Category: Books

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.

Daniel de Visé (MSJ90)

In the first half of this exhaustively researched, highly informative book, de Visé, the author of King of the Blues and Andy & Don, provides an in-depth profile of the upbringing and career arcs of the film’s stars: the immensely talented, overgrown child John Belushi, who needed constant stimulation and elicited among his friends and colleagues the need to protect; and the quieter, highly intelligent Dan Aykroyd. The author also describes the rivalry-rich, drug-fueled evolution of 1970s comedy in the forms of Saturday Night Live, National Lampoon, and Chicago’s Second City group, all of which laid the groundwork for the movie. Gleaned from primary research and interviews with Aykroyd and director John Landis, among others, the narrative details the relationship between Belushi and Aykroyd, the sincerity with which they immersed themselves in the blues to live out their fantasies of fronting a great band, and how they overcame accusations of cultural appropriation to revive and amplify the careers of talents such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Cab Calloway. The book is also the definitive scene-by-scene account of a film—ambitious and over budget, panned by most critics of the day—that endures as a well-written and directed comedy doubling as a loving homage to a uniquely American genre and its capital city. A complete portrait of a classic film and the zeitgeist of its era.

Arden Joy (BSJ16)

Abigail Meyer and Freya Jonsson can’t stand one another. But could their severe hatred be masking something else entirely? From the moment they locked eyes in high school, Abby and Freya have been at each other’s throats. Ten years later, when Abby and Freya cross paths again, their old rivalry doesn’t take more than a few minutes to begin anew. And now Naomi, Abby’s best friend, is falling for Freya’s producer and close pal, Will. Both women are thrilled to see their friends in a happy relationship – except they are now only a few degrees of separation from the person they claim to despise… and they can’t seem to avoid seeing one another. After their encounters repeatedly devolve into warfare, Abby and Freya’s friends decide their age-old rivalry can only mean one thing: true love. Will their friends bring them together? Or will Freya’s refusal to admit who she is keep them from discovering their underlying passion? “Keep This Off The Record” is a fun and fresh LGBTQIA+ story about the freedom to be who you are, even if that means falling for the person you hate.

Laurie Lawlor (BSJ75)

Inspiring, little-known story of two artists who changed each other’s lives and the course of musical history. Illustrated picture book for music enthusiasts age 6 and up.

BettyJoyce Nash (MSJ88)

On Boneyard Island, Georgia, where everyone’s weirdly kin, thirteen-year-old Lucille is marooned when her mother goes AWOL with an old flame, leaving Lucille with only her father’s ashes, two half-siblings, and Will, the misanthropic manager of the island’s only motel. The abandonment kills hope of Lucille’s promised snorkeling trip to the Florida Reef before ocean heat kills the coral, and illusions she’s harbored about her mother’s sanity. Everybody Here is Kin explores the lives of this sinking family, the island community, and fears of exposing wounds, old and new, when natural disaster forces them to trust, and depend on, strangers.