Carl Levin ’56, H’80
Getting to the Heart of the Matter: My 36 Years in the Senate
Wayne State University Press
The longest-serving U.S. senator in Michigan history, Levin was known for his dogged pursuit of the truth, his commitment to holding government accountable, and his basic decency. Getting to the Heart of the Matter is his story — from his early days in Detroit as the son of a respected lawyer to the capstone of his career as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Edward Melillo ’97
The Butterfly Effect: Insects and the Making of the Modern World
Knopf
Insects might make us shudder, but they are also responsible for many of the things we take for granted in our daily lives. Drawing on research in laboratory science, agriculture, fashion, and international cuisine, Melillo weaves a vibrant world history that illustrates the inextricable and fascinating bonds between humans and insects.
Linda Barrett Osborne ’71
Guardians of Liberty: Freedom of the Press and the Nature of News
Abrams Books for Young Readers
Named one of 2020’s best children’s books by the New York Public Library and Kirkus, Guardians of Liberty explores the essential and basic American ideal of a free press. Citing numerous examples from the country’s past, from the American Revolution to the Vietnam War to the Obama and Trump presidencies, Osborne shows how freedom of the press has played an essential role in the growth of this nation, allowing democracy to flourish.
Clyde Prestowitz ’63
The World Turned Upside Down: America, China, and the Struggle for Global Leadership
Yale University Press
When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, most experts expected that WTO rules and procedures would make China “a responsible stakeholder in the liberal world order.” But Prestowitz contends the experts guessed wrong; if anything, China has become more authoritarian and mercantilist. Prestowitz, a labor economist and founder and president of the Economic Strategy Institute, describes the key challenges posed by China and the strategies America and the Free World must adopt to meet them.
Jed Rakoff ’64, H’03
Why the Innocent Plead Guilty and the Guilty Go Free
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
How can we be proud of a justice system that often pressures the innocent to plead guilty? How can we claim that justice is equal when we imprison thousands of poor Black men for relatively modest crimes but rarely prosecute rich white executives who commit crimes having far greater impact? Rakoff explores these and other puzzles in this account of the U.S. legal system, grounded in his 24 years as a federal trial judge in New York.
John Strauss ’54
To Understand a Person: An Autobiography (of Sorts)
Epigraph Publishing
How do you truly understand what it means to be a person — any person — struggling with mental illness? Strauss explores that question in this semi-autobiography, not only from his perspective as a psychiatrist, but also as the son of a mother afflicted with a longstanding severe mental illness, and as someone with dedicated interest in both the sciences and the humanities.
Anand Yang ’70
Empire of Convicts: Indian Penal Labor in Colonial Southeast Asia
University of California Press
From the 17th century onward, penal transportation was a key strategy of British imperial rule, exemplified by deportations first to the Americas and later to Australia. A major contribution to histories of crime and punishment, prisons, law, labor, transportation, migration, colonialism, and the Indian Ocean world, Empire of Convicts examines the experiences of Indian bandwars (convicts) and shows how they exercised agency in difficult situations, fashioning their own worlds and even becoming “their own warders.”