In print

Marc E. Agronin '91MD
How We Age: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old 
Da Capo Press, $25
Psychiatrist Agronin treats elderly patients at a Miami nursing home. In a book rich with insight about aging, he explores what working in this "waiting room for God" has taught him. Agronin does not gloss over the inevitable physical and mental problems that come with the territory, but, he says, "aging equals vitality, wisdom, creativity, spirit, and, ultimately, hope."

Stuart Banner '85
American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own 
Harvard University Press, $29.95
The issue of property rights—of who owns what—is very much with us, and, as law professor Banner explains, increasingly difficult to pin down in the digital age. In this exploration of evolving laws about ownership, he traces the debate from colonial notions about land to modern concerns over the ownership of sounds and body parts. "Our ideas about property have always been in flux," he writes.

Joshua Kendall '81
The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture 
G. P. Putnam's Sons, $25.95
The United States needed more than a revolution to make a break from England and become its own country; it needed a common language. Biographer Kendall shows how a "cantankerous, driven, and indomitable New Englander" named Noah Webster Jr., a member of the Class of 1778, helped provide the fledgling nation with its own vocabulary and enabled "Americans to think of themselves as Americans."

Eugene Linden '69
The Ragged Edge of the World: Encounters at the Frontier Where Modernity, Wildlands, and Indigenous Peoples Meet 
Viking, $26.95
For the past four decades, environmental journalist Linden has roamed the world, sending back award-winning dispatches about how nature and local peoples change in the wake of economic development. In a series of essays, he revisits his adventures in Polynesia, Africa, the Arctic, Yellowstone, and other once- or still-wild places. The book details both what has been lost and what has stubbornly managed to remain.

Meghan O'Rourke '97
The Long Goodbye 
Riverhead Books, $25.95
On Christmas afternoon, 2008, the author's mother died of cancer. In this powerful memoir, O'Rourke writes eloquently about their years together and the heartbreaking difficulty she had coping with grief. "The rituals of public mourning that once helped channel a person's experience of loss have, by and large, fallen away," she says. O'Rourke describes the scientific research, counselors, and literature that enabled her to understand and navigate her grief's chartless terrain.

Nancy G. Slack
G. Evelyn Hutchinson and the Invention of Modern Ecology 
Yale University Press, $40
In this fine biography of the man once called "the world's greatest ecologist," Slack chronicles a remarkable life that included more than four decades at Yale—where Hutchinson invented new kinds of ecological science, including the use of radioisotopes to investigate the flow of key chemicals in ecosystems. He was also a brilliant, accessible writer, whose interests ranged from the details of lake ecology to medieval images of animals. As Slack says, "Hutchinson left very little unexplored."

More books by Yale authors

Eric Alterman ’86
Kabuki Democracy: The System vs. Barack Obama
Nation Books, $14.99

Adam Arenson ’04, ’08PhD
The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War
Harvard University Press, $35

Peter Brooks ’75MAH
The Emperor’s Body: A Novel
W. W. Norton & Company, $23.95

Tomiko Brown-Nagin ’97JD
Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement
Oxford University Press, $34.95

James Carter ’95, ’98PhD
Heart of Buddha Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth Century Monk
Oxford University Press, $29.95

Seo-Young Chu ’99
Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation
Harvard University Press, $39.95

Madeleine Dobie ’94PhD
Trading Places: Colonization and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century French Culture
Cornell University Press, $27.50

Barry Eichengreen ’76, ’79PhD
Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System
Oxford University Press, $27.95

Kevin Fauteux ’78MDiv
Defusing Angry People: Practical Tools for Handling Bullying, Threats, and Violence
New Horizon Press, $14.95

Eric M. Freedman ’75, ’79JD
Habeas Corpus: Rethinking the Great Writ of Liberty
New York University Press, $22

Jeffrey Friedman ’94, ’02PhD, editor
What Caused the Financial Crisis
Pennsylvania University Press, $29.95

Joseph Gibson ’83, ’87JD
A Better Congress: Change the Rules, Change the Results
Two Seas Media, $16.95

Priscilla Gilman ’93, ’02PhD
The Anti-Romantic Child: A Story of Unexpected Joy
HarperLuxe, $24.99

Neil Goodwin ’62, ’65MArc
We Go as Captives: The Royalton Raid and the Shadow War on the Revolutionary Frontier
Vermont Historical Society, $24.95

Otis L. Graham Jr. ’57
Immigration Reform and America’s Unchosen Future
AuthorHouse, $12.80

Ross Guberman ’94
Point Made: How to Write Like the Nation’s Top Advocates
Oxford University Press, $19.95

Laura L. Mays Hoopes ’68PhD
Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling
Lulu, $14

Dean Karlan, professor of economics, and Jacob Appel
More Than Good Intentions: How a New Economics is Helping to Solve Global Poverty
Dutton Adult, $26.95

James M. Keller ’78MPhil
Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide
Oxford University Press, $39.95

Karl Kirchwey ’79
Mount Lebanon
Putnam Adult, $30

James L. Kugel ’68
In the Valley of the Shadow: On the Foundations of Religious Belief
Free Press, $26

James Ledbetter ’86
Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex
Yale University Press, $26

Ethan J. Leib ’04PhD
Friend v. Friend: The Transformation of Friendship—And What the Law Has to Do With It
Oxford University Press, $29.95

Roger S. Levine ’95, ’04PhD
A Living Man from Africa: Jan Tzatzoe, Xhosa Chief and Missionary, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century South Africa
Yale University Press, $30

Jane Mendelsohn ’87
American Music
Knopf Doubleday, $23.95

Wade H. Nichols ’64
The Glamis Curse
CreateSpace, $14.95

Walter Olson ’75
Schools for Misrule: Legal Academia and an Overlawyered America
Encounter Books, $25.95

Julia C. Ott ’07, ’07MPhil
When Wall Street Met Main Street: The Quest for an Investors’ Democracy
Harvard University Press, $35

Carlos Riobó ’93, ’98PhD
Sub-Versions of the Archive: Manuel Puig’s and Severo Sarduy’s Alternative Identities
Bucknell University Press, $65

Alexandra Robbins ’98
The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth
Hyperion Books, $23.95

Kenneth S. Robson ’55
The Children’s Hour: A Life in Child Psychiatry
Lyre Books, $24

Daniel T. Rodgers ’73PhD
Age of Fracture
Harvard University Press, $29.95

Susan P. Schoelwer ’90, ’94PhD
Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art and Family 1740–1840
Connecticut Historical Society, $30

Ian Shapiro ’83PhD, ’87JD
The Real World of Democratic Theory
Princeton University Press, $24.95

Jing Tsu, associate professor of Chinese culture
Sound and Script in Chinese Diaspora
Harvard University Press, $45

Harlow G. Unger ’53
American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution
Da Capo Press, $26

Daphne Uviller ’94
Hotel No Tell
Bantam Dell, $15

Roye E. Wates ’65PhD
Mozart: An Introduction to the Music, the Man, and the Myths
Amadeus Press, $24.99

Donald Watson ’59, ’62BArch, ’69MEnvD, and Michele Adams
Design for Flooding: Architecture, Landscape, and Urban Design for Resilience to Climate Change
John Wiley & Sons, $85

David A. Weintraub ’80
How Old is the Universe?
Princeton University Press, $29.95