Output

The Pursuit of Liberty: How Hamilton vs. Jefferson Ignited the Lasting Battle Over Power in America
Jeffrey Rosen ’91JD
(Simon and Schuster, $31)

“Thomas Jefferson attributed the rise of political parties in America to a dinner at his home in Philadelphia with Alexander Hamilton,” writes legal scholar Jeffrey Rosen in a splendid account that begins with a fateful meal in April 1791. Hamilton’s suggestion, as recorded by Jefferson, that “the greatest man . . . that ever lived was Julius Caesar,” is interpreted by Jefferson “as evidence of a dark plot to resurrect monarchy in America.” The ensuing discussions, explains Rosen, form the core of an ongoing debate about the best way to balance federal power to achieve the Declaration’s “three shining ideas: liberty, equality, and government by consent.”

Ghost Town: A Novel
Tom Perrotta ’83
(Scribner/Simon and Schuster, $28)
 
In the early 1970s in the fictional town of Creamwood, New Jersey, a 13-year-old named Jimmy Perrini, who was part of a “normal family—the glue that held the world together”—watched his world come apart. He was playing shortstop for his Little League team when he got word that his mom had died. What follows is a moving account of a horrendous summer and “the pain encoded in those two simple words: Jimmy . . . Creamwood.” As a result of that time, “I’d drawn a circle around my hometown—cordoned it off from the rest of my life—and that had served me pretty well for a very long time,” the narrator explains. But when he’s called back for a ceremony that memorializes his dad, he has to deal with “the demons you think you’ve outrun.”

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival
Stephen Greenblatt ’64, ’69PhD 
(W. W. Norton, $31.99)

The England of the mid-to-late 1500s during the reign of Queen Elizabeth was a “culturally backward” place where, notes literary scholar Greenblatt, “new ways of thinking . . . were held in check by a state-sponsored repression.” Enter—stage left, if you will—“a cobbler’s son from Canterbury” named Christopher Marlowe, a poet and playwright whose unlikely early brilliance was rewarded with a scholarship to Cambridge. Greenblatt’s page-turner biography offers a riveting look at the author of such game changers as Tamburlaine the Great and Doctor Faustus. Marlowe, also a spy for the English secret service, was murdered when he was just 29, but his “reckless, daring, unscrupulous, transgressive” works and life, says Greenblatt, helped Shakespeare and others “break through the carapace of inherited dogma.”

Heart of the Jaguar: The Extraordinary Conservation Effort to Save the Americas’ Legendary Cat
James Campbell ’84
(W.W. Norton, $35)

During his all-too-brief lifetime, wildlife biologist Alan Rabinowitz, who passed away at 64 in 2018, studied and championed the jaguar, an exquisitely spotted, large cat that once ranged over much of North and South America. With his legendary endurance and daring, Rabinowitz became known as the Indiana Jones of field ecologists. In this riveting account of the man and his impact, Campbell follows the Jaguar Corridor, “a swath of land that unites ecologically important jaguar populations and that extends roughly five thousand miles from the Iberá wetlands in northern Argentina to southern Arizona,” helping preserve it for the future. Campbell highlights both his hero and the people he inspired “to ensure that . . . the most magical of all the big cats will always have a home on the planet.”

Eres la luna en mi cielo
Val Ramos [’81] Flamenco Ensemble
(PIRAM Records)

This is a band that can read a room, whether it’s a bar or a ballroom, and set the right tone. That ability also applies to the ensemble’s rare live recordings—this 28-minute album is just its third release. The music is grounded in flamenco traditions, anchored by Ramos’s sultry yet fleet-fingered guitar work, yet you may catch glimpses of ’60s soul, Bacharach, Jobim, Django Reinhardt, Cat Stevens, ’70s slow grooves, and extraordinary jazz flute playing by Kris Jensen, who doubles on saxophone, plus vibrant vocals from guest artist Alfonso Cid. The album flows from ballads to tangos to rumbas. The rhythms are subtle yet firm, the solos controlled and concise, the overall effect rich and luxurious and equally well suited to dancing, swaying, or just listening close.