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Shelf Life |
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The Truth About Hormone Replacement Therapy: How to Break
Free from the Medical Myths of Menopause |
The first edition of this guide, cautioning women against
rushing into hormone replacement therapy, came out in 1989. Its warning
was prescient: in July, the only large-scale study of HRT’s effects
on healthy women was curtailed because the hormones were doing more harm
than good. The popularity of the therapy is a “triumph of marketing
and advertising over science,” the authors assert in this sixth edition,
which offers a balanced view of the pros and cons as well as natural alternatives. |
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Caste and Outcast
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In this reissue of his 1923 memoir, Mukerji—the pioneer of South
Asian immigrant literati—recalls his life in India as a Hindu of
Brahmin parentage and his days picking hops as a newcomer to California.
Stanford associate history professor Gordon H. Chang, MA ’72, PhD
’87, provides a new introduction; associate professors of cultural
and social anthropology Purnima Mankekar and Akhil Gupta, PhD ’88,
provide an afterword illuminating Mukerji’s life and works. |
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Vulture Capital |
The hard-boiled, Chandleresque narration might suggest
redheaded bombshells pleading for help in exchange for a kiss. Instead,
this mystery set in the post-dot-com world features a venture capitalist
as protagonist and a biotech executive as purported victim. Can Ted Valmont
save Silicon Valley from ruin? Maybe not—but the quest gives Coggins
a second case for private eye August Riordan, introduced in The Immortal
Game (2000). |
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A Single Shard |
Tree-ear is a homeless orphan in 12th-century Korea,
named after the mushroom that grows on tree trunks without a parent seed.
Watching a master potter at work, the boy becomes intrigued. His dream
of mastering celadon craftsmanship is a metaphor for his path to fulfillment,
as a single pottery shard changes his destiny. The novel received the
John Newbery Medal for the most distinguished contribution to American
children’s literature. |
| Ralph
Ellison: Emergence of Genius Lawrence Jackson, PhD ’97 John Wiley & Sons, 2002 $30 |
In this first Ellison biography,
Jackson, an assistant professor of English at Howard University, draws on
the closed archive of Ellison papers at the Library of Congress and the
renowned essayist’s correspondence with other black intellectuals.
Ellison was the first African-American to win the National Book Award for
fiction, with Invisible Man (1953). A visionary, enigmatic figure,
he never completed another novel. |
| Bootstrap:
Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch Kenneth L. Hess, ’74 S-Curve Press, 2001 $24.95 |
From his experience
starting a software company on his own in 1984 and seeing sales grow to
more than $23 million 12 years later, the author offers advice to budding
entrepreneurs on all aspects of running a business—and having a life,
too. Venture capital played no part in his operation, and the contractions
in that industry today make his do-it-yourself ethos timely. |
| In the Shadow
of Love: Stories from My Life Walter Meyerhof Fithian Press, 2002 $12 |
The emeritus physics
professor gives a candid account of his life and loves, from his days as
a Jewish teenager in Nazi Germany to his misadventures as an energetic senior
citizen sailing on San Francisco Bay. His father’s status as a Nobel
laureate helped Meyerhof narrowly escape the Gestapo’s clutches and
start a new life in the United States. |
| Pursuit Erica Funkhouser, MA ’73 Houghton Mifflin, 2002 $22 |
This award-winning
poet’s fourth collection is a taxonomy of sorts, based on close examination
of birds, beasts, people and their interactions. In “Turning Point,”
a hunter passes up the chance to shoot a buck at close range: “The
gun barrel pointed to his feet, a waste of readiness.” Describing the
aftermath of a marauding animal’s garden visit, Funkhouser describes
“whole rows of over-anticipated greens and high-strung succulence demolished.” |
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Vouchers Within Reason: A Child-Centered Approach
to Education Reform |
Most discussion
in the school-voucher debate—and other educational reform schemes—revolves
around the interests of people other than children, charges the author,
who teaches law at the College of William and Mary. State funding of private
schools is a moral and constitutional right, he argues, but so are tough
standards on content, teaching and treatment of pupils. |