THE LIVES OF URCHINS
We the Animals, Justin Torres; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $18.
Stegner fellow Torres illuminates the lives of three young brothers who are growing up with a "confused goose" of a mother and a father whose abuse is "meticulous." The feral boys want more: more food, more warmth, more noise, more chaos, more beauty, more heft in a world where they are powerless—unless their unthinking acts of destruction can be considered agency. Short chapters—concentrated as raisins—describe the boys' Musketeer closeness and then its unraveling, as the youngest boy experiences the explicit sexual awakening and the implicit intellectual one that severs their bond.
But Will the Planet Notice? How Smart Economics Can Save the World, GERNOT WAGNER, MA '03; Hill and Wang, $27.
The author, an economist for the Environmental Defense Fund, lives lightly on the Earth: He doesn't drive and his utility bill runs less than $30 a month. But he argues that such individual efforts are like spitting in a wind turbine unless global market forces are marshaled against climate instability. He'd start with fishery regulation and carbon-pollution limits, using strategies like those used to conserve lobsters and get the lead out of gasoline.
The Language of Flowers, VANESSA DIFFENBAUGH, '00, MA '03; Ballantine Books, $25.
In this capacious novel, an emancipated foster child becomes a florist to the beau monde of San Francisco when she popularizes the Victorian custom of communicating with flowers. However, the often-homeless young woman's personal vocabulary runs to an abundance of thistle, for misanthropy, even when she connects with the one man in the world likeliest to understand her. Although Diffenbaugh's insistence that past feelings of unworthiness can blight future happiness is perhaps a bit reductionist, The Language of Flowers is an ingratiating debut.
Giving 2.0: Transform Your Giving and Our World, LAURA ARRILLAGA-ANDREESSEN, '92, MA '98, '99, MBA '97; Jossey-Bass, $25.95.
The founder and chair of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, Arrillaga-Andreessen provides a comprehensive guidebook on philanthropy. Whether givers have great resources (the spare millions a private family foundation might manage) or more modest ones (business skills that can help needy individuals or fledging nonprofits), they can take steps to assure that their gifts have impact. Leveraging the power of groups, incorporating philanthropy in family life, and the usefulness of social media are emphasized.
This Burns My Heart, SAMUEL PARK, '98, MA '98, Simon & Schuster, $25.
Drawing on his mother's memories of postwar South Korea, Park writes about an ambitious young woman's quandaries in an era that teeters between tradition and modernization. Soo-Ja Choi picks hastily between two suitors—and then spends years sorting out the repercussions of her decision. One realization: "The biggest luxury in life was the ability to make plans." Park is an assistant professor of English at Columbia College Chicago.
Face to Face, JULIE CADWALLADER-STAUB, '79; DreamSeeker Books, $12.95.
The gravity of illness and loss shadows every poem in this collection—which was born as multiple myeloma stalked the poet's husband of 23 years. Yet possibility and humor and faith without piousness are hallmarks of her writing—each as durable as the Burlington, Vt., landscape she loves. As one poem notes, "The road to the hospital also leads to the county fairgrounds."
"The pants just disintegrated...Soon, every miner was sluicing for color in his long johns—or naked as a jaybird. Yessir, all of California was mining in the vanilla."
—Tony Johnston, '63, MA '64, in Levi Strauss Gets a Bright Idea, illustrated by Stacy Innerst; Harcourt Children's Books, $16.99
