The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America by Larry Tye ’76 (Mariner Books)
Duke Ellington, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong, and Count Basie were all born within five years of each other and all had careers that spanned more than five decades. In the era of Jim Crow all three frontmen were able to open the rest of the world up to jazz. In this expansive, brightly written history Tye twines their stories, detailing the venues and cities that launched their careers and chronicling their lives on and off stage, the highs and lows included. This is a book that’s best read with a few backing tracks.
We Don’t Have Time For This by Brianna Craft ’13 MA (Hyperion)
Following up on Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir, in this YA debut Craft confronts some of those same issues, only in a different literary landscape. We meet Isa Brown, who is starting her junior year at Lakewood High while feeling stressed. Wildfires are burning near her Pacific Northwest town, her longshoreman dad might lose his job when the port adds a natural gas pipeline, and Isa decides that joining her school’s environmental justice club could be a good idea. She ends up sharing the club’s presidential duties with Darius Freeman, who is annoyingly bent on buffing his credentials so he can get into a top college. The two instantly clash, but Craft has another plan in mind for their relationship.
Left for Dead: Shipwreck, Treachery, and Survival at the Edge of the World by Eric Jay Dolin ’83 (Liveright)
As the War of 1812 looms, Captain Charles Barnard persuades his New York partners to back a sealing expedition to the Falkland Islands. Barnard secures the brig Nanina and sails off to the South Atlantic to begin the hunt. The next year an American ship brings news that a war with Great Britain is underway and Barnard’s backers order him to return. He stays. The Americans discover 34 English castaways and both sides agree that the war is too distant to worry about—at least until the Nancy, a Royal Navy brig, arrives and claims the Nanina as a prize while Barnard and four others are away hunting. When they return, their ship is gone. Plenty of heroes and bad behavior in this gripping true story of maritime treachery.
Alumni Nonfiction
The Lure of the East: A Curator’s Fascinating Journey by Marilyn Jenkins-Madina ’62 (Rodin Books)
#UsToo: How Jewish, Muslin, and Christian Women Changed Our Communities by Keren McGinity ’99 AM, ’05 PhD (Routledge)
Systems from Hell: Problem Definition and the Literary Portrayal of Failure in Our Public Policy and Social Institutions by David A. Rochefort’ 76 AM, ’79 AM, ’83 PhD (SUNY)
The Vietnam War: A Military History by Geoffry Wawro ’83 (BasicBooks)
Red Secularism by Todd H. Weir ’87 (Cambridge University Press)
The Bloomsbury Handbook on Religion and Heritage in Contemporary Europe by Todd H. Weir ’87 and Lieke Wijnia (Bloomsbury)
Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject by Suzannah Weiss ’13 (Polity)
Alumni Poetry
Blue Moon Looming by Javier Sandoval ’16 (CutBank )
Childrens
How We Can Live: Principles of Black Lives Matter by Lalena Garcia, illustrated by Caryn Davidson ’02 (Lee & Low Books)
Faculty
The Presidents and The People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It by Corey Brettschneider (W.W. Norton)
Elemental: How Five Elements Changed Earth’s Past and Will Shape Our Future by Stephen Porder (Princeton University Press)
A New No-Man’s-Land by Esther Whitfield (University of Pittsburgh Press)