Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe
James J. Sheehan, ’58
Houghton Mifflin
$26
At the huge February 2003 demonstration in London to oppose the Iraq War, history professor Sheehan marveled at the sentiment of his favorite protest sign—Down with This Sort of Thing. Not long ago and for centuries, lusty war was Europe’s defining characteristic. His book charts the Continent’s deliberate moves away from defense-defined statehood toward social stability, economic integration and political unity.
The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse
Richard Thompson Ford
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
$26
It’s not easy adjudicating discrimination. Law professor Ford discusses how knee-jerk accusations of bigotry and efforts to define various struggles as analogous to the civil rights movement can undermine genuine public support for social justice. He defines as “racism without racists” many contemporary situations in which people have grievances, but not individuals to blame.
If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy—From the Revolution to the War of 1812
George C. Daughan, ’62
Basic Books
$30
Before Paul Revere mounted up, he had to row past British warships. This less-remembered fact, Daughan argues, is emblematic of how the Continental Navy would fare: forgotten even though it played a vital foundational role. Whether the establishment of an expensive navy would protect the Republic or destabilize it was a source of huge debate among the Founders until the War of 1812.
The Path to Purpose: Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life
William Damon
Free Press
$25
The director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence views with alarm the world’s boomerang children, Young NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and hikikomori: rudderless young people who seem unable to commit to adulthood’s tasks and goals. He offers ways parents can nurture children in their search for purpose—defined as an intention both “meaningful to the self and consequential for the world beyond the self.”
Perfect Family
Pam Lewis, ’65
Simon & Schuster
$25
In this psychological thriller, Angela “Pony” Carteret is found drowned at her family’s lake house. The single mother, an incomparable swimmer who wouldn’t have left her baby untended, had promised to tell her brother, William, something startling. Her death launches him on a guilt-ridden investigation of family secrets.
Pithy Seedy Pulpy Juicy
Hilary B. Price, ’91
ECW Press
$16.95
This “Rhymes With Orange” collection provides glimpses of the cartoon wizard behind the curtain. Price’s specialties include pets (the stick-bored dog who wonders why its owner never throws a squirrel); examining rooms (a witch who wants the plastic surgeon to make hers colder); and time’s passages (poor breakfast habits, a generation later, result in a quaint Bed & Poptart).
