by Bill Greer ’76 In this novel about New Amsterdam, Greer paints a portrait of life in the Dutch settlement as experienced by Jackie Lambert, a teenage bride who is among the first settlers and who witnesses the English takeover 40 years later. Mevrouw (a Dutch housewife) Lambert opens a window into the transplanting of [...]

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by James Rice ’85 This study of the Potomac River basin opens with a mystery: Why, when the region offered fertile soil and excellent fishing and hunting, was nearly threequarters of the area uninhabited on the eve of colonization? Rice uses archaeological and anthropological research, as well as scholarship on farming practices at the time, [...]

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by Kristin Johnston Largen ’90 It is a truism in the study of religion that to understand one’s own tradition one must inhabit another’s deeply. Largen, assistant professor of systematic theology at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., takes the reader on a pilgrimage into Buddhism in order to ultimately address what Christians mean by [...]

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by Paula Becker ’85 and Alan J. Stein The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, held on the University of Washington campus in 1909, was a major community effort that brought Seattle and Washington State (then only 20 years old) into the national spotlight. It was the first world’s fair to make a profit, provided a platform for women’s [...]

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by Peter Devine “The Final Interview” is a 100- minute interview with Studs Terkel, one of the world’s greatest contemporary oral historians, and was conducted in February 2005 after Terkel broke his neck. Terkel could not sit still for long periods, making this one of his longest postaccident interviews. Devine, a reporter for the Manchester [...]

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by Tom Cronin, CC political science professor and Michael Genovese This is an expanded update of the highly regarded “The State of the Presidency” (1980). The presidency is loaded with paradoxes that make the job arduous under the best of circumstances. The public wants a strong president but is suspicious of power; it yearns for [...]

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by John Shors ’91 Shors’ third novel is set in modernday Vietnam and tells the story of Iris and Noah, two Americans who, as a way of healing their own painful pasts, open a center to house and educate Vietnamese street children. Inspired by the street children she meets, Iris walks in the footsteps of [...]

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by Katherine Giuffre, CC associate professor of sociology “Collective Creativity” analyzes the explosion of artistic creativity taking place on Rarotonga, a South Pacific island. By examining tourism, galleries, and the artists, the book presents a detailed picture of a complex and multi-faceted community through the words of the artworld participants. Giuffre spent her sabbatical year [...]

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by Anthony D. Barnosky ’74 While reviewing evidence that points to drastic changes resulting from even small global temperature increases, Barnosky also discusses biodiversity’s importance, compares rates of evolutionary change with global temperatures, and recounts Earth’s four previous mass extinctions. One of the assessments is that “many of the species that humans tend to like” [...]

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