Jeffrey Cousins (BSJ85)
In this Sci-Fi adventure, a captured alien reveals that the aliens created humans. Humans are just robots. The human race has different reactions to the news.
What happens to our values?
Should human laws remain?
Should we still have compassion for each other?
Does killing a human being still have the same meaning?
What do you think?
Ian Douglass (MSJ06)
Spanning 60 years and covering professional wrestling events that took place on both land and sea, this book by Ian Douglass includes original input and interviews from nearly 50 wrestlers, writers, and other noteworthy individuals who played meaningful roles in the progression of the professional wrestling history of the Bahamas.
Not only was Douglass able to include insights from a broad range of wrestlers, including Dory Funk Jr., Jimmy Garvin, Mike Rotunda, Don Muraco, Tyree Pride, Kevin Sullivan, Steve Keirn, Brian Knobbs, Omar Amir and Adam Page, but Bahamian Rhapsody was also completed with the full cooperation of the leading Bahamian newspapers – The Nassau Guardian and The Nassau Tribune.
In addition to broadly covering the professional wrestling events that were held in the Bahamas by territories associated with the National Wrestling Alliance, the book also includes coverage of the development of the independent Bahamian wrestling companies of the 1970s, and events hosted by smaller independent organizations based in the United States and Canada. Furthermore, it explores the challenges of training and developing native-born Bahamian professional wrestlers, from local 1970s wrestling stars like “The Sensational Bahamian Grappler” Arnsel Johnson to multi-time Ohio Valley Wrestling Heavyweight Champion Omar Amir.
Douglass previously co-authored the autobiographies of wrestlers Dan Severn, Buggsy McGraw, Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl and Brian Blair. He has also written for Men’s Health Magazine, MEL Magazine and Splice Today, and has been a contributor to both the International Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Bahamas Historical Society.
S.L. (Sandi) Wisenberg (BSJ79)
Even as a fourth-generation Jewish Texan, S.L. Wisenberg has always felt the ghost of Europe dogging her steps, making her feel uneasy in her body and the world. As a child she imagines Nazis taking her family away, fearing that her asthma would make her unlikely to survive. In her late twenties, she infiltrates sorority rush at her alma mater, curious about whether she’ll get a bid now. Later in life, she makes her first and only trip to the mikvah after a breast biopsy (benign, this time), prompting an exploration of misogyny, shame, and woman-fear in rabbinical tradition.
With wit, verve, blood, scars, and a solid dose of self-deprecation, Wisenberg wanders across the expanse of continents and combs through history books and family records in her search for home and meaning. Her travels take her from Selma, Alabama, where her East European Jewish ancestors once settled; to Vienna, where she tours Freud’s home and figures out what women really want; and she visits Auschwitz, which disappointingly leaves no emotional mark. Finally, after reflecting on hospitality and the mutually assured destruction pact of Airbnb, she settles on a tentative definition of home.
“A sharp, deeply questioning mind and a wayward heart inform these delicious essays. They are wry, humorous, melancholy, and universally relatable, filled with the shock of recognition.” –Phillip Lopate
Bob Reiss (BSJ73)
Bob’s 24th book, “Still Hungry, Tales From the Shadows” is a short story collection with 8 tales reflecting a lifelong love with the old Twilight Zone TV series, and the art of showing truths about the real world by getting at them through the back of the mirror. A waitress faced with an unusual customer. A scientist summoned to a military base. A world leader trapped at 30,000 feet. A PR person dealing with a pesky journalist. A teenager’s journey during the last 8 hours before the US splits into two countries. Choices and consequences, highlighted in the shadow world.
Jay Copp (MSJ89) You may not be Catholic, but good luck getting through a day without experiencing the impact of Catholicism. Woken up by an alarm and glanced at the clock? The mechanical clock was invented in the 10th century by a monk who became pope. Cornflakes for breakfast? The milk is safe thanks to Louis Pasteur, a devout Catholic whose research was driven by a love of God and humanity.
Relaxing with a beer or glass of wine once you get home? Monks in the Middle Ages, sequestered in their monasteries and needing to fend for themselves, were the first brew masters and also significantly advanced the art of winemaking.
Curling up with a good book by a literary giant? Rough-and-tumble Papa Hemingway was a disillusioned member of the Lost Generation, but as a Catholic he also searched for God as diligently as he hunted big game in Africa.
Perhaps you have a good job because you went to college. The university was a Catholic innovation. Stopping at the hospital after work to visit a sick parent? The Greeks and Romans had some admirable civic virtues, but caring for the ill was not one of them. Early Christians began the first hospitals.
Our customs, pastimes and enduring practices and institutions often can be traced back to an inventive, resourceful and, usually, a devout Catholic.
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.