Books
by Alumni:
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History and Current Events
Richard
B. Allen, AM'72, Slaves,
Freedmen, and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius (Cambridge
University Press). Allen reconstructs the social and economic
history of Mauritius from 1721 until 1936, emphasizing the changing
relationships between the island's sugar industry and different
elements of the island's plural society.
Myra
Young Armstead, AM'77, PhD'87, "Lord, Please Don't
Take Me in August": African Americans in Newport and Saratoga
Springs, 1870 to 1930 (University of Illinois Press). By examining
the "backstairs" social and political experiences of African-American
workers and their families in two resort towns, Armstead expands
the black American narrative beyond the rural South and metropolitan
North.
Bonnie
Blackburn, AM'63, PhD'70,
and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, The Oxford Companion to the
Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning (Oxford
University Press). This reference work investigates the layers
of historical significance, the mathematical patterns, and the
literary inspiration associated with the calendar year. The first
part is a day-by-day guide to the year, while the second discusses
past and present systems for measuring time.
Rivkah
B. Harris, PhD'54, Gender
and Aging in Mesopotamia: The Gilgamesh Epic and Other Ancient
Literature (University of Oklahoma Press). Using primary sources--myths,
epics, letters, and legal and economic texts--Harris examines
ancient Mesopotamian attitudes toward youth and mature adulthood,
aging and the elderly, generational conflict, and gender differences
in aging.
Ruth
H. Howes and Caroline
L. Herzenberg, SM'55, PhD'58, Their Day in the Sun:
Women of the Manhattan Project (Temple University Press).
The book examines the contributions of hundreds of women scientists,
engineers, and technicians who worked on the Manhattan Project
during WWII.
Paul
H. Kratoska, AM'68, PhD'75,
The Japanese Occupation of Malaya: A Social and Economic History
(University of Hawaii Press), and editor, Food Supplies and
the Japanese Occupation in Southeast Asia (St. Martin's Press).
In the first book, Kratoska studies the social and economic effects
of the occupation era on the people of Malaya. In the second,
he presents ten articles that examine Southeast Asia's food shortages
from 1941 through 1945.
Sally
Gregory Kohlstedt; Michael M. Sokal; and Bruce
V. Lewenstein, AB'80, The Establishment of Science
in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (Rutgers University Press). The authors trace the
evolution of scientists' roles in American society, public attitudes
toward science, and the changing dimension of the sponsorship
of science and its participants. Topics include the tension inherent
in having a scientific "elite" in a democratic society and debates
between disciplinary specialization and interdisciplinary research.
Lawrence
W. McBride, PhD'78,
The Reynolds Letters: An Irish Emigrant Family in Late Victorian
Manchester (Cork University Press). This selection of 50 letters
sent from Manchester between 1877 and 1904 chronicles the growing
wealth and respectability of Irish emigrants in industrial England,
disproving the perception that all such emigrants experienced
squalor and degradation.
Muriel
C. McClendon; Joseph
P. Ward, AB'87; and Michael MacDonald, editors, Protestant
Identities: Religion, Society, and Self-Fashioning in Post-Reformation
England (Stanford University Press). This book investigates
the complex ways in which England's gradual transformation from
a Roman Catholic to a Protestant nation presented men and women
with new ways in which to fashion their identities and to define
their relationships with society.
Bronwyn
Rebekah McFarland-Icke, AM'91, PhD'97,
Nurses in Nazi Germany: Moral Choice in History (Princeton
University Press). In detailing the story of nurses participating
in Nazi "euthanasia" measures from 1939 to 1945, McFarland-Icke
explores how men and women who were trained to care for their
patients instead came to assist in their murders.
Walter
Nugent, PhD'61,
and Martin Ridge, editors, The American West: The Reader (Indiana
University Press). This collection of essays deals with the experiences,
values, and ideas of the diverse groups of people who settled
in different parts of the American West. Analyzing what happened
when different cultures intersected in the underdeveloped region,
the tales provide a history of how and why the West was settled.
Jule
DeJager Ward, AM'87, PhD'96,
La Leche League (University of North Carolina Press). Examining
the history of the La Leche League, started in the 1950s to help
women worldwide learn to breast-feed their children, Ward provides
insights into its origins and theological underpinnings, showing
how the organization's quasi-religious status was combined with
scientific ideology and feminism.