Category: Books

Linda K. Wertheimer (BSJ86, MSJ86)

Faith Ed, Teaching about Religion in an Age of Intolerance, gives an intimate cross-country look at the ongoing debate over how to handle religion in the schools. Veteran education journalist Linda K. Wertheimer traveled to communities around the nation, listening to voices on all sides of controversies over teaching about religion, including those of clergy, teachers, children, and parents who are Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Sikh, or atheist. Her investigation, which includes a return to her rural Ohio school system, which once ran weekly Christian Bible classes, reveals a public education system struggling to find the right path forward and offers a promising roadmap for raising a new generation of religiously literate Americans.

Lori Marshall (BSJ86, MSJ88)

“One-Way Ticket to L.A.” is the story of how a nurse from Ohio found love in Hollywood. Written by Barbara Marshall with her daughter Lori Marshall, the memoir chronicles Barbara’s journey from nursing school to Los Angeles where she met a fast-talking comedy writer from the Bronx named Garry Marshall. He would go on to direct movies with Julia Roberts, Tom Hanks, Julie Andrews and more. Together, Barbara and Garry built one of the most respected marriages in Hollywood. With mutual love and encouragement, their fairy tale lasted 53 years. The book was published by Sarah Street Press in early 2021.

Ian Douglass (MSJ 2006)

Douglass has collaborated with professional wrestling star B. Brian Blair to complete Blair’s 472-page autobiography. Featuring forewords by Bret “The Hitman” Hart and Steve “Gator” Keirn, along with an afterword from Hulk Hogan, Truth Bee Told has been praised by reviewers as an instant classic professional wrestling autobiography.

Despite growing up amidst the challenges caused by poverty, disfiguring injuries and familial strife, Brian Blair’s determination to better himself and his life circumstances took him to worldwide wrestling fame, and also to major successes in the realms of business and politics. Truth Bee Told places you in the passenger’s seat alongside Brian for an entertaining and often hilarious journey through more than 40 years in the professional wrestling industry. You will learn the steep price Brian paid to go from welfare to millionaire, as you experience every marvelous conquest and heartbreaking catastrophe right alongside him. As a tell-all autobiography that pulls no punches, Truth Bee Told more than lives up to its name.

Alisa Parenti (COMM87, MSJ88)

In this historical fiction novel, Parenti takes readers from the tenement halls of the Lower East Side to the walls of Sing Sing as the United States is engulfed by the “Red Scare.” Ethel, the first woman on death row for conspiracy to commit espionage, speaks with Mary Wurth, a young reporter from Queens looking to prove her worth. With the world divided on whether Ethel should live or die, Mary struggles to understand what it means to be an American, and is enamored with the prospect of seeing the true Ethel.

BETRAYAL explores issues deeply impacting our world today, such as the unequal treatment of women, the debate on capitalism versus socialism, and growing nationalism around the globe. Ultimately, this book asks readers what it really means to betray – or to be betrayed.

Parenti is an award-winning broadcast journalist, reporter, and anchor. She has also served as an adjunct faculty member at Georgetown University teaching multimedia journalism and news writing. She and her husband, Jim (MSJ 88), reside in Washington, DC.

Saumya Roy (MSJ02)

“Castaway Mountain” is a narrative non fiction book on the Deonar garbage mountains of Mumbai and the waste pickers who live off them. It follows the life of Farzana Shaikh, a teenaged waste picker, over eight years as she found toys, snacks, jeans, friends and love on these mountains. Among the most fearless pickers in her community, Farzana works on, looking for forgotten treasures amid the trash even as the mountains make her sicker. Through her, Castaway Mountain tells a story of overconsumption, pollution, climate change and how the poor and marginalized face the brunt of it all.

Farzana’s story is interspersed with that of a court case to close down the garbage mountains- one that has stretched on for three decades, while the mountains have only grown taller, erupted in fires and spewed noxious air. Castaway Mountains is about the unspoken trauma of living in places like this and how this trauma is expressed through ancient myths pickers have heard of, through their scarred bodies and how it lingers, subconsciously, in their minds.  It is a beautiful story of light and life amidst darkness, one that will grip readers and move them.

Todd Melby (MSJ87)

The true story of the Coen Brothers’ epic film of murder, mayhem, and malfeasance on the frozen landscapes of Minneapolis and North Dakota, offering an inside look into what Roger Ebert called “one of the best films I’ve ever seen.”

Library Journal’s verdict: “Much like the movie it dissects, this book is quirky and intelligent, with surprising revelations. A treat for cinephiles and fans of the Coen brothers.”

“A Lot Can Happen in the Middle of Nowhere” features a foreword by William H. Macy, dissects actor audition tapes, early versions of the script, and much more.

Jeff Fleischer (MSJ2003)

We already know what climate change is and many of us understand the human causes. But what will climate change do to our world? Who will be affected (spoiler: all of us!) and how will our lives change in the future? Topics include sea levels, extreme weather, drought, animal and plant extinction, and human and animal migration.

Drawing on real-life situations and stories, journalist Jeff Fleischer takes an informed, approachable look at how our world will likely change as a result of our actions, including suggestions on what we can still do to slow down these unprecedented effects.

Michael Sean Comerford (MSJ83)

American OZ is a rollicking, gritty, adventurous story of life in the secretive subculture of traveling carnivals. You’ll never see your state fair or street fest the same way again.

Michael Sean Comerford writes a bold, inspiring true story of a year working behind the scenes with the colorful characters and legends of carnivals.

It’s a new classic American road story as he hitchhikes to shows in California, New Jersey, New York, Chicago, Alaska, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Georgia, and Florida where he works in a freak show. He travels to the lawless foothills of Mexico to see the new face of the American carny.Learn about their hidden world among us. The deeper you read the more you’ll see. A #1 Amazon bestseller, it’s available everywhere books are sold, including audiobooks.

Michael Chacko Daniels (MSJ68)

In this coming of age novel set in 1950s Bombay, Michael Chacko Daniels explores both an India that was cosmopolitan, and the slow rise in exclusionary politics in the country, through the life of a Malayali Syrian Christian boy growing up at that time.

Jug Suraiya, author and former associate editor of the Times of India, writes in the Foreword: “Michael Chacko Daniels has been compared favorably with transcultural writers . . . In narrating the stories of Paul Paulose, his two sisters, and their parents in flashback and flash-forward sequences, he not only vividly evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of a long-ago Bombay, but does so in an idiom which owes as much to the Maximum City of the past as to his Kerala heritage and his American influences.

The result is a compelling amalgam of humor, social satire, nostalgia, and verbal legerdemain of no little virtuosity, with many passages lending themselves to being read aloud in the best oral tradition of storytelling. The illustrations, by Rukmini Chakravarty, imbue the work with the visual immediacy of a graphic novel. In all, the book in its nimble elegance resembles the gazelles of its title. You’ll enjoy reading it as much as the author has obviously enjoyed writing it.”

By Ellen Blum Barish (MSJ94)

One afternoon in the spring of 1972, a Mack truck sped through a residential intersection of Philadelphia and collided with a station wagon carrying a young girl and her friend on a ride home from school. The accident shattered the girl’s realities and a blanket of silence fell over them until they reconnected at their 20th high school reunion. That conversation set Ellen Blum Barish on a 20-year journey, reflected in seven springs, that reunited her to her past, her self, and what she now understands as faith.