{"id":18672,"date":"2022-07-18T16:13:57","date_gmt":"2022-07-18T16:13:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/160-news\/?p=18672"},"modified":"2026-02-27T22:47:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T22:47:17","slug":"shelf-conscious-erik-larson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/2022\/07\/shelf-conscious-erik-larson\/","title":{"rendered":"Shelf Conscious: Erik Larson"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Talia Bank ’23<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sociology professor and legal studies codirector <\/em>Erik Larson teaches courses on the <\/em>sociology of law, economic sociology, and <\/em>comparative-historical sociology.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Any standout books you\u2019ve read <\/strong>recently?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the <\/em>Afterlife of Mass Incarceration<\/em>, by Reuben Jonathan Miller, is based on participant-observation research Miller conducted with people who had been released from incarceration and draws on his observations of his own and his family\u2019s experiences. It gets to the wider cultural understandings that we place on people trying to become part of society again after they\u2019ve been stripped of societal membership.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s one of your all-time favorite reads?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Independent People<\/em>, by Halld\u00f3r Laxness, is a novel set in the early twentieth century about a poor farmer in rural Iceland whose main goal is to not have to depend on other people. The book has sharp, witty criticism of the widely held belief that being independent makes life good. Yet, Laxness portrays the main character as a whole person, helping a reader get a sense of how people come to believe in that fantasy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What book is crucial to understanding your <\/strong>academic niche?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m going to cheat and list two. The Common Place of Law<\/em>, by Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, shows how law endures as a powerful structural and cultural force by giving us flexible ways to enact ideas from law in everyday life. The Sense of <\/em>Dissonance<\/em>, by David Stark, gives insight about innovation, ideas, and thinking. Stark persuasively shows how innovation emerges from the interplay of values in tension, by combining things in new ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s something you love to read that we <\/strong>might not expect?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

One not immediately related to questions that I teach about is Sevens Heaven<\/em>, by Ben Ryan. He was the coach of Fiji\u2019s men\u2019s rugby team that won the gold medal at the 2016 Olympics in Rio\u2014the first Olympic medal in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What one book would you recommend to everyone at Macalester?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

An odd recommendation: The Oxford English Dictionary<\/em> is twenty volumes; it takes up a lot of shelf space. But it is such a great dinnertime thing\u2014a word comes up and it\u2019s like, \u201cWait, have you ever thought about that?\u201d We look it up together, and flip through the volume to see what else is around it. There\u2019s something about that experience of serendipity.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ever wonder about all those books lining professors\u2019 offices? We\u2019re with you.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1077,"featured_media":18734,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[58],"class_list":["post-18672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","tag-sociology","mediatype-articles"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"fields":{"article_type":[8],"flickr_photoset_id":"","youtube_id":"","square_thumbnail":false,"press_photos":false,"story_title":"","story_caption":"","rotations":false,"maps":false,"marker_title":"","marker_text":"","geographic_location":false,"feature_embed":"","custom_link_url":"","news_icon_name":"","image_options":false,"main_feature_story":"","custom_image":false,"custom_feature_title":"","custom_feature_caption":"","custom_markup":"","custom_markup_link":"","custom_markup_title":"","custom_markup_caption":"","byline":"","post_thumbnail_style":"default","press_downloads":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1077"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18672"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30837,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18672\/revisions\/30837"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.macalester.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}