|
The Divided Family in Civil War America
Amy Murrell Taylor (Grad ’96, ’01)
University of North Carolina Press
In hundreds of border state households, brothers and sisters fought one another, fathers and sons argued over secession and husbands and wives struggled with opposing national loyalties. Taylor studied letters, diaries, newspapers and government documents to understand how families coped with the unprecedented intrusion of war in their private lives.
If You Could See Me Now: A Chronicle of Identity and Adoption
Michael Mewshaw (Grad ’66, ’70)
Unbridled Books
The best-selling novelist and investigative reporter turns to memoir with this book. In the 1960s, Mewshaw helped a former girlfriend through a birth and adoption process in Los Angeles. When the child contacts him years later—mistakenly thinking he’s her father—he decides to help her find her biological parents. Along the way, Mewshaw is forced to confront his own past and complicated memories of the woman he once loved.
The Truth About the Five Primary Religions & the Seven Rules of Any Good Religion
Laura M. George (Com ’83)
The Oracle Institute Press
Why aren’t we living in a more peaceful and purposeful world? The author explores Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam and how they have forgotten or failed in their essential purpose. The book argues that these ancient religions have polarized humanity and promoted intolerance instead of assisting mankind toward a higher spiritual plane. In addition to chapters on the lessons of the major prophets, the book enumerates the seven essentials of any good religion: philosophy, science, morality, justice, inclusiveness, openness and spirituality.
Finishing Touches
Michael A. Chitwood (Grad ’86)
Tryon Publishing
An award-winning author of four volumes of poetry, Chitwood’s latest effort is a collection of essays and fiction. The essays range in topic from his brother-in-law’s pumpkin business to the death of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe. The short fiction covers a range of territory, too, from a hairless tattooed dog to an ailing professor who is visited in the hospital by Jesus.
London Is the Best City in America
Laura Dave (Grad ’03)
Viking
The protagonist in Dave’s first novel is Emmy Everett, who has been living in a tiny fishing village in Rhode Island and working at a tackle shop since jilting her fiance three years earlier. When she reluctantly returns to Scarsdale, N.Y., for her brother’s wedding, she is forced to grapple with a series of life-altering decisions.
New Spirits: Americans in the Gilded Age, 1865-1905
Rebecca Edwards (Grad ’95)
Oxford University Press
Rejecting the stereotype of a "Gilded Age" dominated by robber barons, Edwards looks closely at the period when the U.S. became a modern industrial nation, beginning with Emancipation and ending with the first deployment of U.S. troops overseas. She considers a number of viewpoints, including native-born Anglos, Native Americans, African Americans and an array of Asian, Mexican and European immigrants.
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
Jonathan Haidt (faculty)
Basic Books
An associate professor of psychology, Haidt offers a way to construct a life of virtue, happiness, fulfillment and meaning. He identifies 10 "Great Ideas" that have been discovered by the world’s civilizations and devotes a chapter to each, questioning them in light of what we now know from scientific research, and extracting lessons that still apply to modern life.
Black Lebeda
Edited by Jamie H. Cockfield (Grad ’72)
Mercer University Press
A vivid picture of Soviet Russia during the Great Hunger emerges from this edited diary of J. Rives Childs, who worked with the American Relief Administration in Russia from 1921 to 1923. Childs kept a diary throughout his tenure as a Kazan district supervisor, detailing the grisly famine conditions. He also provides a rare view of local government functions during the early years of the Soviet Union, and a firsthand account of the early days of Lenin’s famous New Economic Policy.
The Barefoot Home: Dressed-Down Design for Casual Living
Marc Vassallo (Grad ’95)
The Taunton Press
The American lifestyle is increasingly informal, and it’s no surprise that our living quarters are following suit. Enter the barefoot home: relaxed, open, filled with light and connected with the outdoors. With glossy spreads of houses that epitomize this quality of informal living, this coffee table book pinpoints the design elements that homeowners can incorporate for that "barefoot spirit."
Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850
Maya Jasanoff (faculty)
Alfred A. Knopf
Winner of the 2006 Duff Cooper Prize, Britain’s most prestigious award for a nonfiction work, Edge of Empire takes an unconventional approach in documenting the formation of the British Empire. Digging in unexplored records in archives and museums on four continents, Jasanoff describes life in India and Egypt through the eyes of little-known European collectors. As they gathered up art works, manuscripts and other artifacts, these marginal figures mirrored the piecemeal and haphazard formation of the empire itself.
Revelations of a Single Woman
Connally Gilliam (Col ’87, Educ ’90)
Tyndale House Publishers
Calling herself "unintentionally" single, the author relates her struggles with singlehood and how she reconciles her Christian faith as a single woman in a Sex and the City world. Through personal stories and those of other women, she reflects on relationships, career, community, family and God’s place in everyday existence. Gilliam is a faith-based life coach in Washington, D.C.
Hardly Working at College: The Overachieving Underperformer’s Guide to Graduating Without Cracking a Book
Chris Morran (Arch ’97)
Simon & Schuster
This entertaining send-up covers everything from why turning in an unreadable first draft is always a good idea to how to avoid group projects while still claiming all the credit. Morran arms students with ingenious strategies for making the dean’s list every semester without taking notes in class or even buying books—but it’s all meant as a joke. An award-winning playwright, actor and comic, he’s been hailed as the "idol of the idle" for his earlier book in this series, Hardly Working: The Overachieving Underperformer’s Guide to Doing as Little as Possible in the Office.
Dear Papa, Dear Hotch: The Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway and A.E. Hotchner
Edited by Albert J. DeFazio III (Grad ’92)
University of Missouri Press
Hotchner was a young man when he met the famed writer in Cuba in 1948, and he later served as the authorized adapter of Hemingway’s stories for movies, plays and television. Their collected letters, spanning the period from that initial meeting to Hemingway’s suicide in 1961, provide a glimpse into the writer’s life and obsessions and the psychological turmoil that led to his death.
American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces
Edited by Louis Nelson (faculty)
Indiana University Press
What is meant by sacred space? Not limited to churches, temples and mosques, it embraces a diverse set of spaces and buildings. The essays in this volume cover church architecture but also nature worship and Central Park; the urban practice of Jewish space; the mezuzah and domestic sacred space; and the spiritual aspects of African-American yard art.
Nobody’s Perfect
Marlee Matlin and Doug Cooney (Col ’78)
Simon & Schuster
A novel for young readers, Nobody’s Perfect is a companion to the book Deaf Child Crossing. Drawing on her own childhood experiences, Matlin—the first deaf actor to win an Academy Award—continues the story of Megan, a spirited fourth-grader coping with the difficulties of growing up deaf.
Trackside Around Charlottesville, Virginia, 1967-1984
Jeremy F. Plant (Grad ’69, ’75)
Morning Sun Books
A professor of public policy and administration at Penn State University, Plant has written 27 other books on a very different subject: railroading. His latest, with more than 200 color photos taken when he was a graduate student in government at U.Va., covers railroading in and around Charlottesville, from the Southern Railway and Seaboard Coast Line to short lines such as the Chesapeake Western and Virginia Blue Ridge.
Building Houses Out of Chicken Legs: Black Women, Food & Power
Psyche A. Williams-Forson (Col ’87)
University of North Carolina Press
Williams-Forson explores material ranging from commercial advertisements to the comedy of Chris Rock, from cookbooks to literature, to analyze how black women have used food as a form of cultural work. She explores the ways that black women have forged their own self-definitions and relationships to the "gospel bird," and argues that the traditions of feminism are inherent in the foods they prepare and serve.
The Up and Up
Lee Irby (Col ’86)
Doubleday
Returning to the hard-boiled world of the Roaring Twenties that he created in his critically acclaimed crime novel, 7,000 Clams, Irby continues the saga of Frank Hearn, a charming but ill-fated bootlegger. Hearn is ready to leave behind his high-stakes lifestyle and finally stake his claim in the world—and no place promises a quicker route to the good life than Miami. When he becomes accused of murdering his business partner, his troubles are only beginning.
<PREVIOUS ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE>
|
