DOOM WITH A VIEW
A Partial History of Lost Causes, Jennifer DuBois; Dial Press, $26
Irina is a young American chess hobbyist who has been diagnosed with Huntington's disease, the neurodegenerative disease that killed her father. Aleksandr, a former world chess champion, is an anti-Putin dissident in Russia. Author DuBois draws these two characters together in 2006 with a fairly flimsy pretext, but their contrasting yet equally futile struggles soon become a thought-provoking study of how people face down fate. This debut novel by a 2009-11 Stegner fellow is decidedly timely—as Putin's recent reelection continues the oppressive reign of a man whose principal tenet, the characters believe, is greed.
Good Products, Bad Products: Essential Elements to Achieving Superior Quality, JAMES L. ADAMS, MS '59, PhD '62; McGraw-Hill, $30.
It's no longer enough to notice that people appreciate well-designed products: A global economy filling up with consumers simply can't afford junky, inefficient goods. Adams, a professor emeritus of mechanical engineering and the author of Conceptual Blockbusting, names this book after a popular course he taught for years. He shows how designers, engineers and manufacturers can interrupt the cycle that makes us "continuously mildly disgruntled owners of our many possessions."
Devine Intervention, MARTHA BROCKENBROUGH, '92; Arthur A. Levine Books/Scholastic, $17.99 (June).
Near-death experience has become as endemic to young-adult literature as amnesia to soap operas. Brockenbrough, with a sensibility more funny bones than Lovely Bones, writes about Jerome, a guardian-angel parolee who's been 17 for 16 years, and the girl he's meant to protect, sweet and tentative Heidi Devine. When Heidi slips through the thin ice on a winter pond, the two must figure out a way to get her into heaven, or restore her to her family, or at least keep her away from the nasty experimenter who wants to watch as a soul is extinguished.
The Man Who Quit Money, MARK SUNDEEN, '92; Riverhead Books, $15.
The life of extreme freegan Daniel Suelo is examined by Sundeen, a fellow appreciator of the desert around Moab, Utah. Suelo, gay, college-educated and a fallen-away evangelical, left his last buck in a phone booth a dozen years ago. He lives in caves, works occasionally (but for neither food not barter) and reports levels of joy and satisfaction commensurate with the Sadhus he emulates. As Sundeen observes: "The person with the least worry over the compromises he must make is, of course, the person who doesn't compromise."
The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism From Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama, ERIC ALTERMAN, PhD '03 and KEVIN MATTSON; Viking, $29.95.
Pundit and Brooklyn College professor Alterman and Ohio University professor Mattson examine how liberals' passion for social justice has animated modern American history. The chronological study examines liberalism with a heavy emphasis on biographical sketches. Present-day liberalism, the authors note, has "pledged itself to rationality in a political culture in which anti-intellectualism runs rampant."
Pricing the Future: Finance, Physics, and the 300-Year Journey to the Black-Scholes Equation, GEORGE G. SZPIRO, MBA '75; Basic Books, $28.
The titular formula was derived to help determine the pricing of options, the financial instruments that can reduce vulnerability in the ever-volatile global economy. Journalist and mathematician Szpiro explains the equation and its uses, in addition to celebrating the genius of its authors: two Nobel Prize winners, Stanford professor emeritus Myron Scholes and Robert Merton, and the late Fischer Black.
'I asked myself, "Is a four-hour service necessary? Or is a thirty-minute service sufficient?" '
—Ekpedeme "Pamay" M. Bassey, '93, in My 52 Weeks of Worship: Lessons from a Global, Spiritual, Interfaith Journey; Balboa Press, $42.99.
