David LowDr. Halley Faust MA ’05 is co-editor (with Paul Menzel) of Prevention vs. Treatment: What’s the Right Balance? (Oxford University Press). In the West, prevention is usually underfunded while treatment receives greater priority. This book explores this observation by examining the actual spending on prevention, the history of health policies and structural features that affect prevention's apparent relative lack of emphasis, the values that may justify priority for treatment or for prevention, and the religious and cultural traditions that have shaped the moral relationship between these two types of care. The publication helps clarify the nature of the empirical and…
Ethan de Siefe ’95 has written an entertaining new book, Tashlinesque: The Hollywood Comedies of Frank Tashlin (Wesleyan University Press). In the preface of his study, de Siefe writes: “Director Frank Tashlin left an indelible impression on American and global film comedy. His films are some of the funniest, most visually inventive comedies ever made, and they feature landmark performances by some of the greatest comedians in American film history, a list that includes not only Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, but Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny.” Tashlin (1913–1972) was a supremely gifted satirist and visual stylist yet…
In his new work The Color of Citizenship (Oxford University Press), Diego Von Vacano ’93 suggests that the tradition of Latin American and Hispanic political thought which has long considered the place of mixed-race peoples throughout the Americas, is uniquely well-positioned to provide useful ways of thinking about the connections between race and citizenship. He argues that debates in the United States about multiracial identity, the possibility of a post-racial world in the aftermath of Barack Obama, and demographic changes owed to the age of mass migration will inevitably have to confront the intellectual tradition related to racial admixture that…
In Share, Retweet, Repeat (Prentiss Hall Press), John Hlinko ‘89 shows readers how to take their ideas, causes, and products, and craft marketing campaigns around them that create buzz—in a quick and cost effective way. In the world of constant communication using new technologies, the average consumers of information have become micro publishers of information as well. Hlinko has been involved in the realm of viral marketing for most of the last 20 years, working with a range of Fortune 500 companies and helping lead MoveOn.org and DraftObama.org. In his book, he shares his expertise on how to create spreadable…
What do Osama Bin Laden’s death, April’s deadly tornados in the southern US, the “Arab Spring,” and recent comments from the US Coast Guard and others about the Deepwater Disaster all have in common? They all are examples of what leaders can learn from Consilience Leadership (Inflection Point Press), a new book by Gary Cook ’64, which demonstrates how lessons learned from Highly Reliable Organization theory, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and other disciplines are helping us understand how to better deal with terrorism and Katrina-like disasters, and better anticipate and avoid political and other disasters. Read more about the book Cook,…
In his book The Buddha Walks Into a Bar …: A Guide to Life for a New Generation (Shambhala), Lodro Rinzler ’05 shows how Buddhist teachings can have a positive impact on every little nook and cranny of your life—whether you’re interested in being a Buddhist or not. These teachings can help inspire individuals to make a difference in themselves and in the world. The book explores the four dignities of Shambhala (the tiger, lion, garuda, and dragon) and the three yanas, or vehicles, of traditional Tibetan Buddhism. Rinzler writes in his book's introduction that the volume is “about taking…
Ariel Rubissow Okamoto ’81 is co-author (with Kathleen M. Wong) of the fascinating Natural History of San Francisco Bay (University of California Press), which also explores its human history and how each affects the other. While the bay is home to healthy eelgrass beds, young Dungeness crabs and sharks, and millions of waterbirds, it also is marked by oil tankers, laced with pollutants, and crowded with 46 cities. The guide explores a number of subjects relating to this unique body of water—including fish, birds and other wildlife, geography and geology, the history of human changes, ocean and climate cycles, endangered…
Courage in the Moment: The Civil Rights Struggle, 1961–1964 (Dover Publications) is a remarkable book of photographs by Jim Wallace, accompanied by a written narrative by Paul Dickson ’61. While many mainstream Southern newspapers ignored the burgeoning civil rights movement in the early 1960s, student journalists from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill bravely ventured out every day to document protest marches and other demonstrations in their town. Jim Wallace was one of these students, and he took memorable photographs primarily during the watershed year of 1963. His pictures contain powerful scenes from a new American revolution, ranging…
Peder Zane ’84 has co-written a new book Design in Nature (Doubleday) with Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University, which describes Bejan’s groundbreaking discovery, the constructal law, a principle of physics that governs all design and evolution in nature. The constructal law holds that all shape and structure emerges to facilitate flow. Rain drops, for example, coalesce and move together, generating rivulets, streams, and the mighty river basins of the world because this design allows them to move more easily. The question to ask is: Why does design arise at all? Why can't the water just seep through the ground?…
In Giving Women: Alliance and Exchange in Victorian Culture (Oxford University Press), Jill Rappoport ’00 explores the literary expression and cultural consequences of English women’s giving from the 1820s to the First World War. During a period when most women lacked property rights and professional opportunities, gift transactions allowed them to enter into economic negotiations of power as volatile and potentially profitable as those within the market systems that so frequently excluded or exploited them. Rappoport shows how female authors and fictional protagonists alike mobilized networks outside of marriage and the market by considering the dynamic action and reaction of…
Paul Halliday ’83, a professor of history n the University of Virginia's College of Arts and Sciences, recently received the Inner Temple Book Prize for his publication, Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire, published by Harvard University Press. He received the prize in December 2011 in London from Princess Anne, daughter of Queen Elizabeth II, in a ceremony at the Inner Temple, one of four unincorporated associations that have existed since the 14th century to recruit and train barristers. Presented every three years, the prize of £10,000 is awarded by the royally chartered Inner Temple and is intended to encourage…
In her illuminating new book, Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden (Grove Press), Brook Wilensky-Lanford ’99 traces the stories of various men who have sought over time to find the “real” Garden of Eden all over the globe, often in the most unlikely places, despite scientific advances and the advance of Darwin’s theory of evolution. This obsessive quest consumed Mesopotamian archaeologists, German Baptist ministers, British irrigation engineers, and the first president of Boston University, among many others. These relentless Eden seekers all started with the same brief Bible verses, but ended up at different spots on the planet,…