Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
H.W. Brands, ’75
Doubleday, 2005
$35
Constant struggle marked Old Hickory’s life and his era (1767-1845). Brands, a history professor at the University of Texas-Austin and biographer of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt, weaves two stories: how the war-orphaned frontier teenager grew into an indomitable military leader and how Jackson’s personal and political development paralleled that of the fledgling nation. The seventh U.S. president was an uncompromising patriot, duelist and slave trader whose gentler nature was revealed in his adoption of two Indian children, one of them orphaned by Jackson’s own troops.
Why Do I Love These People? Honest and Amazing Stories of Real Families
Po Bronson, ’86
Random House, 2005
$24.95
Bronson, the bestselling author of What Should I Do With My Life?, writes about people who dealt with immense familial difficulty—infidelity, illness, accidents and other complicated reversals of fortune. Reporting on their resilience, Bronson doesn’t despair for contemporary kin: “The golden era of family is not in our past. It’s in our future.”
A Day in the Life of the American Woman: How We See Ourselves
Sharon J. Wohlmuth, Carol Saline and Dawn Sheggeby, ’88, editors
An EpiCom Media Book/Bulfinch Press, 2005
$35
Fifty female photographers were dispatched on April 8, 2005, to see what women were doing on an ordinary day. A border patrol agent in Texas, the inventor of Spanx footless pantyhose, a 9-11 widow with two autistic sons, the sisters who cater Little Rock’s finest funerals, and a double amputee from the Iraq war are among those profiled.
The Stanford Law Chronicles: Doin’ Time on the Farm
Alfredo Mirandé, JD ’94
University of Notre Dame Press, 2005
$30
Mirandé left his post as a sociology professor to pursue a long-held dream of attending law school. It wasn’t exactly what he expected. “Like other total institutions such as prisons, boot camps, monasteries and concentration camps, law school systematically strips students of their previous... identities,” he writes. “I emerged from the experience wounded but relatively unscathed.”
The Patient From Hell: How I Worked With My Doctors to Get the Best of Modern Medicine and How You Can Too
Stephen H. Schneider with Janica Lane
A Merloyd Lawrence Book/Da Capo Press, 2005
$25
When Schneider, a professor of biological sciences, was diagnosed with a rare type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, he balked at receiving treatment based on “statistically average” outcomes. Part personal narrative, part advice manual, this book offers guidance on how patients can resist “medicine by the numbers” and seek individualized care.
Music Through the Floor
Eric Puchner
Scribner, 2005
$24
These stories by a former Stegner fellow often focus on unsupervised children and striving immigrants. In “Diablo,” a Mexican day laborer misinterprets the sounds he hears from the apartment below. In “Animals Here Below,” two children conspire to win their stepmother back for their mourning father. In “Essay #3: Leda and the Swan,” a student named Natalie Mudbrook writes as if her life depends on seizing her teacher’s attention.
Stem Cell Now
Christopher Thomas Scott, MLA ’05
Pi Press, 2005
$24.95
Scott, the executive director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics program in stem cells and society, explores the frenzy surrounding this area of science—one with a revolutionary potential matched only by the ethical concern it raises. Controversy aside, he concludes, “no single area of biomedicine holds such great promise for improving human health.”
Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea, and the School That Beat the Odds
Joanne Jacobs, ’74
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005
$24.95
Education blogger Jacobs reports on the first trial-and-error years of a charter high school in San Jose. Most of the entering ninth graders barely have fifth-grade skills, but those who enlist in the school’s culture of hard work, high expectations, “protofascist” discipline, and ganas (desire) emerge as motivated learners ready to succeed at a four-year college.
Articles of War
Nick Arvin, MS ’96
Doubleday, 2005
$17
In this understated novel, Iowa farmboy Heck Tilson, nicknamed for his reluctance to curse, observes the chaos after D-day at Normandy. He tries to cope with the fear so omnipresent that it feels “as if someone had cut him open, stuffed this thing inside, and sewn the flesh closed again”—but his efforts are thwarted by his reputation as a marksman.
