Books, music & film

Information is provided by publishers, authors, and artists.
    
Placed by The Gideons
Wormburner, featuring Steve ‘Hank’ Henry ’93
(Wax Off Records)

Placed by The Gideons is the latest CD by Wormburner, “an electrifying five piece” from New York City that radio station KEXP in Seattle called “anthemic indie rock with a punk rock kick.” A “fugitive odyssey concept album,” Placed by The Gideons features 10 hard-charging rock songs — penned by vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Steve ‘Hank’ Henry ’93 — that are connected by one smoldering narrative thread. Time Out New York cites “echoes of Springsteen, The Clash, and The Pogues that ring out in the succinct vignettes of this striking sophomore set.” The New Yorker said Henry “can sound like a cross between Michael Stipe and The Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle.” Wormburner regularly plays shows at New York City venues like The Bowery Ballroom and The Mercury Lounge, but acclaim for their new album has led to national tour dates stretching to the West Coast.  
            
Africa’s Third Liberation: The New Search for Prosperity and Jobs
Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills
(SA Penguin)

In Africa’s Third Liberation, Colgate President Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills show how Africa has experienced two liberations: the first from colonial and racist regimes and the second from the autocrats who often followed foreign rule. At the end of the 1970s, just three African countries regularly held multiparty elections; more than 40 do today. Africa’s political evolution points to a third liberation — from political economies characterized by graft, crony capitalism, rent-seeking, elitism, and social inequality. This liberation will open up the economic space in which business can compete and employment can expand. The debate is about how Africa can realize its economic potential and avoid the disappointments of the first 50 years of independence. This book asks how Africa’s political leaders and interest groups can promote economic growth in their countries. Using examples from Central and South America, Southeast and South Asia, and the Middle East, the authors examine what means are best to match political liberalization with growth. They suggest a way forward for higher-growth and job-absorption strategies in Africa in the context of liberalized political systems.

Between the Shadow and the Flame
Geoffrey Lee Hodge ’86
(Penumbra Invictus)

In Geoffrey Lee Hodge’s new sci-fi mystery novel, when a pandemic and ensuing nuclear war threaten to put civilization on the brink of obliteration, and conspiracy theorists whisper of a plot to wipe out humanity, philosopher Sophia Xiao gets caught up in a quest to find the truth. Shadowed by a mysterious figure, she travels across the devastated land with Newman, a former theology student, and Hyle, a snarky young science writer, as they evade paramilitary death squads, encounter pockets of survivors, and match wits with the charismatic cult leader who has prophesied Sophia’s role in the coming battle at the end of days. Hunted, Sophia, Hyle, and Newman search for clues about their pursuers and the cause of the war.  

Feminism, the Left, and Postwar Literary Culture
Kathlene McDonald ’91
(University Press of Mississippi)

In journal articles, essays, novels, short stories, plays, and collections of poetry, women in the 1940s and 1950s worked to establish a feminist consciousness in American culture. In her new book, Kathlene McDonald analyzes literary texts to uncover the ambivalence, conflicts, and contradictions that women faced when trying to posit a more egalitarian society in their writings. McDonald argues that, despite efforts to contain political resistance during the McCarthy era, women writers became more actively involved in left politics during the period, drawing on the rhetoric of anti-fascism to critique the cultural and ideological aspects of women’s oppression. McDonald is associate professor of English at the City College of New York Center for Worker Education.

Sleeping with Dog Tags
Tiffany (Drewniak) Cloud Olson ’90
(Word Association Publishers)

The novel Sleeping with Dog Tags tracks the emotional roller-coaster of a military spouse’s year at home while her husband is deployed in Afghanistan. Central to her narrative is the conviction that while war is hell for the soldiers, it is also hell for family members manning the home front, for whom there are few supports. But this is also a love story about two people meeting later in life after divorces and discovering they are soul mates — despite their very different backgrounds. Wisdom garnered from life experiences feeds a poignant, yet self-aware reflection on the challenges of dealing with the ever-present specter of death, the military’s “my way or the highway” nature, and the missteps of a strong woman treading the unchartered path of the military spouse.     

The Island Garden: England’s Language of Nation from Gildas to Marvell
Lynn Staley
(University of Notre Dame Press)

For centuries, England’s writers have used the metaphor of their country as an island garden to engage in a self-conscious debate about national identity. In her new book, Lynn Staley suggests that the trope of Britain as an island garden catalyzed two crucial historical perspectives and, thus, two analytic modes. As isolated and vulnerable, England stood in a potentially hostile relation to the world outside its encircling sea. As semi-enclosed and permeable, it also accepted recuperative relationships with those who moved across its boundaries. Identifying the concept of enclosure as key to Britain’s language of place, Staley traces the shifting meanings of this concept in medieval and early modern histories, treatises, and poems. Staley is Colgate’s Harrington and Shirley Drake Professor of the humanities and medieval and Renaissance studies.

Instant Songwriting: Musical Improv from Dunce to Diva
Nancy Howland Walker ’87
(Satyagraha Publishing)

Instant Songwriting is a how-to for musical improvisers and an excellent resource for songwriters. With more than two decades of musical improv experience, Nancy Howland Walker guides the reader with clear, logical, and fun step-by-step exercises, from the very basics of putting a song together, to highly advanced song techniques. She has written the book for all levels — whether you’re new to the art form or experienced, your songs are improvised or written, or you write songs just for fun or for a profit. Musical tracks are included for each exercise, to accompany you as you practice and master each step along the way. With her new book, Walker is hoping to coach you to become the songwriting diva you were meant to be.

Those We Love Most
Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82
(Voice)

In her first novel, Woodruff writes about marriage, family, and the ties that bind us all. On a bright June day, Maura Corrigan wakes up happy and secure, with a loving husband, and three healthy, vivacious children. By the end of the day, her entire world will be shattered. In the aftermath of tragedy, the fractures in both Maura’s life and her marriage become all-too-clear not just to her and her husband, Pete, but also to her parents, who are grappling with strain within their own marriage. Told through the alternating perspective of these four people over the course of a year, Those We Love Most chronicles how a twist of fate forces them to  examine their mistakes, fight for their most valuable relationships, and ultimately find their way back to each other.

Also of note:
In his new children’s book, Watts and the Nightlight (Larch Press), Gaston Blom ’41 writes about a young boy, Henry, who can’t fall asleep and Watts — an imaginary character living in the nightlight — who helps Henry with his fear of the dark.

An educational comic book, Self-Talk: A Child’s Bulletproof Vest Against Emotional Gunfire (RoundTable Comics), released by Devin Hughes ’91, teaches children about “self-talk,” a strategy they can use to combat negativities stemming from issues like bullying, learning disabilities, familial dysfunction, and peer pressure.  

Meghan Arcuri Moran ’98 has published her story, “Inevitable,” in Chiral Mad (Written Backwards), a new psychological horror anthology whose profits are donated to Down syndrome charities. Fitting into the theme of chirality (when an object is not identical to its mirror image, or cannot be superposed onto itself), “Inevitable” is a story of changing identity. Some days Bud looks into the mirror to find he’s become another person. Today he’s a little girl. In a few days, he’ll be invisible. And in a few more days, he’ll become someone else — someone he finds deplorable. Follow Bud’s descent into the darker side of his humanity.



In the media

“I think people just want to feel less alone. When you feel like the circus freak and the people on the soccer sidelines don’t know what to say to you, you want that collectivity and connectivity.”
        — Lee McConaughy Woodruff ’82 on the Today show discussing her new novel, Those We Love Most

“I do believe that this is a critical moment for Africa, and a critically optimistic moment where Africans will be making a set of choices that will affect their economies and their political economies for many years to come.”
        — President Jeffrey Herbst at the CATO Institute during the launch of his new book, Africa’s Third Liberation

“For the Maya, everything has to be brought together in terms of whole multiples and that’s where Venus comes in. It has a five-to-eight rhythm with the sun.”
        — Anthony Aveni, professor of astronomy and anthropology and Native American studies, in Archaeology Magazine

“Choices have consequences. We should never stop learning.”
        — Beverly Low, associate dean for administrative advising and first-year students, in her Huffington Post op-ed piece

“It’s interesting that the Russians are claiming that they found a gigantic deposit of diamonds in a meteorite- impact crater, because, from what we’ve seen so far, it’s kind of unlikely.”
        — Geology professor Richard April commenting to Yahoo news about a claim from Russian scientists

“The result is an authoritative analysis of an episode that ... has utterly failed to penetrate the popular historical memory.”
            — A review in the Atlantic, which listed history professor R.M. Douglas’s book as one of its “Books of the Year 2012.” Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of Germans After the Second World War was published by Yale University Press in June 2012.