Summer Reads 2022

Need something new on your nightstand? Looking for a summer escape? Or need your next book club selection? We've got you covered. It's all the pleasures of a reading list, without the book report.

We asked some of Duke's most admired faculty members to contribute to our popular Lifelong Learning summer reading list. Each book includes five questions to consider while reading, direct purchase links, and an introduction video from the author.

Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People Without Homes

Nonfiction Social Science

5 Questions to Consider While Reading

  1. What are common stereotypes about unhoused people?
  2. How does Shelter Theology challenge those stereotypes?
  3. When assessing religious beliefs, how important is it to pay attention to how they function to offer hope, purpose, or some other positive good?
  4. How important is to get to know an unhoused person as a peer and not as someone to be fixed?
  5. Are there places in your community where people can form friendships with unhoused people?

Biography

Susan J Dunlap, Ph.D. is a Consulting Professor of Pastoral Theology at Duke Divinity School. In addition, she is the coordinator of the M.Div./M.S.W. dual degree program that the Divinity School shares with the University of North Carolina. Her teaching has been in the area of care of the sick and care for the bereaved. She also teaches two courses that integrate ministry and social work along with a colleague from UNC School of Social Work. She is an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) pastor and has served churches in both the Triangle area and Baltimore, MD. In Baltimore she was the pastor of a small church for four years before returning to school for a Th.M. from Duke and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. She has been on the Strategy Team of a community organizing group, Durham CAN, and serves on the board of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, where she also co-leads a grief group for family members of people who have died violently. She also serves as a volunteer chaplain at Urban Ministries of Durham. She is the author of three books, Counseling Depressed Women (1997), Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick (2009), and Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People Without Homes (2021). She lives in Durham with her husband, Dr. Prasad Kasibhatla, who teaches in the Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life

Nonfiction Social Science

5 Questions to Consider While Reading

  1. Many parents say that when their first child is born they believe in nurture, but after their second child is born they believe in nature. What do you believe? And why? 
  2. The book describes research that works like a “data pantry” for which thousands of people are studied closely all their lives starting from birth, and psychology professors visit the pantry to test their ideas. What’s good about this kind of science, and what’s risky?
  3. When reading the book’s chapters, can you imagine yourself as one of the study participants who have been studied from birth to midlife? Would you feel proud, or worried? Why? 
  4. The book tells the story of researchers who have worked together for decades. How are friendships among the researchers important for project success?
  5. The Origins of You shows that data collected as young as age three can predict how people behave as adults. But prediction is not perfect. Why is that important? 

Biography

Dr. Avshalom Caspi’s appointments include the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University and Professor of Personality Development, King's College, London. Caspi’s research spans the fields of psychology, epidemiology, and genetics. His work is concerned with three questions. (1) How do childhood experiences shape aging trajectories?, (2) How do mental health problems unfold across and shape the life course?, and (3) What are the best ways to assess and measure accelerated aging? Caspi is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the Rema Lapouse Award for Significant Contributions to the Scientific Understanding of Epidemiology and Control of Mental Disorders from the American Public Health Association. Dr. Caspi received his PhD in developmental psychology at Cornell University. He served on the faculty at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin before moving to London and then Duke. Just as soon as the world is safe and sane again, he will return to his travels, and for now he’s honing his photography and cooking and learning about farming. Learn more at www.moffittcaspi.com.

Dr. Terrie E. Moffitt’s appointments include the Nanerl O Keohane University Professor of Psychology, Duke University and Professor of Social Development, King's College, London. Moffit’s expertise is in the areas of lifelong aging, mental health, and longitudinal research methods. She is the associate director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows a 1972 birth cohort in New Zealand. She also founded the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study (E-Risk), which follows a 1994 birth cohort in Britain. Moffitt is a licensed clinical psychologist, with specialization in neuropsychological assessment. She is an elected fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, British Academy, and UK Academy of Medical Sciences. Her current service includes chair of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences at the National Academy of Sciences, chair of the National Institute on Aging’s Data-Monitoring Board, and chair of the jury for the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (Switzerland). Moffitt is a recipient of the Stockholm Prize, the Klaus Jacobs Prize, the NARSAD Ruane Prize, and the 2022 Grawemeyer Prize for her work on mental health, and the Maltilda White Riley Award from the NIH for her recent work on aging. Dr. Moffitt received her PhD in psychology at the University of Southern California and completed her postdoctoral training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She enjoys working on her poison-ivy farm in North Carolina. Learn more at www.moffittcaspi.com.

You Mean It or You Don't: James Baldwin's Radical Challenge

Nonfiction Social Science

5 Questions to Consider While Reading

  1. We began reading James Baldwin and writing together in response to police violence on campus and in our local community. How have you been impacted by events in your local community in recent years?
  2. This book is an introduction to James Baldwin's life and writing. What is one thing you learned about Baldwin from this text that surprised or delighted you?
  3. James Baldwin requires readers to reckon with the racial violence of U.S. history. What do you know about U.S. history, and what more do you want to learn?
  4. This book aims to help readers move from conviction to action. What is one belief that you hold with such conviction that you'd be motivated to take action in your community?
  5. In the end, Baldwin was an artist, and our book concludes with an invitation to readers to create art. What beautiful, creative things might you make and share?

Biography

Adam Hollowell teaches ethics and inequality studies at Duke University, where he directs the Global Inequality Research Initiative at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Jamie McGhee is a novelist, playwright, and essayist. For her fiction, she was named a James Baldwin Fellow in Saint-Paul de Vence, France, and a Sacatar Fellow in Itaparica, Brazil. She graduated from Duke University in 2016, where she was a Reginaldo Howard Scholar. She lives in Berlin, Germany.