Please send news of your recently published book along with a review copy, if possible, to "Bookshelf," Oberlin Alumni Magazine. Your review copy will be presented to the Oberlin College Library as a gift from you.

Stricken: Voices from the Hidden Epidemic of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Edited by Peggy Munson '91

Haworth Press, 2000

 

Once dismissed by the media as "The Yuppie Flu," chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome (CFIDS) has since been recognized as a growing worldwide epidemic of devastating proportions. This collection of personal essays, poetry, and journal entries, including a submission by Ellen Samuels '94, provides an eye-opening look at this chronic illness and explores the complex social and political circumstances surrounding it. Munson is an award-winning fiction writer, poet, and essayist whose work has appeared in such publications as Literature and Medicine, the Spoon River Poetry Review, 13th Moon, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

By Alan Furst '62

Random House, 2000

 

It is Paris, 1938, and Nicholas Morath, the protagonist of this haunting espionage thriller, spends his days as the owner of a small advertising agency and his nights in the Bohemian circles of his Argentine mistress. When his uncle, a diplomat at the Hungarian legation in Paris, recruits him for a secret mission of the utmost importance, Nicholas' life becomes increasingly riddled with danger under the shadow of Nazi Germany. He ultimately finds himself risking his life behind enemy lines, fighting for the very future of a free Europe. Furst is the author of a number of novels about espionage in Europe before and during World War II.

By Jane Hilberry '80

Ocean View Books, 2001

 

Inspired by an encounter with Edgar Britton's art at a 1997 show at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, Hilberry provides a fascinating biography of the artist and his work, with a focus on his later erotic studies of the 1970s. Though he is considered one of Colorado's best-known local artists, Britton should not be considered regional in any sense; he is clearly in dialogue with and inspired by artists such as Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall. His love of and fascination with the human, particularly female, form is reflected and celebrated in his beautiful watercolors, drawings, and sculptures. Hilberry is associate professor of English at Colorado College and a poet whose work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals.

By Marc Landy '68 and Sidney Milkis

University Press of Kansas, 2001

 

What exactly makes a president great? Looking to the past, Landy and Milkis find five presidents who set the standard for presidential leadership and examine the qualities and strengths shared by these great leaders. The authors identify George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt as great presidents. These five sought to change and improve the nature of the regimes they inherited and assumed office at points in our history at which social and political circumstances made such change possible. According to the authors, they all expanded the office of the presidency as they inaugurated moments of far-reaching development.

Through their search for common threads running through these five presidencies, Landy and Milkis allow for a better understanding of both the possibilities and limitations of the office. Although skeptical about the possibility of greatness, as they conceive of it, in our modern presidency, their consideration of these five giants of American history demonstrates the importance--and reality--of truly inspired democratic leadership. Landy lives in Weston, Massachusetts, and is professor of political science at Boston College. He lectured in political science from 1986 to 1994 at Harvard.

English Urban Experiences, 1540-1640

By Robert Tittler '64

Stanford University Press, 2001

 

Much more is known about the court and the country of early modern England than urban society and life in the 1500s and 1600s. Tittler reveals the way small towns began to develop their own commerce and trade. We meet outspoken spinsters breaking out of the traditional mold and becoming independently wealthy moneylenders. We discover the election of local mayors to set the pace and impose a moral tone on the towns as they go about collecting taxes. Fortunately there are still historians willing to piece together detailed archival information and illustrations of homes, markets, and public buildings of the period through journals and public records. Tittler, an expert on this period, introduces us to a number of people of the period whose lives are illuminated in an unforgettable way. A professor of history, he lives in Montreal where he teaches at Concordia University.