Art and Architecture

Julia S. Ardery, AM’76, The Temptation: Edgar Tolson and the Genesis of Twentieth-Century Folk Art (University of North Carolina Press). Ardery explains the late-20th-century emergence of folk art by interpreting the life and work of Tolson, a Kentucky woodcarver.

Jill Metcoff, AM’72, Along the Wisconsin Riverway (University of Wisconsin Press). This collection of photographs depicts the untouched landscapes of the Lower Wisconsin River. The words of Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and other regional voices accompany the images.

Biography and Letters

Horace M. Bond, MAT’26, PhD’36, and Julia M. Bond, X’35; Adam Fairclough, editor, The Star Creek Papers (University of Georgia Press). The Bonds share their personal insights into African-American life during the Depression in the Star Creek community of Washington County, LA.

William D. Falloon, AB’83, Charlie D.: The Story of the Legendary Bond Trader (John Wiley & Sons). The author traces the life and career of Charlie DiFrancesca, nicknamed the “Sultan of Scalp” for his phenomenal success.

Andrea Leonard, AB’47, A Crocker Genealogy: Volume 1; A Crocker Genealogy: Volume 2; and Records of the Proprietors of the Common Lands in the Town of Barnstable, Massachusetts, 1703–1795 (Heritage Books). In the first work, Leonard traces the descendants of William and Alice Crocker—who settled in Massachusetts in 1634—to the 14th generation. The second volume further traces the Crockers’ origins in England and includes excerpts from the family diary. The third work includes transcriptions of handwritten 18th-century property and boundary descriptions and records..

Criticism

Robert D. Denham, AM’64, PhD’72, editor, Northrop Frye’s Student Essays (University of Toronto Press). Denham gathers 22 essays by the Canadian literary and cultural critic, who wrote more than 30 books and whose 39 honorary degrees include one from the U of C.

Education

Nicholas C. Burbules and David T. Hansen, AB’76, PhD’90, editors, Teaching and Its Predicaments (Westview Press). This essay collection addresses many complexities and challenges associated with contemporary teaching.

Arlene B. Hirschfelder, MAT’71, Kick Butts! A Kid’s Action Guide to a Tobacco-Free America (Simon & Schuster). Written for both children and adults, this guide suggests ways to help create a smoke-free society through research and antismoking campaigns.

Madonna M. Murphy, AB’76, Character Education in America’s Blue-Ribbon Schools: Best Practices for Meeting the Challenge (Technomic Publishing Co.). Murphy documents how the country’s top elementary and secondary schools impart moral and ethical values.

Fiction and Poetry

Stephen K. Cook, AB’72, Netcracker (Commonwealth Publications). A high-tech Washington thriller, Cook’s work explores the threats to privacy brought on by the Information Age.

Mario A. Lopez, AM’67, Short Stories for the Twenty-first Century (Esperante Group Publications). Previously published in Spanish, Lopez’s tales touch on issues of culture, linguistic innovation, and social change.

Gender Studies

Ritch C. Savin-Williams, AM’73, AM’75, PhD’77, ...and Then I Became Gay: Young Men’s Stories (Routledge). Savin-Williams brings together memoirs that chronicle the feelings of young men as they recognize their bisexuality or homosexuality.

History/Current Events

Edward A. Allworth, AM’53, editor, The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland (Duke University Press). These essays by Crimean Tatars detail their struggle to resettle in Crimea amid discrimination and shaky political and economic developments following the breakup of the former Soviet Union.

Marc J. Blecher, AM’72, PhD’78, China Against the Tides: Restructuring through Revolution, Radicalism, and Reform (Pinter/Cassell). Blecher analyzes China’s radical socialism and its efforts at structural reform. He argues that China’s economic progress since the 1970s has resulted from the country’s political authoritarianism, refuting the Western notion that economic modernization occurs with democracy.

Jennifer S. H. Brown, PhD’76, and Elizabeth Vibert, editors, Reading Beyond Words: Contexts for Native History (Broadview Press). These essays by Canadian and American scholars look at how documentary sources have interpreted Native American history, examining the works’ bias, context, voice, and perspective.

Antoinette M. Burton, AM’84, PhD’90, At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain (University of California Press). Investigating the relationship between colonial subjects and their imperial rulers, Burton describes the experiences of three Indian travelers in Britain during the lateVictorian period.

Alan K. Dowty, AM’60, PhD’63, The Jewish State: A Century Later (University of California Press). Dowty explores the history of this country and its contemporary behavior as a state, contending that its sense of nationhood and democracy derives from its cultural and ideological roots in the Jewish traditions of Palestine and Eastern Europe.

Michael D. Gambone, AM’89, PhD’93, Eisenhower, Somoza, and the Cold War in Nicaragua (Greenwood Publishing Group). Gambone argues that Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza Garcia challenged the hegemony of the United States more than any other Central American leader by using American institutions to increase his powers and prestige.

Daniel S. Goffman, AM’77, PhD’85, Britons in the Ottoman Empire, 1642–1660 (University of Washington Press). Goffman counters the view that the English have always been imperialist in nature, arguing that they humbly accommodated themselves to the powerful Ottoman Empire and laid the foundation for future commercial and diplomatic relations with Asia.

Harvey L. Harris, SB’14, The War As I Saw It: 1918 Letters of a Tank Corps Lieutenant (Pogo Press). Harris’ letters tell of life in a tank corps under the command of General George S. Patton, Jr. The book includes descriptions of how tank machinery was used in the 1918 battles of St. Mihiel and the Meuse-Argonne.

John D. McCannon, Jr., AM’91, PhD’94, Red Arctic: Polar Exploration and the Myth of the North in the Soviet Union, 1932–1939 (Oxford University Press). Using Soviet archives, McCannon recounts the tales of 1930s expeditions by Soviet Arctic explorers who became national heroes and propaganda icons.

Ronald V. Mershart, PhD’69, editor, They Remember Superior (Wisconsin Humanities Council/Douglas County Historical Society). In honor of Wisconsin’s sesquicentennial, Mershart rounds up letters, memoirs, autobiographical sketches, and newspaper articles written by mid-19th-century settlers in Superior, WI.

Barbara J. Newman, AM’76, Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard’s Theology of the Feminine (University of California Press). Newman examines the life and work of Hildegard of Bingen, a 12th-century mystic, musician, and scientist. The author explains how Hildegard used symbolic theology to explore the meaning of her gender.

Richard A. Schwartz, AM’74, PhD’77, Cold War Culture (Facts on File) and Encyclopedia of the Persian Gulf War (McFarland). The first book is an encyclopedia of Cold War–related American literature, popular culture, and performing arts. The second work is a guide to political debates related to the Persian Gulf War.

Elsa S. Slae, AB’63, For the Sake of Jerusalem (Chemed Press). Illustrated with more than 150 documentary photographs, Slae’s study of 19th- and 20th-century Jerusalem presents the people, places, and events that have influenced Jewish life, including the rebuilding of the Old City after 1967.

Hatten S. Yoder Jr., AA’40, SB’41, Planned Invasion of Japan, 1945: The Siberian Weather Advantage (American Philosophical Society). Yoder recounts the U.S. Navy MOKO Expedition of 1945, sent to Siberia to forecast weather for a planned November invasion of Japan. He describes the difficulties in setting up a station for transmitting weather bulletins to Guam amid Soviet interference and cold weather.

Angela R. Zito, AM’78, PhD’89, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China (University of Chicago Press). Zito examines the religious and political life of emperor Qianglong during 18th-century China, explaining how elaborate rituals empowered and dominated the throne.

Medicine and Health

Nicholas A. Ashford, PhD’65, JD’72, and Claudia S. Miller, Chemical Exposures: Low Levels and High Stakes (Van Nostrand Reinhold). Ashford and Miller present evidence for a new theory of disease—toxicant-induced loss of tolerance (TILT)—that may explain illnesses such as chronic-fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, and the unexplained sickness of Gulf War veterans. The authors maintain that TILT develops after a single high-level chemical exposure or repeated low-level exposures.

Helen G. Charley, SM’41, and Connie Weaver, Foods: A Scientific Approach (Prentice Hall). In its third edition, this textbook covers the complex nature of foods using principles of chemistry, physics, microbiology, and physiology.

Phyllis Eisenstein, X’66, and Samuel M. Scheiner, SM’80, PhD’83, Overcoming the Pain of Inflammatory Arthritis: The Pain-Free Promise of Pantothenic Acid (Avery Publishing Group). Relying on Eisenstein’s personal experience and the authors’ research, this book explains why vitamin B5, or pantothenic acid, halts the pain from inflammatory arthritis.

David S. Gochman, AB’56, AB’57, editor, Handbook of Health Behavior Research (Plenum). With contributions from health psychology, medical anthropology, and medical geography, this four-volume work reviews basic research on preventive-health actions, risk behaviors, and medical and lifestyle regimens.

Sheldon W. Samuels, AB’51, and Arthur C. Upton, editors, Genes, Cancer, and Ethics in the Work Environment (OEM Press/Ramazzini Institute). This book at once explores the effects of molecular biology on occupational and environmental cancer research and the ethical challenges such issues present in the workplace. The analysis includes a previously unpublished paper by Alan Gewirth, a U of C professor emeritus of philosophy.

Political Science and Law

Nicholas A. Ashford, PhD’65, JD’72, and Charles C. Caldart, Technology, Law, and the Working Environment (Island Press). Ashford and Caldart examine the legal issues associated with technology-related workplace problems, discussing such matters as occupational health and safety, toxic-substance regulations, and right-to-know requirements.

Georg Graf, AM’86, Vertrag und Vernunft (Springer) and Rechtsfragen des Telebanking (Orac). In the first book, Graf evaluates the application of rational choice theory to the understanding of contract law, referring to the ideas of Ronald Dworkin and John Rawls. The second work explores the legal problems created by Internet banking.

Ellen S. Podgor, MBA’87, and Jerold H. Israel, White Collar Crime in a Nutshell (West Publications Co.). In this book, the authors provide an overview of the substantive and procedural law of white-collar crime.

Walter W. Powell, AM’85, PhD’90, editor, Private Action and the Public Good (Yale University Press). Powell charts the ascendancy of nonprofits and their contributions to economic development in the United States, France, Germany, and Eastern Europe.

Psychiatry/Psychology

Richard A. Hutch, AM’71, PhD’74, The Meaning of Lives: Biography, Autobiography, and the Spiritual Quest (Cassell). Hutch explores how reading and writing about other people’s lives can lead to reflections on birth, sexuality, and mortality. Steven J. Trierweiler and George Stricker, AB’56, The Scientific Practice of Professional Psychology (Plenum Press). The authors argue for the incorporation of scientific methods into the clinical practice of psychology.

Religion and Philosophy

John P. Burgess, AM’80, PhD’86, The East German Church and the End of Communism (Oxford University Press). Burgess traces the theological factors that led to the church’s involvement in Germany’s 1989 revolution, analyzing the dissident use of church symbols in the development of an alternative theology.

Geoffrey A. Clark, PhD’71, and C. M. Willermet, editors, Conceptual Issues in Modern Human Origins Research (Aldine de Gruyter). This book analyzes the conceptual differences between the replacement and continuity schools of thought on the origin of humans. The essays, written by a worldwide group of archaeologists, paleoanthropologists, and molecular biologists, argue the impossibility of a compromise between these two conceptions and offer glimpses into remote human history.

Alfred J. de Grazia, AB’39, PhD’48, Quantavolution and Catastrophism: Works on a Changing Paradigm for the Sciences and Humanities (Metron Publications). De Grazia investigates the controversies over the increasing use of quantavolutionary theory, which posits that abrupt, far-reaching events cause major historical changes.

Zahava K. McKeon, PhD’74, and William G. Swenson, AB’63, PhD’74, editors, Selected Writings of Richard McKeon, Volume 1: Philosophy, Science, and Culture (University of Chicago Press). These essays by the late U of C professor emeritus in philosophy examine philosophic problems as expressed in culture, science, and humanism.

William K. Mahony, PhD’82, The Artful Universe: An Introduction to the Vedic Religious Imagination (State University of New York Press) and Meditation Revolution: A History and Theology of the Siddha Yoga Lineage (Agama Press). In the first work, Mahony analyzes the roles played by poetry, liturgy, and contemplation in India’s Vedic religion. In the second book, Mahony explores India’s spiritual tradition of yoga and traces its recent expansion from Asia to the West.

David A. Morgan, PhD’90, Visual Piety: A History and Theory of Popular Religious Images (University of California Press). Morgan interprets ideas and feelings associated with religious iconography from the late Middle Ages to contemporary times.

Gerald A. Rodgers, AB’47, The Gospel According to Jerry (Latter Rain Publishing House). Rodgers covers case histories of religious experiences diagnosed as mental illnesses.

Stephen H. Webb, AM’84, PhD’89, On God and Dogs: A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals (Oxford University Press). Webb suggests that the relationship between humans and pets illustrates God’s power in creating intimate associations based on love and reciprocity.

Science and Technology

Gary B. Grant, AB’87, and Gary M. Grobman, The Nonprofit Internet Handbook (White Hat Communications). This resource for nonprofit organizations explains how to use the Internet for fund-raising, recruitment, and advocacy.

Social Sciences

James I. Charlton, AM’79, Nothing About Us Without Us: Disability Oppression and Empowerment (University of California Press). Charlton suggests ways that people with disabilities can overcome feelings of powerlessness, dependency, and degradation.

Jerome Smith, PhD’75, The Realities of Adoption (Madison Books). Smith’s look at changing adoption practices over the past 15 years covers confidential and transracial adoption, as well as his role in high-profile adoption court cases.

For inclusion in “Books by Alumni,” please send the book’s name, author, publisher, field, and synopsis to the Books Editor, University of Chicago Magazine, 1313 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637, or by e-mail: uchicago-magazine@uchicago.edu.