LSA Reading List: Nonfiction Edition

• Lynn Anderson-Carpenter, advisor and lecturer in LSA’s Departments of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Biology, and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, has written an accessible book for understanding the countless ways that humans have altered the environment, called Man-Made: The Evolutionary Influence of Humans (Maize Books, 2023).

• Catherine Badgley, professor in the Residential College and in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and a research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, has co-edited At the Foot of the Himalayas: Paleontology and Ecosystem Dynamics of the Siwalik Record (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025), which investigates 20 million years of sediment to reveal the fossils and distant lives of elephant ancestors, rhinos, swamp rats, and sabertooth cats.

• A new book by history alum Jillian Berman (A.B. ’11), Sunk Cost: Who’s to Blame for the Nation’s Broken Student Loan System and How to Fix It (University of Chicago Press, 2025), takes on the fraught and timely topic of the student loan system, and the resulting long-term debt that plagues so many Americans.

• American Scare: Florida’s Hidden Cold War on Black and Queer Lives (Dutton, 2025) by English alum Robert W. Fieseler (A.B. ’03), has been hailed as a “vital exposé for both our history and our present day.” It examines how 20th century Black and queer Floridians were targeted by the racist and homophobic legislation of the Johns Committee during the era of the Second Red Scare and the Lavender Scare, under the guise of anti-communism.

• Residential College lecturer and children’s literature expert Elizabeth Goodenough co-edited the anthology What the Presidents Read: Childhood Stories and Family Favorites (Bloomsbury, 2025), which blends biography, history, literature, and psychology to consider how the childhood reading habits of U.S. presidents may have shaped who they became as national leaders.

• Lisa Nakamura, the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Culture, has written The Inattention Economy: How Women of Color Built the Internet (University of Minnesota Press, 2026), which examines the role of women of color in the history of technology, citing key innovations from microchips to MySpace to virtual reality.

• Worlds Apart: Genre and the Ethics of Representing Camps, Ghettos, and Besieged Cities (Columbia University Press, 2025) by English alum (M.F.A. ’01) Benjamin Paloff, who is also a professor of comparative literature and Slavic languages and literatures, asks important questions about how literary genres shape our historical memory of 20th century atrocities—and the ethics of storytelling.

           Illustration by Becky Sehenuk-Waite