Jane Brox ’78 Silence: A Social History of One of the Least Understood Elements of Our Lives Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2019) The idea first came to Brox after a visit to the Cistercian abbey of Sénanque in the south of France in 2001: “I was so taken by its architecture and the complex understanding of […]
Tilar Mazzeo (English) Eliza Hamilton: The Extraordinary Life and Times of the Wife of Alexander Hamilton Gallery (2018) The hit musical Hamilton introduced theater audiences to Eliza Hamilton, wife—and eventually widow—of Alexander Hamilton. Mazzeo’s biography brings Eliza Hamilton fully to life in a meticulously researched and engagingly told account. In this telling, Hamilton is revealed […]
L. Sandy Maisel (Government) and Hannah Dineen ’17 Trumping Ethical Norms: Teachers, Preachers, Pollsters, and the Media Respond to Donald Trump Routledge (2018) This book was literally born on Mayflower Hill. Maisel, in his first class for Introduction to American Government in the fall of 2016, divulged his Democratic pedigree. That nod to transparency, however, […]
Elizabeth Finch (Museum of Art), Donna M. Cassidy, and Randall R. Griffey Marsden Hartley’s Maine The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017) This handsome and informative edition represents the first in-depth discussion of artist Marsden Hartley’s complex relationship with Maine, his home state. It was published to coincide with Marsden Hartley’s Maine, the exhibition organized by […]
Ben Lisle (American Studies) Modern Coliseum: Stadiums and American Culture University of Pennsylvania Press (2017) Lisle guides readers through the changes in stadium design since World War II, from urban ballparks like Ebbets Field and Fenway Park to the later iterations that turned from cities to the suburbs. In tracing this cultural change, Lisle examines […]
Tilar Mazzeo (English) Irena’s Children: A True Story of Courage Gallery Books (2016) Best-selling author Mazzeo turns her attention to the story of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who risked her life to smuggle some 2,500 Jewish children from Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Known as the “female Oskar Schindler,” Sendler used her credentials to enter the […]
Debra Spark (English) Unknown Caller LSU Press, Yellow Shoe Fiction (2016) The phone calls come at all hours of the night—Liesel, Joel’s first wife, who left the marriage suddenly and mysteriously years before, making her presence known in an unsettling and even chilling way. Spark’s new novel begins with one of the 2 a.m. calls […]
James R. Fleming (Science, Technology, and Society) Inventing Atmospheric Science: Bjerknes, Rossby, Wexler, and the Foundations of Modern Meteorology The MIT Press (2016) Fleming, a renowned scholar of atmospheric science and history, fixes his gaze on the period from 1900 to 1960, a time of rapid-fire breakthroughs that saw the field advance rapidly, year by […]
Winifred Tate (Anthropology) Drugs, Thugs,and Diplomats: U.S.Policymaking in Colombia Stanford University Press (2015) The aid package called Plan Colombia, passed by Congress in 2000, was intended to help Colombia fight drug trafficking,vanquish leftist guerrillas, and support peace and democracy. Most of the money went to the military, tied to paramilitaries that terrorized the population […]
Kate Bolick ’95 Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own Crown (2015) There is no better person to engage in an exploration of marriage mores than Bolick who, in this memoir/cultural study, proves to be both delightful company and a probing inquisitor who questions our societal assumptions and the pressures they create. Spinster, which earned rave […]
