Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith As the Bingham Visiting Writer, poet Tracy K. Smith read from her powerful, sometimes haunting, work during the Martin Luther King Assembly. Ms. Smith is the director of Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Ordinary Light, shortlisted this fall for the National Book Award in Nonfiction, and three books of poetry. Her collection Life on Mars won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. Ms. Smith’s Duende won the 2006 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and an...
Read MoreDaniel Swinton
Daniel Swinton Daniel Swinton challenged students’ notions of what constitutes sexual assault by presenting a court case, and asking them — the jury — how they would rule. Mr. Swinton visited campus as the 2015 Talbot Speaker. Mr. Swinton is managing partner of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, a multidisciplinary risk management consulting firm based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. A specialist in Title IX, bystander intervention, and sexual assault policy and law, he is the author of several peer-reviewed articles on the subjects. “Some students on college...
Read MoreLove the Stranger, by Jay Deshpande ’02
Love the Stranger by Jay Deshpande ’02 YesYes Books, November 2015 Through the wide-eyed study of beauty and the eerie stations of the erotic, Love the Stranger maps the body in its struggle with desire and absence. The poems treat love, kinship and loss as instruments of our own awakening — tools that can help us encounter our own mysteriousness and touch new ground. As they peer into childhood memory, the end of an affair, dream dismemberments, and even Kim Kardashian, the lyrics in Love the Stranger guide us toward the truths hidden within the body. Jay Deshpande is the winner of...
Read MoreCan China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth, by F. Warren McFarlan ’55
Can China Lead? Reaching the Limits of Power and Growth by Regina M. Abrami, William C. Kirby and F. Warren McFarlan ’55 Harvard Business Review Press, February 2014 A lack of accountability, transparency, and ease of operation in China — combined with growing evidence of high-level corruption — has made domestic and foreign businesspeople increasingly wary of the “China model.” These issues are deeply rooted in Chinese history and the country’s political system. The authors contend that the country’s dynamic private sector, which could be a source of sustainable growth,...
Read MoreWar in the Shallows: U.S. Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam 1965–1968, by John Darrell Sherwood ’85
War in the Shallows: U.S. Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam 1965–1968 by John Darrell Sherwood ’85 Naval History and Heritage Command, October 2015 At the height of the U.S. Navy’s involvement in the Vietnam War, the Navy’s coastal and riverine forces included more than 30,000 sailors and over 350 patrol vessels ranging in size from riverboats to destroyers. These forces developed the most extensive maritime blockade in modern naval history and fought pitched battles against Viet Cong units in the Mekong Delta and elsewhere. War in the Shallows explores the operations of...
Read MoreF*ck Feelings: One Shrink’s Practical Advice for Managing All Life’s Impossible Problems, by Michael I. Bennett, M.D. and Sarah Bennett ’96
F*ck Feelings: One Shrink’s Practical Advice for Managing All Life’s Impossible Problems by Michael I. Bennett, M.D. and Sarah Bennett ’96 Simon & Schuster, September 2015 A veteran psychiatrist and his comedy writer daughter present the antihero of the self-help section, the cut-to-the-chase therapy session people have been waiting for. Most people choose therapy to try changing something they don’t like about themselves or to figure out a way to change another person. The Bennetts argue that goals like these are impossible to achieve, and therefore are deflating and...
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