Recommendations from our interns

Zoe Olivier, Julia Wilcox and Walker Mimms, interns from Bennington College, have volunteered at the Library during their winter break. They organized the Library’s periodicals collection, helping to determine what needs to be repaired, as some of the periodicals date back to the mid 1800’s. By digitizing what we have here at the library, they have made it easier for researchers who want to use the periodicals. They also helped at Circulation Desk, answered phones, as well as shelved and organized books. We are lucky to have their help and their book recommendations.

Zoe Olivier, Class of ’12
French and Playwriting

Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red

I credit Carson’s adaptation of the myths of Geryon and the Tenth Labor of Herakles  for having given me a second pair of eyes with which I look at the world and draw rich writing material.

Julia Wilcox, Class of ’14
French and Italian Literature

Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers

The story behind the world’s most famous forger is brilliantly told in ‘The Man Who Made Vermeers.’ I highly recommend this book if you’re interested in the art world and Europe during WWII, you won’t be able to put it down! A criminal or a talented artist? It’s up to you to decide.

Walker Mimms, Class of ’14
Literature Major

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans

Collaborative masterpiece – commissioned during Roosevelt’s New Deal – chronicling Agee and Evans’ three-month stay with Alabama tenant-farmers during the Depression. Agee’s text mostly comprises poetic ruminations on his host families’ conditions while Evans’ photography provides concrete testimony in the vein of Dorthea Lange’s work. The plot is almost stagnant, but I think it’s more moving than Steinbeck’s work.