The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion
of Intelligent Design
Leonard Susskind
Little, Brown, 2006
$24.95
Physicists have long sought a single mathematical principle that would explain how the universe works. String theory, originated by Susskind, the Felix Bloch Professor in Physics at Stanford, looked promising but produced more loose ends, or what the author calls “a colossal landscape of Rube Goldberg machines.” Acknowledging the temptation to ascribe nature’s complexities to a supernatural intelligence, Susskind argues instead that we live in one “pocket universe” in an unfathomably enormous megaverse, where different pockets operate on different principles.
A Dash of Daring: Carmel Snow and Her Life in Fashion, Art,
and Letters
Penelope Rowlands, MA ’85
Atria Books, 2005
$29.95
Magazine journalist Rowlands traces Snow’s life from her roots as an Irish immigrant to her bitter break with Condé Nast flagship Vogue to her quarter-century tenure at Harper’s Bazaar—where she created a magazine for “well-dressed women with well-dressed minds.”
The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia,
and the Rest of Planet Earth
Eric Jackson, ’88
World Ahead Publishing, 2004
$27.95
Jackson first met Peter Thiel, ’89, JD ’92, through the Stanford Review, long before hedge fund manager Thiel and Ukrainian engineer Max Levchin launched PayPal. Jackson, who became global marketing director of the online payment firm, chronicles how PayPal beat back attacks by critics, rivals and organized crime during the four years before one-time nemesis eBay acquired the company in 2002.
Children of Coyote, Missionaries of Saint Francis: Indian-Spanish Relations in Colonial California, 1769-1850
Steven W. Hackel, ’84
U. of North Carolina Press, 2005
$22.50
An associate professor of history at Oregon State, Hackel explores the many ways Indians of Alta California negotiated colonization’s complex and often devastating effects. Focusing on Mission Carlos San Borromeo, built in the 1770s just south of Monterey, he argues for a more nuanced appreciation of the interactions (and not just collisions) between Indians and Spaniards.
In Praise of Athletic Beauty
Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht
Harvard University Press, 2006
$22.95
A professor of French and Italian and of comparative literature, Gumbrecht encourages intellectuals to think about the pleasures of watching sports. Drawing on historical examples and his experience as a lifelong sports (and Cardinal football) fan, Gumbrecht argues that fascination with athletics may be the most popular and powerful form of aesthetic experience today, in the classic and literal sense of the concept.
The Jury Master
Robert Dugoni, ’84
Warner Books, 2005
$24.95
A former litigator and journalist, Dugoni makes his fiction debut with a conspiracy thriller. Unknown to each other, a shrewd San Francisco lawyer and a former CIA agent in rural Washington are plagued by similar recurring nightmares. The murder—disguised as suicide—of a White House confidant sets the action in motion.
A Left-Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things Southpaw
David Wolman, MA ’00
Da Capo Press, 2005
$23.95
In a lively quest to give port siders their due, journalist Wolman goes man a mano with neuropsychologists in London, golfers in Japan, a Vedic palmist in Quebec, and a pair of pickled brains in Paris.
Seeking Security in an Insecure World
Dan Caldwell, ’70, MA ’78, PhD ’78, and Robert E. Williams Jr.
Rowan and Littlefield, 2006
$24.95
“No longer is war the only security threat that states face,” write these two political scientists at Pepperdine. “Nor, for that matter, is war what it once was.” They examine the fluid nature of modern security threats, including infectious diseases, cyber attacks, transnational criminal organizations, failed states and biological weaponry.
Intuition
Allegra Goodman, PhD ’97
Dial Press, 2006
$25
A postdoc comes to the bitter realization that her most important finding after years of painstaking bench science is her hunch that a fellow researcher has fudged his data. This novel’s examination of high-stakes science and its ethical dilemmas is as ambitious as its characters’ search for a virus that cures cancer.
