Fresh Ink

January 7th, 2014

 

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Promise Land: My Journey Through America’s Self-Help Culture, by Jessica Lamb-Shapiro ’99 (Simon & Schuster).
With a wary eye Lamb-Shapiro walks on hot coals, visits a grief camp for children, takes a class to battle her fear of flying, and surveys a library’s worth of self-help volumes in a memoir that reads like a travelogue from a vast and somewhat familiar territory. The big underlying thread here is how Lamb-Shapiro and her father, a therapist who also writes self-help books, begin to discuss the loss of her mother, who died when Lamb-Shapiro was two.
 
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Bully Nation: Why America’s Approach to Childhood Aggression is Bad for Everyone, by Susan Eva Porter ’87 (Paragon House).
Are there more bullies now than ever before? Porter, a longtime educator and clinical psychologist, doesn’t think so. Instead she argues that our definitions of who is a bully and what counts as bullying have expanded to cover too broad a range of behaviors and that the current solutions are only making the problem worse. An intriguing read for parents, teachers, and anyone who knows a kid.

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The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe by David I. Kertzer’69 (Random House). Incorporating seven years of research in Vatican archives, Kertzer, Dupee Professor of Social Studies and professor of anthropology and Italian studies at Brown, traces the partnership of convenience between Pius XI and Mussolini. When an increasingly regretful pope threatened to denounce Mussolini, Il Duce’s Vatican sympathizers strove to silence the Pope in order to preserve the benefits of the alliance.

 

ALUMNI NONFICTION

Eating Right in America: The Cultural Politics of Food and Health by Charlotte Biltekoff  ’00 AM, ’06 PhD (Duke).T

Train Your Mind for Peak Performance by Lyle E. Bourne Jr. ’53 and Alice F. Healy (American Psychological Association).

Col. William Marsh Vermont Patriot and Loyalist by Jennifer S. H. Brown ’62 and Wilson B. Brown ’61 (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform).

Remodelista: A Manual for the Considered Home by Julie Carlson ’83 and the editors of Remodelista.com (Artisan).

Commemorating The Holocaust: The Dilemmas of Remembrance in France and Italy by Rebecca Clifford (Oxford).

Another City Upon a Hill: A New England Memoir by Joseph A. Conforti ’72 AM, ’75 PhD (Tagus)

The Work of Poverty: Samuel Beckett’s Vagabonds and the Theater of Crisis by Lance Duerfahrd ’90 (Ohio State).

A Doctor’s Dilemma by David Gagnon ’74, ’77 MD (Piscataqua).

Anatomy of Steampunk: The Fashion of Victorian Futurism by Katherine Gleason ’82 (Race Point).

Carrying the Torch: Maude Howe Elliott and the American Renaissance by Nancy Whipple Grinnell ’04 AM (Univ. Press of New England).

Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence by Christina B. Hanhardt ’94 (Duke University).

Letters to an Incarcerated Brother: Encouragement, Hope, and Healing for Inmates and Their Loved Ones by Hill Harper ’88 (Gotham).

Touch the Sky: Find Your Voice, Speak Your Truth, Make Your Mark by Eleni Kelakos ’80 (Eleni Kelakos Enterprises).

Parlour Games and the Public Life of Women in Renaissance Italy by George McClure ’73 (University of Toronto).

Newton’s Football: The Science Behind America’s Game by Allen St. John and Ainissa G. Ramirez ’90 (Ballantine).

Brown University: The Campus Guide by Raymond P. Rhinehart ’62 (Princeton Architectural Press).

A Jewish Professor’s Political Punditry: Fifty Plus Years of Published Commentary by Ron Rubin ’63 AM (Syracuse).

The Call of Character: Living a Life Worth Living by Mari Ruti ’88 (Columbia).

Thank You, Anarchy: Notes From the Occupy Apocalypse by Nathan Schneider ’06 (University of California).

Leaving Russia: A Jewish Story by Maxim D. Shrayer ’89 (Syracuse).

First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America’s First Black Public High School by Alison Stewart ’88 (Chicago Review).

The Cape Town Convention: It’s Application to Space Assets and Relation to the Law of Outer Space by Mark J. Sundahl ’00 (Brill).

Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled Through the Joys of Single Living by Marion Winik ’78 (Skirt!).

Smart People Should Build Things: How to Restore Our Culture of Achievement, Build a Path for Entrepreneurs, and Create New Jobs in America by Andrew Yang ’96 (Harper Business).



ALUMNI FICTION

An Army of Lovers by David Buuck ’93 and Juliana Spahr (City Lights).

Killing Kin by Skye Knight Dent ’76 (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform).

North of Boston: A Novel by Elisabeth (Panttaja) Elo ’78 (Pamela Dorman).

No Alligators in Sight by Kirsten Bloomberg Feldman ’88 (KBFeldman).

Isaac Rules by Paul F. Hammond ’65 (Tate).

Women in Bed by Jessica Keener ’84 AM (Story Plant).

The Saint Luke Mystery by Chester Kisiel ’54 (Amazon Digital Services).

The Tenth Circle by Jon Land ’79 (Open Road Media).

The Witch’s Curse by Keith McGowan ’90 (Henry Holt).

Shahrazad’s Tooth and Other Short Stories by Gretchen McCullough ’84 (BookBaby).

The 14 Fibs of Gregory K. by Greg Pincus ’86 (Arthur A. Levine).

The Risk of Returning by Rudy Nelson ’52, ’71 PhD, and Shirley Nelson (TBM).

The Boy on the Bridge and Switched at Birthday by Natalie Standiford ’83 (Scholastic).

The Other Room: A Novel by Kim Triedman ’81 (Owl Canyon).


ALUMNI POETRY

Contemporary Prayers To* [Whatever Works] by Hannah Burr ’95 (Hannah Burr).

Intimacy by Catherine Imbriglio ’88 AM, ’95 PhD (Colorado State University Center for Literary Publishing).

Schistong by Annie Rachele Lanzillotto ’86 (Bordighera).

Marvelous Things Overheard by Ange Mlinko ’98 MFA (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).


ALUMNI NONFICTION

Slovakia: Fall in the Heart of Europe by Marek Bennett ’97 (Comics Workshop).


FACULTY NONFICTION

Seeing Race in Modern America by Matthew Pratt Guterl (University of North Carolina.

Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam by James A. Warren ’80 (Palgrave Macmillan).








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January/February 2014