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Shelf Life |
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Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA and the Hidden Story
of America’s Space Espionage |
Veteran New York Times journalist Taubman’s
account of the clandestine Cold War programs that produced the U-2 plane,
and—using a secret Palo Alto workplace—the Corona satellite,
tops any spy thriller, but it is based solidly on declassified documents
and interviews with scientists and officials. Desperate to keep tabs on
the Soviet Union’s nuclear activities, Eisenhower championed science
and technology more than any president before or since. The ingenuity
and grit of those who pierced the Iron Curtain was matched only by the
sheer nerve required to do it all behind the backs of Congress and the
public. |
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The Blessings of Bhutan |
Tourists at first, the authors established lasting links as a “two-person
Peace Corps” with this tiny Himalayan kingdom, where the official
development yardstick is Gross National Happiness. Their essays, with
color photos, discuss Bhutan’s spiritual yet earthy culture and how
it changed their own way of life. The couple also ponders how contact
with the outside world, necessary for economic survival, will affect Bhutanese
tradition. |
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Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard |
Anders, a Fast Company magazine editor, chronicles
HP’s sea change, when the enshrined familial culture gave way to
audacious new management on the eve of the tech-sector collapse. The battle
between CEO Fiorina, ’76, mastermind of the merger with Compaq, and
opposing board member Walter Hewlett, MS ’68, MS ’73, DMA ’80,
gives the story its climax, but Anders also reveals much about the Hewlett
and Packard family foundations. |
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Natural Dance |
Delving into photography after retirement from a corporate
career in 1995, Eastman grew fascinated with rhythm in nature—breaking
waves, a swaying branch, birds in flight—and then with the movements
of dance. In 79 color images of professional dancers set loose at the
seashore, in the desert and on the forest floor, he uses a time-lapse
technique to produce ethereal impressions of art and nature uniting. |
| The
Making of Toro: Bullfights, Broken Hearts, and One Author’s Quest for
the Acclaim He So Richly Deserves Mark Sundeen, ’92 Simon & Schuster, 2003 $23 |
Billed as biography, this is the
wacky backstory of an author’s quixotic attempts to write a book about
bullfighting. When all his romantic notions shatter—even trying to
assume the sophisticated persona of his nom de plume, Travis LaFrance, doesn’t
help much—he’s left with a backstory in search of a story. |
|
The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write About Their Fathers ed. Bruce Shenitz, MA ’81 Marlowe & Co., 2002 $16.95 |
The 28 essays
in this anthology spring from relationships that range from close and loving
to remote and hostile and represent every corner of society. In frank and
sometimes humorous descriptions of estrangements and reconciliations, the
writers demonstrate that the complexities of parent-child relations are
universal. |
| That Water,
Those Rocks Katharine Baake, MA ’80 U. of Nevada Press, 2003 $18 |
In this first novel
by the director of creative writing at CSU-Northridge, fact and fiction
blend indistinguishably at times. Baake’s roots are in far-northern
California; Shasta Dam and the rivers it controls provide the landscape
for her memories and imaginings. Whether real or created, her characters’
lives are defined by their surroundings, both natural and engineered. |
| The Work of
the University Richard C. Levin, ’68 Yale U. Press, 2003 $24.95 |
This collection
of speeches and essays marks the 10th anniversary of the author’s tenure
as president of Yale. His topics range from the Internet revolution to the
university’s responsibilities as an “urban citizen” to why
the “Great Books” of the Western canon remain great. Levin brings
his expertise as an economist to such questions as how to counteract the
inherent inequities of a market economy. |
|
Nuclear Weapons and Nonproliferation: A Reference
Handbook |
Nuclear weapons
have always provoked ambivalence, as nations simultaneously try to acquire
or keep them as a deterrent and to rid the world of their deadly threat.
Based at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif., the
authors trace global developments, profile key players, chart progress and
setbacks in disarmament, and outline current controversies. |