Summer 2015
Bookshelf
Voices Against Silence by Alan Holder ’53. Holder’s collection of poetry ranges from the serious to the humorous, examining life’s small details as well as the large questions that arise from the human condition (Anaphora Literary Press, $15).
Bitter Bronx: Thirteen Stories by Jerome Charyn ’59. Novelist Charyn’s short story collection focuses on middle-class families and down-and-out individuals living in a borough devastated by “master builder” Robert Moses (Liveright, $24.95).
World History of Design Volumes 1 and 2 by Victor Margolin ’63. In the first two volumes of this three-volume work, the author catalogs design since the time of the earliest cave paintings, examining the artistic and professional endeavor as both a human and cultural practice (Bloomsbury Academic, $575).
Periphery: Israel’s Search for Middle East Allies by Yossi (né Joseph) Alpher ’64. The author explores Israel’s changing relationship with its neighboring states and allies in the Middle East (Rowman & Littlefield, $34).
Alone and Not Alone by Ron Padget ’64. Padget’s collection of poetry addresses themes of friendship, love and domesticity, humble pleasures and mortality (Coffee House Press, $16).
Concrete Jungle: New York City and Our Last Best Hope for a Sustainable Future by Niles Eldredge ’65 and Sidney Horenstein. The authors use New York City as a microcosm to explore the relationship between cities and the environment, demonstrating that cities represent the last hope for conserving the world’s ecosystems and species (University of California Press, $34.95).
Enabling Acts: The Hidden Story of How the Americans with Disabilities Act Gave the Largest US Minority Its Rights by Lennard Davis ’70. Twenty-five years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, Davis recounts the bill’s history, reflecting on its successes and shortcomings as well as the unique coalition that brought about the bipartisan bill (Beacon Press, $24.95).
The State of the Art: A Chronicle of American Poetry, 1988–2014 by David Lehman ’70. This book is a collection of Lehman’s forewords written for the annual publication The Best American Poetry; the author surveys cultural developments facing poetry, poets and readers in an increasingly technological and social world (University of Pittsburgh Press, $24.95).
Adventurism and Empire: The Struggle for Mastery in the Louisiana-Florida Borderlands, 1762–1803 by David Narrett ’73. The author shows how the United States succeeded Great Britain in the history of empire, focusing on the role of American frontiers in shaping the modern Atlantic world (The University of North Carolina Press, $45).
Guide to Intangible Asset Valuation by Robert F. Reilly ’75 and Robert P. Schweihs. Written for intellectual property experts in law, accounting and economics, this reference book details the process of identifying assets that have clear economic benefit while also providing the framework within which to value them (American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, $142.50).
That Train Again by Mark Statman ’80. This collection of poems explores the multiple worlds in which people love, work and dream (Lavender Ink, $16).
The House Tells the Story: Homes of the American Presidents by Adam Van Doren ’84. This book features images of the residences of 15 presidents, past and present, painted by Van Doren in water–color en plein air, along with essays about his experiences creating them. Historian David McCullough wrote the foreword (David R. Godine, $40).
Inventing Exoticism: Geography, Globalism, and Europe’s Early Modern World by Benjamin Schmidt ’86. The author studies how our modern understandings of exoticism and globalism are products of the ages of exploration and global empire (University of Pennsylvania Press, $85).
Escargotesque, or, What is Experience? by M.H. Bowker ’96. In this memoir, the author meditates on experience, engaging with the writings of philosophers such as Michel de Montaigne and John Dewey to find that the quest for experience may be more melancholy and destructive than people care to admit (Dead Letter Office, $15).
Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization by Elena Conis ’96. The author demonstrates how cultural acceptance of vaccines and vaccination policies depends as much on political and social concerns as on scientific findings (University of Chicago Press, $27.50).
Deep Code by John Coletti ’97. Coletti’s poetry portrays the contemporary urban experience, from power relations and personal loss to nights among city dwellers (City Lights Publishers, $15.95).
Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela ’00. Drawing on policy documents, personal letters, student newspapers and oral histories, the author charts how California and its citizenry responded to the social changes of the 1960s and ’70s to shape education (Oxford University Press, $35).
Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace by Nikil Saval ’05. Saval chronicles the evolution of the white-collar office space, investigating its effects on work life and examining alternative approaches to organizing the modern office (Anchor Books, $26.95).
Freedom’s Right: The Social Foundations of Democratic Life by Axel Honneth, the Jack C. Weinstein Professor for the Humanities. Honneth grounds Western liberal democratic ideas of normative and abstract theories of justice in morally legitimate laws and institutionally established practices (Columbia University Press, $35).
Deaths in Venice: The Cases of Gustav von Aschenbach by Philip Kitcher, the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy. The author considers how the novella Death in Venice, and its theater and film adaptations, treat the question of self-sacrifice in the pursuit of lasting achievements (Columbia University Press, $30).
Karl Daum ’15