In the Hurricane’s Eye: The Genius of George Washington and the Victory at Yorktown
by Nathaniel Philbrick ’78 (Viking)
It turns out that the American Revolution was not won in 1781 by the Continental Army at the siege of Yorktown, but at sea by the French navy a few weeks earlier in the Battle of the Chesapeake. There, in an engagement championed by Washington, the French squadron pounded the British fleet and sent them back to New York for repairs, leaving Cornwallis’s army trapped on the Virginia peninsula with no real hope of rescue. That’s the thrust of Philbrick’s engrossing new book, the third volume in his series about the American Revolution. It’s a compelling, detailed look at the jigsaw puzzle of events that led to the end of the war.
Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
by Eric Klinenberg ’93 (Crown)
Resilient communities don’t just need shared values, they also need libraries, playgrounds, diners, schoolyards, and community gardens—shared spaces where actual, non-online connections can spark and flourish. Here, in an eloquent narrative that travels from Chicago to Singapore, Klinenberg, an NYU sociology professor (Heat Wave, Going Solo), argues that social infrastructure is an underappreciated resource, one that’s crucial for the future of democratic societies and one we need to build on.
The Only Girl: My Life and Times on the Masthead of Rolling Stone
by Robin Green ’67 (Little Brown)
This sharp and funny memoir circles around Green’s time in the wide-open early 1970s as a writer at Rolling Stone, when she was the only woman on the masthead. But it’s also about growing up on Providence’s East Side, Brown, life in Berkeley, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her Los Angeles–based decades-long career in television—one that includes writing for Northern Exposure, The Sopranos, and Blue Bloods. A captivating read recounting the peaks and low spots, with cameos from Hunter S. Thompson, Dennis Hopper, Annie Leibovitz, David Cassidy, and Rolling Stone’s founder Jann Wenner.
Alumni Nonfiction
New England Neon by Susan Bregman ’75 (Arcadia)
Alfalfa Bill: A Life in Politics by Robert Dorman ’85 AM, ’91 PhD (Univ. of Oklahoma)
Garbage Citizenship: Vital Infrastructures of Labor in Dakar, Senegal by Rosalind Fredericks ’00 (Duke)
Sacred Shelter: Thirteen Journeys of Homelessness and Healing by Susan Greenfield ’83 (Empire State Editions)
Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe by Dagmar Herzog ’85 AM, ’91 PhD (Univ. of Wisconsin)
Autism in Heels: The Untold Story of a Female Life on the Spectrum by Jennifer O’Toole ’97 (Skyhorse)
The Torture Machine: Racism and Police Violence in Chicago by Flint Taylor ’68 (Haymarket)
Going to College in the Sixties by John Thelin ’69 (Johns Hopkins)
Alumni Poetry
Penultimate Human Constellation: A Father and Son Converse in Poems by Ben Ostrowski ’17 and Steven Ostrowski (Tolsun)
Faculty Fiction
Life on the Infinite Farm by Richard Schwartz (American Mathematical Society)
Faculty Nonfiction
Exile within Exiles: Herbert Daniel, Gay Brazilian Revolutionary by James Green (Duke)
