationship, rather than cool professionalism and “safe” distance, a shift that acknowledges the humanity and vulnerability of both patient and physician. Her experience completely changed her approach to training residents and interacting with the community at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Read In Shock for a vision of what healthcare can and should be.
You can also hear Dr. Awdish and her caring team on This American Life, recorded in June, 2020, after the initial, exhausting peak of COVID-19.
Mathematics for Human Flourishing by Francis Su
December 2020
Highly recommended.
If someone said to you, “I have a great book on math and virtue,” you might imagine a dry, niche read that only appeals to the most devout math or philosophy enthusiasts. Mathematics for Human Flourishing by Francis Su is about math and virtue; however, it is anything but dry. Easy to read, funny, and clever, Mathematics for Human Flourishing not only makes a case for the beauty of math, it also promotes a view of education that is deeply human and inspiring.
In addition to explanations of how the way one studies math can cultivate virtues and promote things such as meaning, justice, and community, Su intersperses mathematical brain teasers at the end of each chapter, giving the reader practice at the sort of mathematical exploration and play he is describing. Throughout the book there are also excerpts from letters written to Su by Christopher Jackson, an inmate in a federal prison who contacted Su to ask for help learning math. This structure of the book, along with the content, creates a reading experience that nourishes the mind and soul as one considers what it means to be human and humane.
Those who have tasted beauty and its virtues will welcome practice as a way to taste it again and again. For when we experience beauty that stirs us, we long for more. Of all the virtues cultivated by mathematical beauty, this may be the most important one of all: the disposition toward beauty. … A disposition toward mathematical beauty is the engine of mathematical persistence.Francis Su
The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? by Michael J. Sandel
November 2020
Highly recommended.
But a perfect meritocracy banishes all sense of gift or grace. It diminishes our capacity to see ourselves as sharing a common fate. It leaves little room for the solidarity that can arise when we reflect on the contingency of our talents and fortunes. This is what makes merit a kind of tyranny, or unjust rule. –Sandel, p. 25.
In his new book, The Tyranny of Merit, political philosopher Michael Sandel is worried about our democracy and sets out to excavate the roots of the all too apparent decline in both social bonds and respect in public discourse. In this quick and thoughtful read, Sandel draws upon his characteristically commonsensical prose to argue that a pernicious myth of meritocracy has eroded a sense of common good in the United States.
This book joins a series of recent critiques of meritocracy including Daniel Makovitz’s 2019 The Meritocracy Trap. Like Makovitz, Sandel takes aim at inequality, arguing that our meritocratic system is now sowing discontent even amongst its beneficiaries; however, Sandel is more squarely focused on restoring the common good and democratic politics. Populism, Sandel argues, is a response to the tyranny of merit and the misguided notion that social positions in our society are near perfect reflections of effort and talent. This notion is what allows the successful to imagine their success is of their own making–owing to their special, superior virtue. It also allows us to imagine those less no successful are conversely not so virtuous. He reminds us that most Americans do not in fact have a college degree. He notes, “by telling workers that their inadequate education is to blame for their troubles, meritocrats moralize success and failure and unwillingly promote credentialism—an insidious prejudice against those who have not been to college” (p. 89).
For Sandel, credentialist prejudice along with an ethic of success are core dimensions of meritocratic hubris. “To reinvigorate democratic politics, we need to find a way to a morally more robust public discourse, one that takes seriously the corrosive effect of meritocratic striving on the social bonds that constitute our common life” (p. 31). Here we see this book is also a poignant call for the moral renewal of civic life. Ultimately, Sandel makes a plea for humility as a civic virtue as an antidote to the meritocratic hubris at the root of our current political dysfunction. “Humility is the beginning of the way back from the hard ethics of success that drives us apart. It points beyond the tyranny of merit toward a less rancorous, more generous public life” (p. 227).
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