Category: Books

Shadan Kapri (MSJ16)

“Discovering Your Passion: The Path to Your Authentic Life,” is written for all of those who don’t fit the mold, to the dreamers and the nonconformists, the ones who never truly fit in but were born to stand out. This is for you. The truth is that we live in a world that is constantly telling us who to be, how to dress, and how to act from the moment we are born. We are sent messages of what is acceptable and appropriate, but as we get older, we realize that the old rules of how to act or what to do with our lives may not align with who we really are inside.

Each of us is unique and original in so many ways. It’s our greatest asset. Yet, we often lose sight of this. This book is for the person who wants to find their purpose and passion in life. It doesn’t exist by living inside a cubicle or checking off an arbitrary list of society’s expectations. It is found by going within yourself and searching for your answers, searching for your truth.

What seems different is actually the world’s way of giving us unique, independent voices. Each voice can and does move us forward. Each of us has the ability to change lives, but first we have to stop believing the simple lie that to be accepted we have to be like everyone else.

“Discovering Your Passion: The Path to Your Authentic Life,” helps people find their unique voice, their passions, and dreams in life. It provides guidance with journaling and questions that help people find their truth. Not the truth the media tells us. The truth that is in your heart. For real failure is failing to sing that song or tell that story that you were sent here to tell. May this book help you on the path to finding your place in the world. The world needs you now more than ever.

Ari Berman (BSJ04)

A riveting account of the decades-long effort by reactionary white conservatives to undermine democracy and entrench their power—and the movement to stop them.

The mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, represented an extreme form of the central danger facing American democracy today: a blatant disregard for the will of the majority. But this crisis didn’t begin or end with Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Through voter suppression, election subversion, gerrymandering, dark money, the takeover of the courts, and the whitewashing of history, reactionary white conservatives have strategically entrenched power in the face of a massive demographic and political shift. Ari Berman charts these efforts with sweeping historical research and incisive on-the-ground reporting, chronicling how a wide range of antidemocratic tactics interact with profound structural inequalities in institutions like the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to threaten the survival of representative government in America.

Ian Douglass (MSJ06)

In this 440-page sequel, Ian Douglass (MSJ06) works with Steve Keirn to tell the story about his mainstream return to wrestling, the creation of the Professional Wrestling Federation, and his stint in the World Wrestling Federation as the alligator hunter Skinner and the evil wrestling clown Doink. From there, Steve’s life progresses through a series of ups and downs that eventually sees him founding a wrestling school, starting an iill-fated independent wrestling company, and eventually becoming the head trainer who oversaw the most successful era of homegrown talent creation under the World Wrestling Entertainment banner.

Steve Reddicliffe (BSJ75)

Steve Reddicliffe of Glen Arbor, Mich., is the editor of the new edition of The New York Times Essential Book of Cocktails, with recipes and stories from more than 100 years of the paper’s drinks coverage. The more than 400 recipes include Martinis and Manhattans; Bloody Marys and Bellinis; and nightcaps, Negronis and non-alcoholic cocktails, from such writers as Robert Simonson, Rosie Schaap, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Pete Wells, Melissa Clark, Rebekah Peppler and Mark Bittman. Reddicliffe, who wrote The Quiet Drink column for The Times, served as the deputy editor for the paper’s international edition, deputy travel editor, and television editor.

Jeff Fleischer (MSJ03)

Every four years, coverage of the presidential election turns into a horse-race story about who’s leading the polls and who said what when. Social media and online news have made it easier to spread false information (even by accident) and harder to know what’s accurate. It can be difficult to get good information about how the election process actually works, why it matters, or how you can get involved. Civics education and information about how our government functions is necessary whether you’re a longtime voter or a soon-to-be voter. This newly revised edition includes statistics and anecdotes from recent elections alongside straightforward, nonpartisan analysis and explanation. Author Jeff Fleischer uses a fun, casual voice and real-world examples to provide an essential resource that will remain relevant long after the next president is elected.

Judy Rosenfeld Gruen (MSJ86)

What happens when career ambition begins to clash with a commitment to religious and personal values? In “Bylines and Blessings,” award-winning author Judy Gruen shares how she resolved these two seemingly conflicting drives.

As a young, secular woman determined to succeed as a writer, she learns to turn rejection and obstacles into steps toward professional excellence. Along the way, she also becomes a powerful voice for traditional Jewish values, understanding that words create worlds. Discovering the surprising impact of her writing on readers of all ages and across many faiths, she ultimately finds the blessings in the bylines.

This heartfelt, compelling memoir traces Gruen’s path in building not only a career but a purposeful life. Filled with humor and depth, this book will feel like having a heart-to-heart talk with an old friend.

“A perceptive memoir, written with both boldness and restraint.” –Kirkus

Glenn Miller (MSJ90)

Henry Franken has a problem with money – he has too much of it. When his unprincipled father dies, thirty-three-year-old Henry inherits a massive estate, including an Upper East Side residential building. He must confront the reality of his new financial status, directly conflicting with his well-honed identity as a “progressive liberal.” When he shows up to collect the keys to his father’s building, he notices a sign: “Doorman Wanted.” Seeing a chance to stave off the complexities of his inheritance, Henry applies for the position under a pseudonym… and gets it.

Now, no one in the building knows that Doorman “Franklin Hanratty” is the building’s new mysterious owner. Through interactions with residents and the homeless outside his door, Henry develops from an idealistic young person avoiding the demands of his fortune, into a man who accepts the opportunity to direct that wealth toward a broader good.
“…a delightful, meaningful, and important book that belongs on the top shelf of any library.” — Greg Fields, author of Through the Waters and the Wild.

Morgan Campbell (BSJ99)

Morgan Campbell comes from “a fighting family,” a connection and clash that reaches back to Chicago in the 1930s. His parents’ families were both part of the Great Migration from the U.S. rural south to the industrial north, but a history of perceived slights and social schisms solidified a feud that only intensified over the century.

Morgan’s maternal grandfather, Claude Jones—a legendary grudge-holder and fixture of the Chicago jazz scene—was recruited to play in Toronto and eventually settled in Canada in the mid-1960s. Morgan’s paternal grandmother, Granny Mary, however, remained stateside, a distance her resentments would only grow to fill.

Bearing witness to these tensions was young Morgan, an aspiring writer, budding athlete, and slow-jam scholar whose American roots landed him an outsider status that exposed the profound gap between Canada’s multicultural reputation and its very different reality.

Having grown up bouncing between these disparate identities—Black and Canadian, Canadian and American, Campbell and Jones—Morgan has crafted a witty, wise, rich, and soulful illumination of the journey to find clarity in all that conflict.
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Kerry Luft (BSJ87)

Coyotes Among Us is an eye-opening volume of research and photographs exploring one of North America’s most persistent—and misunderstood—predators. The coyote. Even its image conjures up more myth than fact. From its depictions as the “trickster” in ancient fables to its portrayal as a threat to humans and their pets in modern news sources, coyotes are rarely shown in a favorable light. Now, the Urban Coyote Research Project pulls back the curtain on the defamed coyote, revealing the surprising truth about this unique creature. Though harassed and hunted for generations, today the coyote persists and even thrives. With an innate ability to adjust to new climates and environments, the coyote has developed an expansive range. Once confined to the American West, it now lives in forty-nine states, across lower Canada, throughout Mexico, and all the way to Costa Rica. Its habitat ranges from rural prairie to urban overpasses; it is the largest animal to regularly live wild within city limits. The coyote continues to overcome the ceaseless intrusion of urban development to create a bright and flourishing future, providing its human neighbors a surprising number of benefits. With stunning images of coyotes within their surprising habitats, Coyotes Among Us draws from decades of experience to dispel coyote myths, highlight the benefits of living with coyotes, and embrace the coyote as a brilliant survivor against all odds.

David Ropeik (BSJ72, MSJ73)

In some ways our fear of cancer exceeds the risk, and the fear does great harm all by itself. “Curing Cancer-phobia How Risk, Fear, and Worry Mislead Us” explores the history and psychology of those fears, documents the massive harm they cause, and reviews efforts to reduce that harm.

Thousands are injured, and hundreds killed, by treatment for types of ‘overdiagnosed’ breast, prostate, thyroid, and lung cancer that would never harm the4 patient, frightened into more treatment than their clinical conditions require because the frightening “C word” is in the diagnosis. $5.3 b/yr is spent on this clinically unnecessary treatment.
Our fear of cancer leads millions to screen though not in the groups for which screening is recommended, even though research shows they are more likely to be harmed than helped. We spend $9.2 b/yr on this “overscreening”.

Fear of cancer leads to disproportionate government spending to reduce cancer risk compared to what is spent on other major health threats. We spend billions on products that promise to reduce our cancer risk, but don’t. Fear of cancer impedes the use of technologies that could provide great benefit, like fluoridation of drinking water and non-greenhouse gas emitting nuclear power.

By bringing this issue to public attention, “Curing Cancer-phobia How Risk, Fear, and Worry Mislead Us” hopes to help reduce all those harms.