Page Turners

Read any good books lately? Share your book recommendations with other Brunonians by sending e-mail to Events@brown.edu. Be sure to include your name, your title and department, the name of the book and author, and your brief critique. This week's page turners are:

Reda Bensmaia, professor of French studies

• The Colonizer's Model of the World: Geographical Diffusionism and Eurocentric History by J. M. Blaut:"I liked this book because it challenges some of the most pervasive beliefs concerning world history and particularly the'colonizability' of African and other'non-European' peoples. I think this book is indispensable if one wants to understand our postcolonial world."

Kate James, Web editor, the Brown University News Service

• The Way of All Flesh: The Romance of Ruins by Midas Dekkers:"Dekkers looks at our obsession with death and the macabre — both fear of and lust for. Probably not the best bedtime reading, but definitely a great read."

Anne Diffily, editor at large, Public Affairs and University Relations

• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell:"Written by a Ph.D. paleoanthropologist-turned-novelist, this 1997 page-turner is a blend of futuristic thriller, theology and sci-fi'first contact' genre. A Jesuit priest in the mid-21st century leads a mission to encounter and study an apparently intelligent civilization on a planet in another solar system. What Father Emilio Sanchez finds confounds his expectations and his faith, and tests his physical and spiritual core to the utmost."