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HOT TYPE: New releases by Swarthmoreans
George Struble ’54
Getting Swiss Airmail Off the Ground, 1913-1939: Grand Award Exhibit
Exhibitors Press
In this collection of Grand Award-winning stamp exhibits, Struble tells a comprehensive story of the development of the Swiss airmail system. Highlights include elements not duplicated in other countries, such as the 1913 Flugspende (Campaign for Aviation) flights, the 1919 airmail service flown by the Swiss Air Force, the quiet period from 1920 to 1923, and the seasonal nature of the service into the 1930s, closing down every winter.
Emily Klein Abel ’64 and
Margaret Klein Nelson ’66
Limited Choices: Mable Jones, A Black Children’s Nurse in a Northern White Household
University of Virginia Press
Born at the turn of the 20th century, Mable Jones was emblematic of her race, gender, time, and place. She lived first in a rural community before moving to a city, where she spent years caring for the two children of an affluent suburban family. Those children, now adults, have pieced together Jones’ life, through interviews and their own childhood memories, in an effort to investigate the impact of structural racism, as well as a discriminatory system their own family helped uphold.
Eugene R. McNinch MD ’64
What All Women Need to Know: From Teens to Menopause
Dorrance Publishing Co.
McNinch draws on years of experience as an OB-GYN in this discussion of medical issues women experience. Designed to empower women to take a prominent role in their health care, this book delves into the complexities of the female body, offering insight into underlying problems, questions to ask providers, and different testing and treatment options.
Rod Chronister ’67
Biology by Design
Independently published
Chronister, a retired physician and high school teacher, offers biology from a creationist perspective with this textbook, written through the lens of Intelligent Design. He encourages the study of the science of biology in a manner that is compatible with the various theological perspectives on Genesis, while preparing students for more advanced studies in college.
Mark Vonnegut ’69
The Heart of Caring: A Life in Pediatrics
Seven Stories Press
Vonnegut, a pediatrician, details the changes he’s seen in medicine over 40 years of caring for children. Whether recounting the cases that have stuck with him, or detailing larger changes in medicine — the privatization of health care, innovations in cancer treatment, the rise of anti-vaxxers and HMOs — Vonnegut is a personable guide through what is often seen as an impersonal system, and his stories sparkle with humanity, candor, and wry wisdom. It’s the story of a life lived in medicine, with all the heartbreak, hope, and everyday heroism that entails.
Lauren Belfer ’75
Ashton Hall
Ballantine Books
When a close relative falls ill, Hannah Larson and her young son, Nicky, join him for the summer at Ashton Hall, a historic manor house outside Cambridge, England. Nicky stumbles upon a dark secret from centuries earlier, and Hannah is pulled into an all-consuming quest for answers, delving into its infamous history. As the multilayered secrets of Ashton Hall unravel, so does the tapestry of Hannah’s own life and crumbling marriage back in New York City — revealing how the most profound hauntings are within ourselves.
Shoshana D. Kerewsky ’83
Cancer, Kintsugi, Camino: A Memoir
Independently published
This powerful memoir is more than the tale of Kerewsky’s breast cancer survival, or her pilgrimage to hike the Camino de Santiago through France to the city of Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. It’s also about Jewish identity, atheism, family, AIDS, COVID-19, metaphors and similes, bricolage, self-reflection, and hypothetical cuckoos. Through richly layered fragments of lyrical prose and poetry, Kerewsky conveys the rhythms of thought, feeling, and walking in a sparkling narrative mosaic.
Benjamin Kennedy ’88
Welcome to Real Analysis: Continuity and Calculus, Distance and Dynamics
American Mathematical Society
Designed for use in an introductory undergraduate course in real analysis, Kennedy’s textbook brings more abstract ideas to life in accessible applications. Packed with a variety of exercises and questions designed to check comprehension, this book is largely developed in the setting of general metric space, and in addition to the standard material in a first real analysis course, it includes two chapters on dynamical systems and fractals, as well as other pedagogical innovations.
Mark Rozzo ’88
Everybody Thought We Were Crazy
Ecco Press
A stylish, wild, and intimate look into the marriage of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward, who lived out the emblematic love story of 1960s Los Angeles. In their Hollywood Hills home, everything that defined the 1960s went down: fun, decadence, radical politics — and at the center of it all, one inspired yet highly combustible couple. A tale of love, art, Hollywood, and two youthful creatives who descended into disorder and chaos, mirroring the very shape of the decade.
Daisy Fried ’89
The Year the City Emptied: After Baudelaire
Flood Editions
Fried, a poet, poetry critic, poetry editor for the journal Scoundrel Time, and a member of the faculty of the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, found that the best way to cope with the worst year of her life was by adapting 28 poems by 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire. This lyrical work is about the year 2020, which for Fried was filled with sickness, death, politics, unrest, sadness — and, of course, the global lockdown.
Jennifer Ruth ’91 and Michael Bérubé
It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and Academic Freedom
Johns Hopkins University Press
The protests of summer 2020 led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. It’s Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be rigorously distinguished from freedom of speech, Bérubé and Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy — theories that have no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever.
Radiance Harris ’06
Trademark Like a Boss: The Ultimate Step-By-Step Guide to Protecting Your Brand
Radiance Walters Harris
Every business needs a unique and protected brand to stand out, prevent consumer confusion, ward off theft, and avoid a rebrand for violating someone else’s trademark rights. Harris guides readers through the trademarking process, with advice on how to conduct a trademark search, prepare and file an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, common pitfalls in the registration process, and when to engage an attorney.
Peter C. Baker ’07
Planes: A Novel
Knopf
The effects of secrets are on full display in this fiercely intelligent debut novel that goes deep inside the daily lives of two women — one in Rome, the other in North Carolina — to tell a story about the interconnections, both personal and political, that exist beneath the surface of our world. As the characters’ narratives unfurl thousands of miles apart, they begin to resonate like the two sides of a tuning fork, and ultimately, both women face wrenching questions that will shape the rest of their lives. (Book cover designed by Linda Huang ’08).
Emma Otheguy ’09
Sofía Acosta Makes a Scene
Knopf Books for Young Readers
A sensitive portrayal of a Cuban-American girl’s efforts to determine where she belongs — both in her ballet-loving family and the wider world. Otheguy weaves this heartwarming tale to include a soft focus on issues such as gentrification, privilege, immigration, and history, all while engaging young readers to join Sofía on her journey to become a ballet dancer as she finds her voice and makes some good trouble along the way.
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.