Patrick Harwood (MSJ90)
Patrick Harwood has published his fifth book, “Stories from the Underground: The Churchyards of Charleston.” (BirdsEyeViews Publications). The book examines Charleston, S.C.’s rich, diverse and interesting history through the prism of its religious burial grounds. Harwood has resided in the Charleston, S.C. area since 1990. He is a communication professor at South Carolina State University. For more information, visit mybirdseyeviews.blogspot.com.
Michael Chacko Daniels (MSJ68)
Michael Chacko Daniels’ new poetry collection—Letters to Molly: Lady on a Red Leash & Other Poems—discovers poetry in the seemingly mundane events of everyday life. His eyes and ears are wide open, as he captures in precise detail the quirky behavior and dialogue of people he meets at San Francisco farmers markets, on buses and trolleys, and hiking trails. He’s a consummate storyteller, and many of his poems, which are based on emails he sent to his sister Molly, are miniature stories, laced with humor and are often quite touching. Daniels has many more arrows in his quiver. In addition to their engaging content, the poems are a delight to read because of Daniels’ visual artistry, the varied and imaginative spacing of his lines, and the different fonts occasionally employed, all used to great effect. Poems such as “The Land Imagined” and “Tastes More Like Bombay” are simple and understated, yet succeed in revealing, as many poems in this collection do, the love between Daniels and his sister.
Chuck McCutcheon (BSJ85)
The seventh edition of “Congress A to Z,” a SAGE Publications college textbook about Capitol Hill policy and politics, was published in July 2022. The update includes new entries on coronavirus, Black Lives Matter and numerous other issues.
Xelena González (BSJ01)
When Grandma walks to her special garden, her granddaughters know to follow her there. Grandma invites the girls to explore her collection of treasures–magical rocks, crystals, seashells, and meteorites–to see what wonders they reveal. “They are alive with wisdom,” Grandma says. As her granddaughters look closely, the treasures spark the girls’ imaginations. They find stories in the strength of rocks shaped by volcanoes, the cleansing power of beautiful crystals, the mystery of the sea that houses shells and shapes the environment, and the long journey meteorites took to find their way to Earth. This is the power of Grandma’s special garden, where wonder grows and stories blossom.
Lauren Hirshberg (MSJ02)
Suburban Empire takes readers to the US missile base at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, at the matrix of postwar US imperial expansion, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the tide of anti-colonial struggles rippling across the world. Hirshberg shows that the displacement of indigenous Marshallese within Kwajalein Atoll mirrors the segregation and spatial politics of the mainland US as local and global iterations of US empire took hold. Tracing how Marshall Islanders navigated US military control over their lands, Suburban Empire reveals that Cold War-era suburbanization was perfectly congruent with US colonization, military testing, and nuclear fallout. The structures of suburban segregation cloaked the destructive history of control and militarism under a veil of small-town innocence.
Lisa L. Lewis (IMC91)
In 2015, when Lisa L. Lewis started looking into why high schools start so early in the morning, she had no idea where it eventually lead. After the 7:30 a.m. start time at her son’s high school prompted her involvement, her writing on the topic sparked California’s landmark law (the first of its kind in the nation) requiring health secondary school start times and her new book, The Sleep-Deprived Teen: Why Our Teenagers Are So Tired, And How Parents And Schools Can Help Them Thrive.
Her book synthesizes the research on sleep, provides parents with practical guidance, and also includes a deep dive into tech use and sleep, along with an examination of how sex and gender, sexual identity, socioeconomic status, and race and ethnicity can affect sleep. The book has been described as “a call to action” by Arianna Huffington and “an urgent and timely read” by Daniel H. Pink.
“Adolescents are chronically sleep-deprived, with far-ranging implications for their well-being – including their mental health,” Lewis said. “My hope is that spreading awareness of how critical sleep is for our teens will help prompt ongoing meaningful change.”
Deborah “Dobsy” Karabin (BSJ73)
PROCEEDS FOR THIS KIDS BOOK BENEFIT UKRAINIAN REFUGEES.
My paternal grandparents lived there.
This book is about Bita Ukrainian Warrior Dog, which is the title.
She meets a band of pups from Paris led by Metro, an American poodle named after my own dear dog. Bita is separated from her family and finds a Ukrainian soldier who is later wounded. Bita tracks him down, finds her family and surprises everyone including herself with a big bundle of joy.
Gary Weiss (MSJ76)
Back in the fall of 2016 we heard the news about the passing of Eddie Antar, “Crazy Eddie” as he was known to millions of people, the man behind the successful chain of electronic stores and one of the most iconic ad campaigns in history. Few things evoke the New York of a particular era the way “Crazy Eddie! His prices are insaaaaane!” does. The journalist Herb Greenberg called his death the “end of an era” and that couldn’t be more true. What’s insane is that his story has never been told.
Before Enron, before Madoff, before The Wolf of Wall Street, Eddie Antar’s corruption was second to none. The difference was that it was a street franchise, a local place that was in the blood stream of everyone’s daily life in the 1970s and early ’80s. And Eddie pulled it off with a certain style, an in your face blue collar chutzpah. Despite the fact that then U.S. Attorney Michael Chertoffcalled him “the Darth Vader of capitalism” after the extent of the fraud was revealed, one of the largest SEC frauds in American history after Crazy Eddie’s stores went public in 1984, Eddie was talked about fondly by the people who worked for him. They still do–there are myriads of ex-Crazy Eddie employee web pages that still attract fans, and the Crazy Eddie fraud scheme is now taught in every business school across the United States.
Many years have passed since the franchise went down in spectacular fashion but Crazy Eddie’s moment has endured the way that iconic brands and characters do–one only need Google the media outpouring that accompanied his death. Maybe it’s because it crystallized everything about 1970s New York almost perfectly, the merchandise and rise of consumer electronics (stereos!), the ads (cheesy!), the money (cash!). In “Retail Gangster,” investigative journalist Gary Weiss takes readers behind the scenes of one of the most unbelievable business scam stories of all time, a story spanning continents and generations, reaffirming the old adage that the truth is often stranger than fiction.
Reviews:
New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/09/books/review-retail-gangster-gary-weiss.html
Wall Street Journal
https://www.wsj.com/articles/retail-gangster-review-lets-make-a-deal-11661205935
David Dennis (MSJ09)
A dynamic family exchange that pivots between the voices of a father and son, The Movement Made Us is a unique work of oral history and memoir, chronicling the extraordinary story of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and its living legacy embodied in Black Lives Matter. David Dennis Sr., a core architect of the movement, speaks out for the first time, swapping recollections both harrowing and joyful with David Jr., a journalist working on the front lines of change today.
Taken together, their stories paint a critical portrait of America, casting one nation’s image through the lens of two individual Black men and their unique relationship. Playful and searching, anxious and restorative, fearless and driving, this intimate memoir features scenes from across David Sr.’s life, as he becomes involved in the movement, tries to move beyond it, and ultimately returns to it to find final solace and new sense of self—revealing a survivor who travels eternally with a cabal of ghosts.
A crucial addition to Civil Rights history, The Movement Made Us is the story of a nation reckoning with change and the hopes, struggles, setbacks, and triumphs of modern Black life. This is it: the extant chronicle of why we live, why we move, and for what we are made.
Greg Presto (BSJ04, MSJ07)
Exercise can do so much more than just make you sweat. It can also take you across the world to bike with zebras, back in time to the decks of the Titanic, or into the shoes of pro athletes, Hollywood superstars … and even presidents of the United States.
Whether you’re a beginner who can barely make it off the couch or a gym junkie who can’t stop moving, The Workout Bucket List is bursting with seriously fun fitness challenges and adventures for every type of person … and body! There are workouts, plans, races, and ideas to build your own ultimate life list of adventures—with options you can try at home, in your local gym, and across the globe. Inside this book you’ll:
· Race your bike over mountains against a locomotive
· Run in the world’s largest 10K
· Do leg day like America’s toughest firefighter
· Swim a mile in Mr. Rogers’s sneakers
· Tackle a workout using equipment from the Titanic
· Conquer the world’s tallest climbing wall
· Catch a big wave in the Big Apple
And hundreds more!