Gregory Huber’s research examines the interaction of individuals and institutions in American politics. This summer, the Yale political scientist recommends a mid-20th-century book about America’s founders, along with two works of fiction: a novel of second chances and a classic that anticipated the virtual world.
Huber is the Forst Family Professor of Political Science in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a resident fellow of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS), and the director of the Center for the Study of American Politics. He is also an associate editor of the American Political Science Review.
Gregory Huber
What’s the last great book you read?
Gregory Huber: “Life after Life,” by Kate Atkinson. It isn’t a work of science fiction, but it imagines life as a choose-your-own adventure where you get re-dos. It’s wonderfully mind-bending and immersive.
Do you have a favorite book that you wish more people had read?
Huber: “Neuromancer,” by William Gibson. Published in 1984, it invented the term “cyberspace,” among other things, and anticipates a world 40 years in the future where we interact in virtual spaces.
Is there anything you’re reading for your area of expertise?
Huber: “Crisis in Freedom: The Alien and Sedition Acts,” by John C. Miller, published by Little Brown and Company in 1951. We think of efforts to criminalize and persecute the political opposition as somehow antithetical to core American values, but some of the founders, including John Adams, were willing to use the state to entrench themselves from the get-go.
