dialogue
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HOT TYPE: New releases by Swarthmoreans
Miriam S. Moss ’51
Seasons in the Pine Barrens: The Journal of Miram S. Moss
South Jersey Culture & History Center
Moss spent years observing and participating in the natural world in New Jersey’s Pine Barrens and recording thoughts in her journal. Over almost 30 years, she and her husband Sidney lived for many a weekend in their secluded, primitive cabin. These journal entries speak to her deepest feelings and, at age 92, they still resonate much as they did when they were written decades ago.
Franz Leichter ’52
Reminiscences
iUniverse
Leichter was smuggled out of Nazi-occupied Austria and arrived in the U.S. at age 10. His family had no means of support and spoke no English. He worked his way through Swarthmore and Harvard Law, eventually being elected to the New York State Legislature. As a senator, Leichter exposed the reemergence of sweatshops and sought their closure. He sponsored New York’s groundbreaking abortion rights law in 1969 and fought for its passage in 1970.
Anne Vohl ’55
The Ted Letters: The Life and Death of a Clozaril Patient
Independently published
Vohl, a retired lawyer, has written an account of her son’s 60-year life. A schizophrenic, he was Nevada’s first Clozaril (clozapine) patient, and was prescribed this little-used drug for over 30 years. In the form of letters from mother to son, the book argues for wider usage of clozapine with better medical attention to its many side effects, and is of special interest to mental health care providers and policy planners, patients, and families.
Christopher Lukas ’56
Innocence Lost: A Novel of Duplicity
Independently published
The book’s antihero, Martin Gray, flees to Mexico from San Francisco when his life is threatened. Arriving in the early 1940s, he remains there for 35 years, caught up in the beauty of the country, his involvement with the CIA, and with Mexico’s ever-changing entanglement with American foreign policy and designs.
Carl Abbott ’66
Suburbs: A Very Short Introduction
Oxford University Press
Exploring two centuries of suburban growth as integral to global urbanism, Abbott argues that the future of an urbanizing world will be a suburban one. The author presents suburbs as interesting and viable on their own terms, rather than being simply cousins of big cities. He offers glimpses of suburbs from London to Lima, São Paulo to Singapore, Cairo to Chicago, and Dublin to Delhi.
Carl Abbott ’66 and Margery Post Abbott ’67
Quakers in Politics
John Hunt Publishing
What is the experience of Quakers who plunge directly into politics? The authors draw on the experience of political Quakers on four continents to explore the challenges and opportunities that political Quakers face. Surveying historical and contemporary experience, they highlight the careers of Quakers who held fast to principle and those who did not.
Linda Barrett Osborne ’71
Who’s Got Mail? The History of Mail in America
Abrams
Who’s Got Mail? is an intriguing and fact-filled look at how the mail has been delivered in the U.S. since before the Constitution was signed. The Post Office has always been a public service designed to deliver letters, medical supplies, and packages at a reasonable cost. Full of eccentric characters and technological achievements, this fun, narrative nonfiction for the middle grades celebrates one of our oldest and strongest institutions.
William Ehrhart ’73
What We Can And Can’t Afford: Essays on Vietnam, Patriotism and American Life
McFarland & Company
Ehrhart’s experiences in the Vietnam War defined his life — first as an enlisted member of a Marine infantry battalion, then as an author, poet, and teacher who has spent 50 years explicating the war and its consequences. He explores a range of topics, including gun violence and the Second Amendment, American politics and the accelerating destruction of civil society, Afghanistan and other foreign policy misadventures, Israel and Palestine, and the nature of patriotism.
Richard Goodkin ’75
Mourning Light
University of Wisconsin Press
Set in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Mourning Light this semi-autobiographical story examines the ways love and mourning interact with our understanding of ourselves and others. Reb Matkowski, an English literature professor named by his mother for the title character of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, is hounded by guilt over the death of his lover, a young British academic named Anthony Payton. Convinced Anthony has sent him a cryptic message from beyond the grave, Reb discovers its meaning with the help of Eric Sundergaard, a handsome, enigmatic lawyer he meets on the day of Anthony’s death.
Jeffrey Scheuer ’75
Critical Thinking and Citizenship: Inside The Liberal Arts
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Inside the Liberal Arts explains the purpose of liberal learning — to produce critical thinkers and well-rounded democratic citizens. Scheuer guides us through the moral and conceptual heart of the liberal arts education ideal.
Maria (Mia) Ong ’94
The Double Bind in Physics Education: Intersectionality, Equity, and Belonging for Women of Color
Harvard Education Press
In a detailed exploration of inclusion in physics, social scientist Ong makes the case for far-reaching reform in higher education, noting that despite diversity efforts to recruit more women and students of color into science and mathematics programs, many leave the STEM pipeline. Ong takes readers inside the issue by following 10 women of color from their entrance into the undergraduate physics program at a large research university through their pursuit of various educational and career paths.
Kim Coleman Foote ’00
Coleman Hill
SJP Lit/Zando
Coleman Hill is the story of two American families whose fates become intertwined in the wake of the Great Migration. Braiding fact and fiction, it is a character-rich tour de force exploring the ties that bind three generations. In a stunning biomythography — a word coined by the late, great writer Audre Lorde — Coleman Hill draws from the author’s own family legend, historical record, and fervent imagination.
Mairin Odle ’08
Under the Skin: Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America
University of Pennsylvania Press
Under the Skin investigates the role of cross-cultural body modification in 17th and 18th century North America, arguing that tattooing and scalping were crucial to interactions between Natives and newcomers.
Even as distinctive Indigenous body- modification practices were adopted and transformed by colonial powers, they were linked to “Nativeness.” Odle’s research explores both the lived physical experience and the contested metaphorical power of early American bodies.
The Bulletin receives numerous submissions of new publications from the talented Swarthmore community and can feature only a fraction of those submissions here. Please note that work represented in Hot Type does not necessarily reflect the views of the College.