Ishi’s Brain: In Search of America’s Last “Wild” Indian
Orin Starn, MA ’85, PhD ’89
W.W. Norton, 2004
$25.95

The last survivor of the massacred Yahi tribe of Northern California was captured in 1911 and spent his final five years in San Francisco. While researching Ishi in 1998, anthropologist Starn heard a rumor from Native Americans trying to repatriate Ishi’s ashes that scientists had removed his brain before cremation. So began an investigation that kept Starn hopping from Yahi territory to UCSF and Berkeley to Washington, D.C., where the missing organ turned up at the Smithsonian. As he recounts his odyssey, Starn debunks longstanding assumptions about Ishi and re-examines changing standards in his own profession.

After
Claire Tristram, ’85, MA ’86
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004
$20

Tristram‘s first novel, set in a post-September 11 context, explores the unexpected turns grieving can take. A year after the death of her husband at the hands of Muslim extremists, a widow invites a Muslim stranger to a weekend tryst. Part of her seeks an end to mourning; lust and curiosity motivate them both. But an irresistible urge for revenge overtakes their 24-hour encounter, and passion is transformed into cruelty and guilt.

The Pilots
James Spencer, MA ’53
G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2003
$23.95

More than half a century after he flew 40 missions as a bomber pilot in the South Pacific, Spencer offers a novel-in-stories about the terror and exultation of World War II air combat. Now a psychotherapist in Menlo Park, the author portrays young men whose adrenaline-fueled love of P-38s must be reconciled with war’s gruesome costs. His 15 stories center on two boyhood friends who first “flew” a model plane winched up in the walnut tree of a California backyard.

Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty
Scott Turow, MA ’74
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003
$18

Turow’s work on both sides of the aisle—serving as a prosecutor and later handling appeals of condemned prisoners—made him a self-described “death penalty agnostic.” His struggle with subtle arguments pro and con ends as he serves on the Illinois Governor’s Commission on Capital Punishment, and reaches a personal conclusion about the ultimate punishment.

Leaving Protection
Will Hobbs, ’69, MA ’71
HarperCollins, 2004
$15.99

Drawing on his own experience as a deckhand trolling for salmon off Alaska, the award-winning author of 16 other books for young adults crafts a fast-paced sea adventure full of peril and plot twists. Hobbs is a Russian-Alaska history buff, and his 16-year-old protagonist discovers that the mercurial captain who has engaged him for the season is fishing for something more priceless than the catch.

The Letters of Robert Duncan and Denise Levertov
ed. Robert J. Bertholf and professor emeritus Albert Gelpi
Stanford U. Press, 2004
$39.95

Levertov, who taught creative writing at Stanford from 1982 to ’93, was close friends with fellow poet Duncan for decades. They poured out their souls in more than 450 letters over three decades; sadly, the later correspondence chronicles their irreparable falling-out during the Vietnam War. Although both opposed American actions, they disagreed on the poet’s role in society.

Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russia After the Cold War
James M. Goldgeier and Michael McFaul, ’86, MA ’86
Brookings Institution Press, 2003
$19.95

The authors discuss two contending philosophies and their good and bad effects on relations with Russia. Policy makers whom the authors call “realists” concentrate on balancing power, while “liberals” want to transform regimes to spread democracy. The two ideas cross party lines: each administration pays heed to both in varying degrees, and events like 9-11 can shift the balance.

Summer of the Big Bachi
Naomi Hirahara, ’83
Bantam Dell, 2004
$12

In Japanese, bachi means payback for misdeeds. In this first novel, it looks as though a teenage betrayal half a century ago is about to catch up with two survivors of Hiroshima transplanted to Los Angeles. The arrival of inquisitive strangers from their old hometown starts a chain of subterfuge and violence that ultimately gives way to reconciliation and redemption.

Is Taiwan Chinese? The Impact of Culture, Power, and Migration on Changing Identities
Melissa J. Brown, ’85, MA ’86
UC Press, 2004
$24.95

In claiming sovereignty over Taiwan, China argues that the island is ethnically Han, like the mainland. But Brown’s case studies in both places lead her to conclude that identity has more to do with social environment than with ancestry, and that Taiwan today will identify with China only if it becomes democratic. Brown is an assistant professor of anthropological sciences at Stanford.