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Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage |
Veteran New York Times journalist Taubman’s account of the clandestine Cold War programs that produced the U-2 plane, and—using a secret Palo Alto workplace—the Corona satellite, tops any spy thriller, but it is based solidly on declassified documents and interviews with scientists and officials. Desperate to keep tabs on the Soviet Union’s nuclear activities, Eisenhower championed science and technology more than any president before or since. The ingenuity and grit of those who pierced the Iron Curtain was matched only by the sheer nerve required to do it all behind the backs of Congress and the public. |
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The Blessings of Bhutan |
Tourists at first, the authors established lasting links as a “two-person Peace Corps” with this tiny Himalayan kingdom, where the official development yardstick is Gross National Happiness. Their essays, with color photos, discuss Bhutan’s spiritual yet earthy culture and how it changed their own way of life. The couple also ponders how contact with the outside world, necessary for economic survival, will affect Bhutanese tradition. |
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Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard |
Anders, a Fast Company magazine editor, chronicles HP’s sea change, when the enshrined familial culture gave way to audacious new management on the eve of the tech-sector collapse. The battle between CEO Fiorina, ’76, mastermind of the merger with Compaq, and opposing board member Walter Hewlett, MS ’68, MS ’73, DMA ’80, gives the story its climax, but Anders also reveals much about the Hewlett and Packard family foundations. |
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Natural Dance |
Delving into photography after retirement from a corporate career in 1995, Eastman grew fascinated with rhythm in nature—breaking waves, a swaying branch, birds in flight—and then with the movements of dance. In 79 color images of professional dancers set loose at the seashore, in the desert and on the forest floor, he uses a time-lapse technique to produce ethereal impressions of art and nature uniting. |
| The Making of Toro: Bullfights, Broken Hearts, and One Author’s Quest for the Acclaim He So Richly Deserves Mark Sundeen, ’92 Simon & Schuster, 2003 $23 |
Billed as biography, this is the wacky backstory of an author’s quixotic attempts to write a book about bullfighting. When all his romantic notions shatter—even trying to assume the sophisticated persona of his nom de plume, Travis LaFrance, doesn’t help much—he’s left with a backstory in search of a story. |
| The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers ed. Bruce Shenitz, MA ’81 Marlowe & Co., 2002 $16.95 |
The 28 essays in this anthology spring from relationships that range from close and loving to remote and hostile and represent every corner of society. In frank and sometimes humorous descriptions of estrangements and reconciliations, the writers demonstrate that the complexities of parent-child relations are universal. |
| That Water, Those Rocks Katharine Baake, MA ’80 U. of Nevada Press, 2003 $18 |
In this first novel by the director of creative writing at CSU-Northridge, fact and fiction blend indistinguishably at times. Baake’s roots are in far-northern California; Shasta Dam and the rivers it controls provide the landscape for her memories and imaginings. Whether real or created, her characters’ lives are defined by their surroundings, both natural and engineered. |
| The Work of the University Richard C. Levin, ’68 Yale U. Press, 2003 $24.95 |
This collection of speeches and essays marks the 10th anniversary of the author’s tenure as president of Yale. His topics range from the Internet revolution to the university’s responsibilities as an “urban citizen” to why the “Great Books” of the Western canon remain great. Levin brings his expertise as an economist to such questions as how to counteract the inherent inequities of a market economy. |
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Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation: A Reference Handbook |
Nuclear weapons have always provoked ambivalence, as nations simultaneously try to acquire or keep them as a deterrent and to rid the world of their deadly threat. Based at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., the authors trace global developments, profile key players, chart progress and setbacks in disarmament, and outline current controversies. |
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