Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye: A Family Field Trip to the Arctic’s Edge in Search of Adventure, Truth, and Mini-Marshmallows by Zac Unger ’96 (Da Capo). San Francisco tree-hugger and firefighter Unger drags his wife and kids to Churchill, Manitoba, to see whether it’s true that global warming is drowning polar bears and causing them to cannibalize one another. A self-mocking and witty observer, Unger learns as much about scientific politics as he does about bears.

Vodka: A Global History by Patricia Herlihy (Reaktion Books). A professor of history emerita, Herlihy is the author of the scholarly history The Alcoholic Empire: Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia, so it’s not surprising that this little book for a general reader is packed with insights into vodka’s poetic, economic, and destructive forces. Herlihy explains how, since its discovery in the fourteenth century, this flavorless spirit has been distilled, flavored, traded, and marketed internationally. She even gives a handful of recipes, including one for Jell-O shots.

 

Fra Keeler by Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi ’09 MFA (Dorothy, a Publishing Project). A man buys a house, sight unseen, and moves in, obsessed with the death of its former owner, Fra Keeler. At times this chilling but comic novel feels like a magically detailed dream. At others, it’s a nightmare. As influences, the author lists her Brown writing professors Brian Evenson and Robert Coover, as well as a long list of books and movies, including Hitchcock’s Vertigo, which this book resembles in its eerie, taut, and compulsive psychological pace.

 

 

ALUMNI FICTION

 

A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aronson ’86 (Bloomsbury USA). 

No Turning Back by Lidia Falcon, translated by Jessica Knauss ’04 AM, ’08 PhD (Loose Leaves Publishing). 

The Fun Parts: Stories by Sam Lipsyte ’90  (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Lenin’s Harem by William Burton McCormick ’92 (Knox Robinson Publishing).

The Pier Group: A Nantucket Mystery by Richard D. Thomson ’57 (Amazon Digital Services Inc.). 

 

 

ALUMNI NON-FICTION

 

Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009, edited by Anthony Arnove ’94 AM, ’98 PhD  (Haymarket Books).  

Which Sin to Bear?: Authenticity and Compromise in Langston Hughes by David E. Chinitz ’85 ScM (Oxford University Press).

Gold and Silver in the Mojave: Images of a Last Frontier by Nicholas Clapp ’57 (Sunbelt Publications).  

Sensing the Past: Hollywood Stars and Historical Visions by Jim Cullen ’88 AM, ’92 PhD (Oxford University Press).  

Leadership: Growing and Sustaining a Smaller Organization by Robert Follett ’50 (Alpine Guild, Incorporated). 

Racial Subordination in Latin America: The Role of the State, Customary Law, and the New Civil Rights Response by Tanya Kateri Hernandez ’86 (Cambridge University Press). 

A Misplaced Massacre: Struggling over the Memory of Sand Creek by Ari Kelman ’93 AM, ’98 PhD  (Harvard University Press).  

For the Survival of Liberty: Great Presidential Decisions by Elton B. Klibanoff ’64 (Dog Ear Publishing).  

L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir by Annie Rachele Lanzillotto ’86  (State University of New York Press). 

Food to Eat: Guided, Hopeful and Trusted Recipes for Eating Disorder Recovery by Lori Lieberman ’84 (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform). 

Networks Against Time: Supply Chain Analytics for Perishable Products by Anna Nagurney ’76, ’83 PhD; Ladimer S. Nagurney ’74 ScM, ’86 PhD; Min Yu; and Amir Masoumi (Springer). 

Every Word You Write … Vichy Will Be Watching You: Surveillance of Public Opinion in the Gard Department 1940–1944: The Postal Control System During Vichy France by Robert W. Parson ’59 (Wheatmark, Inc.).

The MILF Diet: Let the Power of Whole Foods Transform Your Body, Mind and Spirit … Deliciously! by Jessica Porter ’88  (Atria Books).  

Save Our Science: How to Inspire a New Generation of Scientists by Ainissa Ramirez ’90 (TED Conferences).

The Memoir of Lieutenant Dumont, 1715–1747: A Sojourner in the French Atlantic by Jean-François-Benjamin Dumont de Montigny; translated by Gordon M. Sayre ’88 and edited by Carla Zecher (University of North Carolina Press). 

Media, Erotics, and Transnational Asia, edited by Louisa Schein ’79 and Purnima Mankekar (Duke University Press). 

How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields ’78 (Knopf).

Living the Hiplife: Celebrity and Entrepreneurship in Ghanain Popular Music by Jesse Weaver Shipley ’92 (Duke University Press). 

Making it in the Minors: A Team Owner’s Lessons in the Business of Baseball by Arthur P. Solomon ’61 with Allyn I. Freeman ’61 (McFarland).

A History of American Higher Education by John Thelin ’69 (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2nd Edition). 

Declining Prospects: How Extraordinary Competition and Compensation Are Changing America’s Major Law Firms by Michael H. Trotter ’58 (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform). 

The Pathological Family: Postwar America and the Rise of Family Therapy by Deborah Weinstein ’93 (Cornell University Press). 

 

ALUMNI CHILDREN’S BOOKS

 

Neighbors: The Yard Critters Too by George Held ’58, illustration by Joung Un Kim (Filsinger & Co Ltd).

Flying Henry, photographs and text by Rachel Hulin ’00 (Powerhouse Books).

 

FACULTY NON-FICTION

 

Vertical Empire: The General Resettlement of Indians in the Colonial Andes by Jeremy Ravi Mumford (Duke University Press). 

The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America by James T. Patterson (Basic Books). 

 

FACULTY POETRY 

 

History and Other Poems by Brenda Marie Osbey (Time Being Books).