UC Berkeley Library Update

Square Haunting: Five Writers in London Between the Wars
Francesca Wade

In 1928, when Virginia Woolf gave her lectures at Cambridge University titled A Room of One’s Own, Cambridge still did not give degrees to women, and would not until 1948. For women in Britain in the decades between the world wars, forging an independent life, let alone one of the mind, was a daunting challenge and almost impossible to achieve. Yet, a decade later, Woolf was living in London’s Mecklenburgh Square, writing a biography of the painter Roger Fry, with her husband operating a literary press in the basement.

Actually, a number of women, defying societal pressures and the odds, similarly managed to pursue their intellectual ideals in this same leafy, quiet square (which also saw some pretty festive partying). This book is a poignant and beautifully written account of the square hauntings of five of the women who lived there between 1918 and 1945: Woolf, novelist-theologian Dorothy Sayers, poet HD (Hilda Doolittle), economist Eileen Power, and classicist Jane Ellen Harrison. In its bohemian Bloomsbury setting, the residents “lived in squares, painted in circles, loved in triangles,” and this book is a fitting and fascinating tribute to their vibrant and revolutionary pursuit of autonomy, and ideas of their own.

ANN GLUSKER
Librarian for Sociology, Demography, & Research Methods;
Interim Librarian for Public Policy, Anthropology

The Hands of the Emperor
Victoria Goddard

In the aftermath of a worlds-shattering magical cataclysm, Cliopher Mdang works tirelessly to reform a bloated and broken bureaucracy into something that serves its people. He works side by side with the god-emperor of the old empire, literally untouchable, whose humanity has been denied for a thousand years. In a story about compassion, identity, and making the world a better place, Cliopher goes against millennia of tradition and taboo to extend a hand in friendship when he invites the Sun-on-Earth to come home with him on holiday. The mere suggestion could see him executed for blasphemy. Instead, it upends the world.

ANITA BROWN
Serials Processing Assistant
Bioscience, Natural Resources, & Public Health Library

Seveneves
Neal Stephenson

What would happen if the moon exploded? All the rules that govern our solar system would change – or rather, because the rules of physics would still be followed, everything about life on Earth would change irreversibly. This novel imagines in stunning detail a multicentury history of human life after the moon shatters, and the central role that women would play in it. Stephenson creates a rigorously science-based alternate reality peopled with compelling characters on complex adventures.

MICHELE RABKIN
Associate Director
Berkeley Connect

The Politics and the Constitution of Athens
Aristotle

An oldie but a goodie, Aristotle’s account of the political machine of fourth-century Athens is a fundamental tool for understanding the origins of political thought and how states formed institutions to order their state. Although Aristotle is attributed with some 158 accounts of other Greek constitutions, this is the only extant version of these works, which we only have by chance, as papyri containing portions of the text surfaced within the last century and a half and were pieced together by scholars.

ANDY HOGAN
Postdoctoral Fellow
The Center for the Tebtunis Papyri
The Bancroft Library

The Mountain in the Sea
Ray Nayler

This book is a gem – an entrancing page-turner taking place in the near future, where the existence of a society of highly intelligent and communicative octopuses comes into contact with humans. In narrating this encounter, the author explores deep questions on the nature of mind – the meaning of and requirements for sentience, and how mind, body, and world are intertwined. All of this in the context of a near-future world continuing to be plagued by environmental catastrophe and extreme human suffering. How might such an intimate meeting with the alien consciousness of cephalopods with a very different lens on the world inform our capacity to rewrite the rules?

DAVID PRESTI
Teaching Professor
Neurobiology and Psychology

White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple shares the remarkable and true story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick, an English East India Company officer, and his wife, Khair-un-Nissa, an Indian Muslim noblewoman. Their love story serves as a powerful reminder of the cultural amalgamations that thrived during 18th-century India, building bridges between India and the West through the intermingling of languages, art, religion, and politics.

However, this historical perspective seems unusual and ironic in contrast to the narrative that exists in the world’s consciousness of today, given the oppressive practices of cultural separation spurred on by racism and colonialism in 19th- and early 20th-century India. These practices led to the burning of the aforementioned bridges and the collective social awakening of a country seeking freedom and justice. In the shifting shadows of these opposing ideologies, Dalrymple provides new perspectives on the mechanisms of racism, colonialism, and globalization. He encourages the reader to examine the sociocultural fabric of our current existence and reconsider how the legacies of our past weave our future.

This book is well-researched and beautifully written, and has everything one could want: memorable characters, adventure, romance, espionage, betrayal, tragedy, and curated pictures that offer a glimpse into this forgotten world!

VINEETA RAM
Disability Specialist
Disabled Students Program