In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings
James C. Scott ’67PhD
(Yale University Press, $28)
Sterling Professor of Political Science and anthropologist Scott, who passed away last year at 87, left behind a book of freshwater wisdom that casts rivers as “alive” and our long-running subjugation attempts as “myopic.” Drawing on years studying what he deliberately calls Burma rather than Myanmar, particularly its main river, the Ayeyarwady, Scott rejects viewing these ecosystems as simply water to be used and controlled by our species alone. Instead, he offers a more expansive take that includes the river’s myriad life forms. And he offers a plea for a “soft-path engineering” strategy to work with, not against, rivers “on behalf of the more-than-human world.”
On Freedom
Timothy Snyder, Richard C. Levin Professor of History and Global Affairs
(Crown/Penguin Random House, $32)
In this country the word freedom too often suffers from “overuse and abuse,” historian Snyder declares in his response to those who appear to think that freedom simply means “the absence of something: occupation, oppression, or even government.” In a deeply personal essay that draws heavily from the author’s trips to war-torn Ukraine and from childhood memories on an Ohio farm, Snyder instead sees freedom from a more positive perspective: “to affirm, not just deny.”
The Rivals: A Novel
Jane Pek ’05
(W. W. Norton, $26.99)
The best matches may be made in heaven, but these days, numerous dating apps are trying to perform that heavenly duty. Digital matchmaking, however, is not without its flaws, and the lack of truth in advertising is certainly one of them. In this page-turning high-tech yarn, enter a stealthy company called Veracity, which was “set up to verify not only individual daters but also the matchmakers themselves.” If you need help separating truth from online fiction, love object/sleuth Claudia Lin and her sidekicks can be on your case. But when the dating companies start throwing AI bots called “synths” into the profile pool, mayhem and murder ensue.
Doggerel: Poems
Reginald Dwayne Betts ’16JD, Associate Research Scholar in Law
(W. W. Norton, $26.99)
Betts, former prisoner turned lawyer and poet, defines “doggerel” as a species of verse that can be “comic, burlesque . . . trivial,” then turns tail on his categorization: “nah, just a Black Man writing poems about his dog . . . and how having an extra four feet changed his world.” Many of these beautifully crafted works are, at first, simply accounts of travels along familiar New Haven streets with his “small Jack Russell whose heart, / when resting, beats 50 times per minute / & mine beats 53, if at all, low.” Then, in examinations of topics that range from joy to his son’s basketball games, Betts takes flight. “In prison, a letter is called / A kite, as if words alone can gift / a man wings,” he writes. In this poet’s hands, they certainly do.
OceanRiverLake
Arthur Levering ’79MM, composer
(New Focus Recordings)
The sinuous, searing chamber works of Arthur Levering ease into their themes so gracefully that they seem to belong in the “ambient” genre until they start to declaim themselves with crisp shifts in rhythm, volume, and attitude. It’s as if natural elements like waves, clouds, and dewy grass were gathering to tell you a story. Levering likes to acknowledge other composers in his work, but his calm-to-anxious style is all his own, and this album is a wonderful showcase of his mesmerizing musical moods.
The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War
Jim Sciutto ’92
(Dutton/Penguin Random House, $30)
“Children of the last Cold War will remember the brief period of hope following the imagined ‘end of history’ that the age of large armed forces was over,” says Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security analyst. But that optimism proved transient. The “great powers” in the book’s title retook center stage, “upended the post–Cold War global order, and replaced it with a new, less stable one.” Journalist Sciutto roams the world, from Ukraine to Taiwan, to explore how we entered this “tenuous geopolitical reality.” More importantly, he shows how the three superpowers might find “paths to peace.”
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