Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel by Jonathan H. Grossman ’85
Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel by Jonathan H. Grossman ’85 Oxford University Press, March 2012 The same week in February 1836 that Charles Dickens was hired to write his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, the first railway line in London opened. Charles Dickens’s Networks explores the rise of the global, high-speed passenger transport network in the 19th century and the indelible impact it made on Dickens’s work. The advent first of stagecoaches, then of railways and transoceanic steamships made round-trip journeys across once seemingly far distances seem...
Read Moreintimate geographies: poems by Bo Thorne Niles ’62
intimate geographies: poems by Bo Thorne Niles ’62 Finishing Line Press, 2012 “Although its title may call to mind Elizabeth Bishop, the poems in intimate geographies conjure the alert, lucid spirit of May Swenson as they shape their way toward emotional heights and depths. In this collection, which is also recollection, the poet’s formal and verbal inventiveness is deftly balanced with a tender attention to sensory details. The resulting poems map, and honor really, lives that are dear, vivid, all-too-swiftly passing, and therefore, in the truest sense, sacred.” —Jeanne Marie...
Read MoreMy Journey Translated by Katherine Gratwick Baker ’55
My Journey: How One Woman Survived Stalin’s Gulag by Olga Adamova-Sliozberg Translated by Katherine Gratwick Baker ’55 Northwestern University Press, August 2011 In the spring of 1936, Olga Adamova-Sliozberg’s husband, a professor at Moscow State University, was arrested and accused of being a Trotskyite. A short time later, Adamova-Sliozberg herself was arrested as the wife of “an enemy of the people.” Torn from her children, she spent a decade subjected to grueling interrogations and a prison regime designed to crush inmates both physically and psychologically. Released in...
Read MoreCherry Blossoms by Ann McClellan ’68
Cherry Blossoms: The Official Book of the National Cherry Blossom Festival by Ann McClellan ’68 National Geographic Society, January 2012 Washington, D.C.’s cherry blossom trees have enchanted residents and visitors for one hundred years. This spring, the National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates the centennial of the gift of 3,000 cherry trees from Tokyo to our nation’s capital. To mark the event, National Geographic has published this richly illustrated history by Ann McClellan. The book tells the story of how the gift spawned our country’s greatest springtime celebration,...
Read MoreAmerican Veterans on War by Elise Forbes Tripp ’60
American Veterans on War: Personal Stories from World War II to Afghanistan by Elise Forbes Tripp ’60 Olive Branch Press, November 2011 American Veterans on War is a timely, oral-history collection that gathers stories of war as experienced by those involved firsthand. The words of 55 veterans—ranging in age from 20 to 90 years—raise questions about when the wars are worth fighting, what missions can and can’t be won, and the costs and benefits of the United States intervention, both around the world and domestically. Recent veterans tell stories of coping with hostile forces and of...
Read MoreFragile Beginnings by Adam Wolfberg, M.D. ’88
Fragile Beginnings: Discoveries and Triumphs in the Newborn ICU by Adam Wolfberg, M.D. ’88 A Harvard Health Publications Book Beacon Press, February 2012 Half a million babies are born prematurely in the United States every year. As doctors and parents make decisions about life-saving care in the first hours of a premature infant’s life, they must grapple with profound ethical and scientific questions: Who should be saved? How aggres-sively should doctors try to salvage the life of a premature baby, who may be severely neurologically and physically impaired? What will that child’s...
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