Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse by Eric Jay Dolin ’83 (Liveright).
At the start of this vivid and hefty history, Dolin, the author of Leviathan, writes that lighthouses are beacons of hope and safety and danger rolled into one. These towers have always gripped the imagination, and here Dolin explores the evolution of the U.S. lighthouse system, from the first Boston light in 1716, through the development of the prism-based Fresnel lens, and up to today. You’ll find stories of heroic keepers, great storms, and nimble rescues.
A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain by Christina Crosby ’82 PhD (New York University Press).
One October afternoon in 2003, just after her fiftieth birthday, Crosby was on her usual seventeen-mile bike ride when a branch caught in the spokes of her front wheel. The bike pitched over, her jaw shattered against the pavement, and she broke two vertebrae in her neck. She was instantly paralyzed. In this visceral and often moving memoir, Crosby, an English professor at Wesleyan, describes her extensive, painful recovery and how, with the help of her partner and a constellation of friends, she has managed to navigate this new reality.
Hidden Bodies by Caroline Kepnes ’99 (Emily Bestler Books).
In this quick-moving follow-up to her debut thriller, You, Kepnes brings back Joe Goldberg, the literate, witty, obsessive, psychopathic bookseller at Mooney Books, who has found another person of interest. Amy Adam is his new employee and sudden girlfriend, with “long blond hair out of a Guns N’ Roses song,” and a life that, sans e-mail, Facebook, or Tinder, is off the grid. This looks like a promising relationship until Amy steals first editions of Portnoy’s Complaint and runs for Los Angeles, while Joe heads west to track her down.
ALUMNI NONFICTION
The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe by Stephon Alexander ’95 ScM, ’97 ScM, ’00 PhD (Basic Books/Perseus).
Joie de Vivre by Leroy Anderson ’50 (Page Publishing).
Hellboy’s World: Comics and Monsters on the Margins by Scott Bukatman ’78 (University of Calif. Press).
Gendered Law in American History by Richard Chused ’65 and Wendy Williams (Carolina Academic Press).
Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man by Julie Des Jardins ’96 AM, ’00 PhD (Oxford Univ. Press).
One World Trade Center: Biography of the Building by Judith Dupre ’78 (Little, Brown & Co).
A Girl Called Vincent: The Life of Poet Edna St. Vincent Millay by Krystyna Poray Goddu ’76 (Chicago Review Press).
Feminine Law: Freud, Free Speech, and the Voice of Desire by Jill Gentile ’82 with Michael Macrone ’92 (Karnac Books).
Crossing Boundaries and Weaving Intercultural Work, Life, and Scholarship in Globalizing Universities edited by Adam Komisarof ’90 and Zhu Hua (Routledge).
The Committee to Destroy the World: Inside the Plot to Unleash a Super Crash on the Global Economy by Michael E. Lewitt ’79 (Wiley).
Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of the Soviet Empire by Erik R. Scott (Oxford University Press)
ALUMNI FICTION
Awash in Talent by Jessica Knauss ’04 AM, ’08 PhD (Kindle Press).
Leaving Lucy Pear by Anna Solomon ’98 (Viking)
ALUMNI FICTION – SHORT STORIES
The Rope Swing: Stories by Jonathan Corcoran ’07 (West Virginia University Press).
ALUMNI CHILDREN’S
Gator Dad by Brian Lies ’85 (Houghton Mifflin).
