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Shelf Life |
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Crossing the Sauer: A Memoir of World War II |
The author dispels any notion of combat “glory”
as he recreates life in an assault platoon within the 5th Infantry Division
of Patton’s Third Army. Leavening his gritty narrative with stories
of unexpected kindness and humor, Felix conveys both the despair and the
deep camaraderie of men sent out to die. When a case of jaundice sends
him home after three months, he finishes college, marries, raises a family
and enjoys a teaching career in Redwood City. Pondering his fortune some
50 years later, he concludes: “Chance dictates everything.” |
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Saguaro: The Desert Giant |
This book is a lavishly illustrated, fact-packed guide to the world’s
most recognizable cactus. The saguaro plays a remarkable role in Southwest
life and lore, and the authors cover topics ranging from traditional uses
for its ribs—birdcages, splints, shelves, grave coverings, fencing,
oars, among many others—to recipes for syrups and sundaes and the
saguaro’s place in pop culture. |
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Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science |
A surgical resident and staff writer for the New
Yorker, the author reminds readers that every physician makes mistakes;
that, for better or worse, doctors must learn on the job with human guinea
pigs in teaching hospitals; and that diagnosis is sometimes a hit-or-miss
affair with disastrous or miraculous results. By being candid about his
profession’s inescapable shortcomings, he makes its successes seem
all the more triumphant. |
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The Complete Poetry of Catullus |
Not all Latin texts are dry descriptions of Gaul and
military campaigns. Catullus, a wealthy young eques, or knight,
in the 1st century B.C., wrote scathing lines about Caesar and his circle
(“lowlife scumbucket pig,” “detestable perverts”)
and graphic obscenities about his rivals in love. Mulroy is associate
professor of classics at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; he has
performed these translations at poetry slams. |
| Land’s
End: A Walk in Provincetown Michael Cunningham, ’75 Crown, 2002 $16 |
Despite his dubious first impressions
of Provincetown during the bleak off-season, this unconventional outpost
at the tip of Cape Cod grew on Cunningham. In 175 pages, he offers perspectives
on the town’s history and landmarks, the habits and mindset of locals
and sojourners, and the peculiarities of the ecosystem—interspersed
with verses by poets who are linked to his subject. |
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School Choice Tradeoffs: Liberty, Equity and Diversity R. Kenneth Godwin and Frank R. Kemerer, ’63, MA ’68, PhD ’75 University of Texas Press, 2002 $29.95 |
Godwin, a public
policy expert, and Kemerer, a specialist in law and education, probe the
costs and benefits of school reforms that involve parental choice. Asserting
that all policies require tradeoffs among conflicting legal, moral, political
and economic goals, they propose legislation “a liberal democratic
society should find acceptable.” |
| The Red Count:
The Life and Times of Harry Kessler Laird Easton, MA ’82, PhD ’91 UC Press, 2002 $35 |
This is the first
full biography in English of the German aristocrat-turned-leftist, who flourished
in the Weimar Republic then fled Nazism toward the end of his life (1868-1937).
With Kessler’s exhaustive diaries and correspondence at his disposal,
Easton charts a cosmopolitan existence that spanned diplomacy, the avant-garde
art and literary scene, and international politics. |
| Inside the Cult
of Kibu and Other Tales of the Millennial Gold Rush Lori Gottlieb, ’89, and Jesse Jacobs Perseus, 2002 $26 |
Gottlieb and Jacobs
chronicle the hype, hopes and hangovers wrought by the dot-com bubble through
interviews with nearly 100 people who participated or kept close watch.
Gottlieb weaves in her own surreal experience with the amply funded but
fuzzily conceived kibu.com, a website aimed at teenage girls that missed
its target. |
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Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters |
The Stanford humanities
professor offers essays ranging from the role of opera in intellectual history
to the sexual politics of Orwell’s 1984. He also includes a
“reverie on cats” and an account of his liver transplant—in
a collection he calls representative of the “perhaps extravagant heterogeneity”
of his interests. |