The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner
Edited by Page Stegner, ’59, MA ’65, PhD ’67
Shoemaker & Hoard
$30
Discovery!
The Search for Arabian Oil
Wallace Stegner
Selwa Press
$24.95
There are fresh insights here into the worldview of novelist and environmentalist Stegner, who founded Stanford’s creative writing program. The selected letters, grouped topically by his son, span Stegner’s personal and professional experience over six decades, including his ups and downs in Stanford’s academic politics. (At one point, the traditionalist Stegner was so upset about the appointment of avant-garde writer Gilbert Sorrentino that he wanted his name removed from the Stegner fellowship.) His little-known history of the first American ventures in Saudi Arabian oil, a work-for-hire originally published in 1971, counters the view of Aramco as a “sinister force” in the developing Middle East.
The Grand Surprise: The Journals of Leo Lerman
Edited by Stephen Pascal, ’77
Alfred A. Knopf
$37.50
From the ’40s until his death in 1994, Leo Lerman made it his business to know—and invite to parties—anyone who glittered in New York. The Condé Nast editor, writing in purple ink, filled hundreds of notebooks with shrewd observations and voracious gossip about actors, artists, opera singers and literati. Pascal, who was Lerman’s assistant for 12 years, has edited this material into a Capote-ish chronicle of the beau monde.
New England White
Stephen L. Carter, ’76
Knopf
$26.95
The fresh murder of a womanizing professor of economics and a decades-old cold case are entwined in this thriller by Yale law professor Carter. As in his bestseller The Emperor of Ocean Park, the mystery provides opportunities for its author to write about compelling sociological topics: the conflicting expectations felt by black elites in America, entitlement in the Ivy League, and morality in politics and the law.
The Perfect Man
Naeem Murr
Random House
$13.95
Leaving a childhood of staggering neglect behind in India and London, 12-year-old Rajiv Travers comes to be the ward of a romance writer who lives in Pisgah, Mo., during the 1950s. A captivating exploration of adolescent friendships and the power of small-town secrets, this book won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for best book in Europe and South Asia. Murr was a Stegner fellow from 1992 to 1994.
Jeb: America’s Next Bush: His Florida Years and What They Mean for the Nation
S.V. Dáte, ’85
Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin
$26.95
As capital bureau chief for the Palm Beach Post, Dáte covered Jeb Bush’s eight years as Florida’s governor. He writes that Jeb, the Bush son considered likelier presidential timber than George W., worked tirelessly to restrict the freedom of the press, privatize schools and state agencies, dismantle affirmative action and cut taxes for wealthy Floridians.
The Headmaster Ritual
Taylor Antrim, ’96
Mariner Books
$13.95
Ed Wolfe, who identifies with North Korea and thinks Stalin was misunderstood, runs an exclusive prep school. His son, James, is a senior who’d like to get through the year unhazed. And the new history teacher doesn’t know what he’s getting into when he’s ordered to set up a Model United Nations. Novelist Antrim is an editor at ForbesLife.
The Country in the City: The Greening of the San Francisco Bay Area
Richard A. Walker, ’69
U. of Washington Press
$35
Walker, a geography professor at UC-Berkeley, writes a history of the activism that has allowed the Bay Area to remain “more greensward than asphalt jungle, more open space than hardscape.” He pays particular attention to trust-fund heroes and private financiers who saved landscapes in the aftermath of Proposition 13.
The Flying Bed
Nancy Willard, MA ’60, illustrated by John Thompson
Blue Sky Press
$16.99
In this children’s book, poet and Vassar professor Willard spins a fable about an unsuccessful baker in Florence. Guido’s wife threatens to move back to her father’s house unless he can provide a decent bed. He finds a carved beauty that flies the pair up to the kitchens in the sky, where Guido is given some magical yeast and a warning never to reveal its secret.
Design Flaws of the Human Condition
Paul Schmidtberger, JD ’91
Broadway Books
$12.95
A beautiful product that works really well—until some little-noticed facet of it proves disastrous—is said to have a design flaw. Schmidtberger’s comic novel holds that infidelity is the design flaw of love. After each endures a very bad day, Iris and Ken meet in an anger-management class. They forge a friendship that helps them face the betrayal by their seemingly perfect partners, Jeremy and Brett.
