The Insanity Offense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens
E. Fuller Torrey, MA ’69
Norton,
$24.95
Research psychiatrist Torrey thinks deinstitutionalization has been a disaster, and he marshals statistics and tragic case histories to describe the estimated 400,000 severely mentally ill Americans “who are most likely to become homeless, incarcerated, victimized and/or violent.” He believes these sickest patients should have the guaranteed care and medicating that would stabilize their lives and those of their often-terrorized families.
Civic Myths: A Law-and-Literature Approach to Citizenship
Brook Thomas, ’69
U. of North Carolina Press,
$59.95 and $21.95
An English professor at UC-Irvine, Thomas uses works of American literature to examine models of American identity: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and “the good citizen,” Edward Everett Hale’s “The Man Without a Country” and “the patriotic citizen,” Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and “the independent citizen,” and Maxine Hong Kingston’s China Men and “the immigrant citizen.”
Putting Our House in Order: A Guide to Social Security & Health Care Reform
George P. Shultz and John B. Shoven;
Norton,
$24.95
Former Secretary of State Shultz and economics professor Shoven say the nation’s aim should be healthy people in a healthy economy. With Matthew Gunn, ’03, and Gopi Shah Goda, MA ’06, PhD ’07, they recommend incentives to keep older people in the work force, price indexing to fix Social Security, a voucher system for Medicare, and so on.
Happy Family
Wendy Lee, ’98;
Black Cat,
$14
In an elegantly suspenseful debut novel, Lee writes about a Chinese immigrant attracted to a mother and toddler she observes at a Greenwich Village playground. Jane and her husband, who desire a kind of vague authenticity for the baby they’ve adopted from China, hire Hua to be their daughter’s nanny. But is it naïve to assume that the young woman who fled unpromising circumstances in Fuzhou fully understands her own heart, let alone those of these oblivious Americans?
Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism
Brooke Harrington, ’90;
Princeton U. Press,
$29.95
With a sociological, not just economic, approach, Harrington studied investment clubs to see how stock buyers bond. Among her findings: mixed-gender groups reap a “diversity” premium, and buyers use their portfolios to make statements about their values even when “socially responsible investing” isn’t the conscious goal.
Fight: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Ass-Kicking But Were Afraid You’d Get Your Ass Kicked for Asking
Eugene S. Robinson, ’84.
HarperCollins,
$34.95
In tough prose and explicit detail, “fightaholic” and participatory journalist Robinson describes varieties of violence he is drawn to: wrestling, boxing, the martial arts of many nations, knife-fighting, hooliganism and more.Brutality that many would find stomach-turning, he appreciates as “a potent tie to our immediate and ever-present animal.”
