Books, Music & Film

Information is provided by publishers, authors, and artists.

Finding Forever: a Deadline Diaries Exclusive

Ken Baker ’92
(Running Press Teens)

Brooklyn Brant is a teenager with the instincts of a journalist and the mind of a detective. She runs a blog called Deadline Diaries, featuring the clickbait hook-ups, break-ups, and screw-ups of the Hollywood glitterati. Dying to have her big break, she has yet to nab the one juicy scoop that will establish her as the ultimate insider. In this first book of a series, Brooklyn has been called upon to locate America’s sweetheart, Taylor Prince, when the 16-year-old actress disappears. Taylor’s assistant asks Brooklyn to locate the missing starlet under the radar and on a tight deadline. She will need both her sleuthing and journalistic skills to solve the mystery and get the story of a lifetime. Written by Ken Baker, E! News correspondent, this suspenseful, dual-narrative thriller alternates between the perspectives of Brooklyn and Taylor. Baker uses his in-depth experience with celebrity journalism and behind-the-scenes truths to explore the ugly underbelly of Hollywood’s obsession with finding the ever-elusive fountain of youth.

Our International Education: Stories of Living, Teaching, and Parenting Abroad

Monica Berrien ’90 Housen, co-author
(Sense Publishers)

In 2011, three women — a high school math teacher (Housen), a university professor, and an English teacher — accepted one-year Fulbright grants to teach in Hungary. Accompanied by their families, they enrolled their children in local elementary schools, although none of them spoke Hungarian. In this account of their intrepid overseas adventure, the co-authors weave together the deeply personal and professional dimensions of life abroad. Their stories illuminate not only the realities of negotiating work, school, and family life in another country, but also the complexities of cultural adjustment and second-language acquisition. While the United States laments current educational reform, this first-person narrative offers a refreshing look at an alternative means of encouraging children’s resilience and a global perspective.

Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico

David M. Carballo ’95
(Oxford University Press)

This book examines the ways in which urbanization and religion intersected in pre-Columbian central Mexico, with a focus on the later Formative period and the transition to the Classic period. The major societal transformations of this interval occurred approximately 2,000 years ago and more than a millennium before Mexico’s best-known early civilization. Carballo presents a synthesis of data from archaeological projects and key sites such as Teotihuacan and Cuicuilco, while relying on his own excavations at the site of La Laguna. Cities and states developed hand in hand with elements of a religious tradition of remarkable endurance, and these processes were fundamentally entangled. The book provides a history of religion, with the temporal depth that archaeology can provide, and an archaeology of cities that considers religion seriously as a generative force in societal change.

Scudder’s Gorge

Geoffrey Craig ’65
(Prolific Press)

Scudder’s Gorge shines a harsh light on what man is capable of doing to his fellow man, beginning with the day of “the bomb” in Hiroshima and then moving backwards in time to an 18th-century Vermont village founded by post-Revolutionary settlers. Nestled between pine-clad ridges, the valley is home to a small band of Abenaki. The settlers and Native Americans trade with each other and live in peace until a love affair blossoms between a young Abenaki and the daughter of a village elder. A crime reverberates down the generations, leading Everett Scudder and his daughter, Roseanne, to struggle for the dignity of all people. (Learn more about author Geoffrey Craig’s path to a second career as a writer.)

A Fateful Reunion

Allen Foster ’76
(Green Ivy Publishing)

This murder mystery, centered on fictional superstar rock group The Upper Hand, weaves classic rock history into its narrative. The legendary quintet disbanded in the wake of their famed guitarist Jeff Britton’s heroin-induced abandonment of the group. After a 14-year hiatus, band members miraculously orchestrate an end to the estrangement between Jeff and fellow guitarist Mark Donahue, clearing the path for a triumphant return to glory. When troublesome Denise Blake, the woman blamed for Jeff’s heroin addiction, suddenly reappears, Jeff is drawn back into the destructive lifestyle that left him, and the band, in ruins. Jeff’s reconnection with Denise infuriates the band, leading to confrontation, violent clashes … and murder. As detectives scramble to identify the killer, stunning secrets are uncovered about the victim, broadening the list of possible suspects.

Tribal Justice: Twenty-Five Years as a Tribal Appellate Justice

Frank Pommersheim ’65
(Carolina Academic Press)

Tribal Justice provides an in-depth review and survey of tribal appellate court jurisprudence. The topics covered include enrollment and disenrollment, civil rights, elections and political participation, criminal law and procedure, rights of juveniles, tribal constitutions, and traditions and customs. The book focuses on the procedure and substance of tribal court appellate decision making as revealed in the text of actual court opinions. The decisions and accompanying notes are further amplified by the development of a model of tribal court jurisprudence and a discussion of various theories of tribal court judging.

Noble Chase

Michael Rudolph ’58
(Penguin Random House)

Lawyer Beth Swahn makes a rookie mistake: believing her client. Basking in the glory of winning a $100-million judgment for a U.S. division of C.K. Leung, Beth realizes that because of her naïveté, Leonard Sloane, division president, has absconded to the Caribbean with his girlfriend and some of the judgment money. Shortly thereafter, they are both presumed dead following a report of their yacht sinking. Determined to save her firm from bankruptcy, Beth investigates a maze of money laundering and white-collar corruption. When the trail leads her to Sloane’s son, she is torn between her attraction to him and her fear that he is involved in the theft. When a missing file that has the power to ignite a geopolitical firestorm comes to light, Leung becomes convinced that Beth is a party to Sloane’s scheme, and her life becomes threatened.

Letters of Love: From A to Z, With Words and Birds for Your Children

Amy Saypol Tomkins ’76
(Any Pumpkin Productions, Inc.)

A unique alphabet book with words that every child is happy to hear, this is the second book in the Letters of Love series. Illustrated by whimsical bird photographs, each letter in the alphabet is accompanied by an expression of love to let children know that they are especially cherished. Letters of Love: From A to Z is a gift to tell the special child in your life how much you care — 26 times.

The Global War on Tobacco: Mapping the World’s First Public Health Treaty

Heather Wipfli ’98
(Johns Hopkins University Press)

Amid evidence of an emerging pandemic, a committed group of public health professionals and institutions sought to challenge the tobacco industry’s expansion by negotiating a binding international law. The World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) — the first collective global response to the causation of avoidable chronic disease — was one of the most quickly ratified treaties in United Nations history. (It was adopted in 2003 and entered into force in 2005.) In The Global War on Tobacco, Heather Wipfli tells the story of the FCTC, revealing how globalization offers anti-tobacco advocates significant cooperative opportunities to share knowledge and address cross-border public health problems. The book seeks to advance understanding of how non-state actors, transnational networks, and international institutionalization can impact global governance for health. Case studies from diverse high-, middle-, and low-income countries provide real-world examples of the success or failure of tobacco control.

Also of note:
Retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Lawrence Hasbrouck ’53 has chronicled his experience as “a Cold War warrior” in his book The Changing Culture of the Missileer. Hasbrouck spent 13 years in Strategic Air Command in both an underground and above-ground environment. The stories in the book are based on what he experienced in the early ’60s in the Minuteman Missile System.