New and Noteworthy
Six new books from UVA alumni and faculty
Betrayal at Little Gibraltar
by William Walker (Col ’66, Grad ’67)
In 1993, Walker, a military historian, discovered a handwritten margin note in a copy of The American Army in France, 1917–1919 claiming that the 1918 taking of Montfaucon was mishandled. Walker spent the next 20 years researching that claim and discovered that American officers’ subversions and cover-ups caused “the unnecessary slaughter of American doughboys.”
Monticello in Mind: Fifty Contemporary Poems on Jefferson
Edited by Lisa Russ Spaar (Col ’78, Grad ’82, Faculty)
The poems in this collection bring Jefferson and Monticello to life. Each poet, including Rita Dove, Charles Wright, Lucille Clifton and Robert Hass, examines Jefferson from a different angle, illuminating his complexities. “You’re so sharp & disagreeable/ to hold. Je t’adore,” writes Kiki Petrosino (Col ’01) in her poem, “Mulattress.”
Magic and Loss: The Internet as Art
by Virginia Heffernan (Col ’91)
Heffernan, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, makes the argument that the internet is “the great masterpiece of civilization” and can be savored as one would poetry, film or theater. Yet accompanying the internet’s “fantastic abstractions” is the loss of our predigital lives, a sense of mourning for “a handwritten letter … a leather-bound datebook.”
First Entrepreneur: How George Washington Built His—and the Nation’s—Prosperity
by Edward G. Lengel (Grad ’93, ’98, Faculty)
Unlike Thomas Jefferson, George Washington avoided personal debt. Lengel explores how Washington saved and invested money, eventually turning Mount Vernon into a profitable enterprise. Those experiences, Lengel says, “inspired his policies as president.”
Be Frank With Me: A Novel
by Julia Claiborne Johnson (Col ’81)
Alice Whitley, an assistant at a New York publishing house, is sent to Bel Air, California, to work for Mimi Banning, a reclusive novelist who is attempting to finish her long-awaited second book. Alice’s life is changed by Mimi’s brilliant and quirky 9-year-old son, Frank, who loves 1930s films, wears tailcoats and morning pants, but has few friends.
At Home in Two Countries: The Past and Future of Dual Citizenship
by Peter J. Spiro (Law ’87)
Initially a byproduct of 19th and 20th century trans-Atlantic migration, dual nationality was once thought of as a moral disgrace and a threat to international stability. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University, says that dual citizenship has now become “a fact of globalization,” and should be considered a political and human right.