Great Reads for 2025

 Directed Evolution
(American Chemical Society Publications)

Co-authors Aaron Leconte, associate professor of chemistry at Pitzer, and Clair M. Colee SCR’23 have written an excellent primer that serves as a starting point for any scientist interested in a field that seeks in the lab to mimic the natural evolutionary process of molecules. One of the biggest challenges to starting work in the field of directed evolution is that it requires a different style of thinking than other areas of chemistry. In the first chapter, the authors describe this different mentality and then give an overview of the field: what it is, why it is useful, how evolution is applied in the lab, and how evolution can be applied for human benefit. Chemistry professors, according to the publisher, highly recommend Directed Evolution as a necessary first step for junior scientists who are beginning undergraduate or postgraduate work in the field. For more on Leconte's research, see Faculty Distinctions.
 

Liberating the Classroom: Healing and Justice in Higher Education
(Johns Hopkins University Press)

In her new book, CASA Pitzer Director and Pitzer Professor Tessa Hicks Peterson shows how universities can transform into places that directly disrupt injustice and work toward personal and collective liberation. Hicks Peterson’s book is an important contribution in placing the claims of social justice, personal and social healing, and holistic pedagogy within a dialogue that is at once passionate and deeply considered. The book also presents thinkers and practitioners who provide distinct but connected resources for realizing that vision. Hicks Peterson explores the kind of changes in pedagogical practice, campus culture, academic-community relationships, and institutional structures that are needed to create these spaces in higher education. 

 

Deep Water Alchemy: Extractive Mediation and the Taming of the Seafloor
(University of Minnesota Press)

Set against the backdrop of climate change, energy transition, and the expansion of industrial offshore extractions, Pitzer Media Studies Professor Lisa Yin Han’s book rigorously examines oceanic media and its representation of the seabed in terms of valuable resources. From high-tech simulations to laboratories and archives that collect and analyze sediments, Han explores the media technologies that survey, visualize, and condition the possibility for industrial resource extraction. Stefan Helmreich, author of A Book of Waves, says Han tells an important story “vital to our present, when deep-sea oil drilling, deep-sea mining, and the state of the sea, are under grave distress from human enterprise.” 


 


 

 

Always a Song: Singers, Songwriters, Sinners & Saints
(Chronicle Prism)

In this memoir, now in paperback, Ellen Harper ’87, owner of the Folk Music Center in Claremont and mother of musicians Ben, Joel ’95, and Peter Harper ’96 P’27, shares vivid memories of growing up in Los Angeles during the transformational decade of the 1960s among famous and small-town musicians. This beautifully written collection includes stories of Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Baez, The New Lost City Ramblers, Doc Watson, and many more. Harper also touches on pivotal cultural and historic events from the love-ins, women’s rights protests, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the popularization of the sitar and the ukulele. It’s a must-read for lovers of music, history, and for those nostalgic for the acoustic echo of the original folk music that influenced a generation.  


 

The Pitfalls of Family Rule: Patronage Norms, Fmailiy Overreach, and Political Crisis in Kazakhstan and Beyond
(Cornell University Press)

Barbara Junisbai, associate professor of organizational studies at Pitzer, questions the conceptual divide separating democracy from nondemocracy as well as that separating “strong” authoritarian rulers from “weak” ones. Focusing on patronage endemic to post-Soviet Eurasia but also present the world over, she uncovers intra-elite conflict fomented by the greed and ambition of presidential family members as they compete with other elites for access to economic resources and political power. Incorporating multiple case studies, including an in-depth investigation into Kazakhstan over the span of 20-plus years, Junisbai demonstrates the power of institutional norms to hold seemingly unconstrained rulers accountable in surprising and unexpected ways. According to Eric McGlinchey of George Mason University, Junisbai’s study significantly contributes to our understanding of authoritarianism and of post-Soviet Eurasia in particular. In McGlinchey’s view, the book will “reshape how we approach the logic of patronage politics.” 

A Gaza of Siege and Genocide
(Ebook: Mizna)

Gazan poet Yahya Ashour, a visiting professor in Pitzer’s English and world literature field group, shares a special electronic book of excerpted verses (with his own illustrations) from poetry he has written while in exile. All proceeds from sales of the book go toward helping Ashour’s 19 family members survive the dire situation in Gaza and find safety in Egypt. Ashour’s poetry has been translated into several languages, including Spanish, English, French, Japanese, and Bengali. Ashour studied sociology and psychology and served as a creative writing mentor in Gaza. 

Walker in the Evening
(Ruby Violet Publishers)

Nick Owchar, editorial director in Pitzer’s Office of Communications, offers a debut novel that is a page-turning gothic tale melding—through one unforgettable character—the contrasting worlds of 1880s literary London and a struggling Ukrainian village. Philippa Gregory, author of the best-selling The Other Boleyn Girl, calls A Walker in the Evening “an absorbing novel about how we struggle to come to terms with past mistakes.” Owchar is former deputy editor of books coverage for the Los Angeles Times. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Chronicle Books, and other publishing outlets.