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MIXED MEDIA
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Books
CHINA: ARCHITECTURAL GUIDE (DOM)
The megacities of China’s eastern seaboard have attracted increasing attention from architects and urban designers. EVAN CHAKROFF, E03, Addison Godel, and Jacqueline Gargus draw on years of experience leading architectural study tours for this unique English-language travel guide centered on recent Chinese architecture.
I DO: A WEDDING PLANNER TELLS TALES (iUniverse)
LYNDA BARNESS, J71, founder and owner of I Do Wedding Consulting in Philadelphia, dishes on the dizzying details that go into walking down the aisle. Her charming memoir includes ten years of anecdotes on everything from family squabbles to mishaps and mayhem on the big day.
THE CHAPEL (Counterpoint)
It’s rare enough to encounter an intelligent, complex female protagonist over the age of fifty, but to take her to Italy and give her a romance, while schooling the reader in Giotto and Dante, feels almost revolutionary. Master storyteller MICHAEL DOWNING, lecturer in English, gives us Elizabeth, a grieving widow and reluctant traveler who rediscovers herself through a burning curiosity about history’s first documented painting of a human teardrop.
DEAD RINGERS (St. Martin’s)
In this eerie new thriller by New York Times bestselling author CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN, A89, a group of troubled Bostonians begins seeing their doppelgangers around the city. Their search for answers unearths the century-old secrets of some long-dead occultists.
TO CAROLINE—LOVE, AUNTIE (Archway)
LINDA GRAFF (née Linda Mauriello Daly), G84, capped off a forty-one-year-career as a scientist and engineer with a debut novel about a woman making her mark in a male-dominated field. Like Graf, the novel’s protagonist wins a full scholarship for graduate study at Tufts School of Engineering, an experience that transforms her professional life.
BALD, FAT, AND CRAZY (Nothing But the Truth)
Thirty-seven-year-old STEPHANIE HOSFORD, BSOT96, was busy caring for one young child and adopting another from China when she discovered a hard, pea-sized lump in her breast. Within days of being diagnosed with stage one breast cancer, she also found out she was pregnant. With grace and humor, her heartfelt memoir chronicles her stranger-than-fiction saga, from her initial shock and despair, through medical appointments and wig shopping, to the joyous birth of her second child and eventual recovery.
GRACEFUL LIES (Wild Creek Press)
This collection by JOSEPH HURKA, lecturer in English, brings together twelve stories published over thirty years. All share flawed characters who elicit our empathy, even in their moments of protective self-delusion. In “The Candidate,” an adulterous presidential hopeful believes he can balance his precarious double life, and in the title story, one of several edited by Hurka’s mentor, Andre Dubus, a formerly overweight woman finds that slenderness creates its own set of problems. Just as affecting are his characters’ hard-won insights. In the autobiographical “Angry Boy,” an eight-year-old experiences the injustice of “the real world” for the first time, while in “After the Hurricane,” the husband of a devastated infertile woman confronts his own ambivalence about children.
STEVE JOBS AND PHILOSOPHY (Open Court)
SHAWN KLEIN, A95, edits the latest edition in the Philosophy and Popular Culture series. Nineteen provocative essays take a fresh look at Apple’s iconic innovator and his impact on society. One contribution dissects Jobs’s seemingly unrealistic expectations, or his “reality distortion field,” a reference to the illusions created by a fictional race on Star Trek. In fact, the essay concludes, in insisting on what seemed impossible, Jobs actually freed people from their own illusions of limitation. Another piece looks at Jobs’s comparatively paltry philanthropic record through the ethical lenses of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, and Immanuel Kant; others tackle his religious and metaphysical principles, his entrepreneurial instincts, and his perfectionism.
HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGIES OF CAPITALISM (Springer)
MARK LEONE, A63, and Jocelyn Knauf edited the second edition of this textbook, in which historical archaeologists discuss the consequences of racism, resource exploitation, and the creation of social classes. Chapters interpret capitalism in the past, as well as the processes that made capitalist expansion possible.
THE INTIMACIES OF FOUR CONTINENTS (Duke)
In this interdisciplinary critique of literary, archival, and philosophical texts from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, LISA LOWE, professor of English and of American studies, illuminates the connections between a nascent European liberalism, colonialism in the Americas, the transatlantic African slave trade, and the East Indies and China trade.
ATLANTOS (Pipes Canyon)
Los Angeles Times bestselling author ROBIN MAXWELL (NAN RUTER), J70, makes a bold foray into science fiction with this powerful novel that combines mythic history and Plato’s writings to imagine the cataclysmic struggle between two civilizations at the dawn of time.
THE ISLAND OF WORTHY BOYS (She Writes Press)
In this debut historical novel by CONNIE HERTZBERG MAYO, J86, two scrappy boys end up on the wrong side of the law in 1889 Boston and con their way into the Boston Farm School to hide. Located one mile from Boston Harbor on Thompson Island, the institution prides itself on the squeaky-clean records of its young charges. Can Charles and Aidan manage to keep their mishap a secret?
SCARS OF PARTITION (University of Nebraska)
WILLIAM F.S. MILES, F81, F82, draws on three decades of field—work to evaluate the long-term implications of French and British styles of colonialism and decolonization throughout the developing world. In particular, the book examines the legacies of the artificial boundaries that continue to divide indigenous people into separate postcolonial states.
THE DEVELOPING GENOME (Oxford)
Nature or nurture? Fascinating recent discoveries suggest that the answer to what determines the way we look, our personalities, and behavior is not just “both.” In fact, our experiences—from our environment and diet to parenting styles—manage to get under our skin and influence the activity of our genes. In this riveting and accessible introduction to the complex field of behavioral epigenetics, DAVID S. MOORE, A83, a professor of developmental psychology at Pitzer College and director of the Claremont Infant Study Center, walks us through cutting-edge research that could radically alter not only how doctors and mental health professionals treat diseases, but our entire understanding of human nature.
MINUTE ZERO (Putnam)
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State TODD MOSS, A92, brings back State Department crisis manager Judd Ryker (introduced in his first novel, The Golden Hour) in a gripping new tale of espionage and diplomacy. Set amidst a violent election in Zimbabwe, Moss’s latest thriller is inspired by Robert Mugabe’s refusal to relinquish the country’s presidency in 2008.
WHERE HAVE ALL THE ANIMALS GONE? (Bauhan)
Karl Ammann is an award-winning Swiss wildlife photographer who is dedicated to exposing environmental crimes. In this new memoir, DALE PETERSON, lecturer in English, describes his travels with the irascible Ammann through Africa and Asia, where they investigate conservation issues such as the sale of wild animal meat and ivory, the exchange of animal parts for Chinese medicine, and the collapse of wild animal populations across Africa.
THE MYELOMA YEAR (CreateSpace)
RONALD W. PIES, clinical professor of psychiatry, chronicles his wife’s long journey through myeloma, a cancer that affects the plasma cells, in this collection of ten yearning, evocative poems. Also included are six thought-provoking essays from Pies’s Tufts Magazine column, “Mind and Spirit.”
TAKING ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL RIGHTS SERIOUSLY IN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW (Cambridge)
EVELYNE SCHMID, F08, examines why considerations of economic, social, and cultural rights are neglected in international criminal law and in transitional justice more broadly.
SIZE DOESN’T MATTER: WHY small BUSINESS IS BIG BUSINESS! (Happy About)
After paying his corporate dues as an investment banker in the 1980s, JEFF SHAVITZ, A88, started and sold three companies and became an expert on entrepreneurship in the process. This helpful guide to leveraging the “small business boom” includes practical advice on everything from successfully growing a business to planning an exit strategy.
DYLAN GOES ELECTRIC (Dey Street)
Fifty years ago in July, Bob Dylan stunned audiences at the Newport Folk Festival by roaring into an electric version of “Maggie’s Farm,” followed by his new rock single, “Like a Rolling Stone.” The performance, which horrified acoustic- worshipping purists, signaled the end of the folk revival and the beginning of rock’s reign over the hearts of the young. ELIJAH WALD, G15, provides an in-depth look at this defining moment in American music history, delving into the myths surrounding Dylan and his complex relationship to the folk establishment, as well as the cultural, political, and historical context of an event that transformed the sixties.
FROM SILICON VALLEY TO SWAZILAND (Wheatmark)
Rick and WENDY WALLEIGH, J70, were ready to retire from their successful careers in Silicon Valley, but like many baby boomers, they were eager to stay active and engaged. After some soul-searching, they ended up mentoring entrepreneurs in Africa. Their experiences provide valuable insights for anyone who is interested in a service-oriented encore career.
THE GATES OF EVANGELINE (Putnam)
When HESTER YOUNG, J01, had a dream about a young boy adrift in a boat in a mysterious swampland, she knew she had to write about it. In her debut novel, a southern gothic thriller, the same little boy appears in her heroine Charlie Cates’s dreams. Soon Charlie finds herself at a sprawling mansion in Louisiana, where she becomes embroiled in a thirty-year-old missing-child case.
FILM/VIDEO
Amazon debuted two new dramas in August, including Casanova, produced by BEN SILVERMAN, A92. Shot on location in three countries, the would-be series focuses on a less-known phase of the legendary lover’s life—his time in Paris while in exile from his beloved Venice. Viewers watch the pilots on Amazon Instant Video and vote if they’d like more episodes. The other drama, Sneaky Pete, received a series order, but Casanova is still in contention. Watch the extremely not-safe-for-work episode here: bit.ly/casanovapilot.
Blog
JAMES OLCOTT, A80, calls his late father, Bernard, “the Lithuanian
Horatio Alger.” His new blog, “The Bernard Olcott Story,” is just that—a chronicle of his father’s incredible life, from his birth to immigrants in Queens to an electrical engineering degree, five divorces, at least four patents, the creation of a lucrative international business, and finally, a tragic battle with dementia.