Interview with Roger Martin, author of Racing Odysseus

In the September 17 issue of Shelf Awareness: Daily Enlightenment for the Book Trade, the editors had a chance to interview Roger Martin, author of Racing Odysseus: A College President Becomes a Freshman Again. In the interview below, Martin talks about his love for books on classics and higher education.

On your nightstand now:

Colin Thubron's In Siberia. It's 90 degrees outside; plus I love reading travel books.

Favorite book when you were a child:

I didn't read much as a child and paid for it later on. But one of my earliest memories is reading Alan Moorehead's Gallipoli, which opened my eyes to history and to the world.

Your top five authors:

Homer, Plato, Herodotus, Plutarch and Aeschylus. Having had very little interest as a student in Greek literature and philosophy, I got to read these authors in my early 60s and only then realized how much I had missed.

Book you've faked reading:

Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (all 14 volumes), which I was required to read in Divinity School. To impress my professors and fellow students, I went to public places like the university library and pretended to be reading it. But I was actually sound asleep.

Book you're an evangelist for:

Derek Bok's Our Underachieving Colleges. Bok's thinking about higher education in America is quite profound.

Book you've bought for the cover:

Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics. All 14 volumes sit prominently on my bookshelf at home, and friends and colleagues who visit think that I am very smart.

Book that changed your life:

The Bible. It's not only great literature, but continually inspires me to be a better person.

Favorite line from a book:

A great line in Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins, Harry Ashmore's wonderful biography of the fabled president of the University of Chicago, says it all for college presidents like myself: "A university president has at least five constituencies: the faculty, the trustees, the students, the alumni, and the public. He could profitably spend all his time with any one of the five. What he actually does, of course, is to spend just enough with each of the five to irritate the other four."

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

I don't mean to overplay the Great Books theme, but the book I would read again for the first time is Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War. Written almost 2,500 years ago, it is about (among other things) the downfall of Athens when it tried unsuccessfully to impose its political and social values on the rest of the known world. This book is a "must read" for whoever gets elected the next President of the United States!