HOT TYPE: New releases by Swarthmoreans

Marc Egnal ’65
A Mirror for History: How Novels and Art Reflect the Evolution of Middle-Class America
University of Tennessee Press

Egnal uses novels and art to provide a new understanding of American society. The book argues that the arc of middle-class culture reflects the evolution of the American economy from the near-subsistence agriculture of the 1750s to the extraordinarily unequal society of the 21st century. Fiction offers a rich source for this analysis.

Rod Chronister ’67
The World You Think You See: According to Your Brain
Kindle Press

The World You Think You See cover features an illustration of a brain wearing sunglasses, and in each lens is Earth as seen from space.

Chronister provides a rigorous and thorough account of the components and processes involved in seeing. The text is illustrated with figures and videos, with a special emphasis on illusions. The unique strength of the book is its treatment of pathological syndromes in vision with real-life cases. The author is an expert in rehabilitation medicine with a special interest in stroke and brain lesions.

Kristin Camitta Zimet ’69
A Tender Time: Quaker Voices on the End of Life
Baltimore Yearly Meeting

The cover of A Tender Time features a yellow-orange leaf floating on the surface of a body of water.

Zimet curates a unique collection of Quaker voices, historical and contemporary, that explore practical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of aging and dying well. A Tender Time moves in widening circles, from aging to dying, and from primary caregiver to friends to the whole faith community. It illustrates how individual Friends make end-of-life decisions guided by the Spirit and Quaker values.

Peter Brampton Koelle ’80
El tiro postergado (The Shot Postponed)
Xlibris

The cover or El Tiro Postergado features a photograph of two revolvers in a box with green lining.

Koelle’s El tiro postergado, a theatrical work in Spanish based on “Vystrel – The Shot” by Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, examines the themes of jealousy, envy, revenge, and destiny in the dueling culture of post-Napoleonic Russia. It begins when three friends, members of the intelligentsia, discover the story of a romantic personage obsessed as much with his honor as with his ideals.

Thomas Whitman ’82
Four Pieces from Das Jahr (1841)
Hildegard Press

The cover of Four Pieces from Das Jahr features black text on a white cover with a black border.

Co-director of the Swarthmore College Gamelan Semara Santi, Whitman recast several pieces from 1841’s Das Jahr, a large-scale work for piano solo by the 19th-century German composer Fanny Hensel Mendelssohn. Whitman created versions for clarinet, cello, and piano with the goal of making this extraordinary music more accessible to the chamber music community in a practical performing edition.

Dave Gertler ’83
Play the Mackenzie!: A Sharp White Attack in the Ruy Lopez
Elk and Ruby Publishing

The cover of Play the Mackenzie! features a wooden chess set on a plaid tablecloth in the foreground and trees and mountains in the background.

The Mackenzie is a chess variation named after Scottish American master George Mackenzie, who popularized it in the 19th century. He was undefeated with it, overwhelming some top masters of his day. As well as variations and advice, this book contains 57 model games with key annotations. Author and former Chess Life magazine staff member Gertler has held the FIDE Master title since 1985.

Justin Powell ’92 and David P. Baker
Global Mega-Science: Universities, Research Collaborations, and Knowledge Production
Stanford University Press

The cover of Global Mega-Science features green semi-circles on a black background.

Global Mega-Science examines the origins of the unprecedented growth of knowledge production over the past 120 years. Powell and Baker argue that at the heart of this phenomenon is the unparalleled cultural success of universities and their connection to science: the university-science model. The authors analyze the accumulation of capacity to produce research and demonstrate how the university facilitates the emerging knowledge society.

Matthew Warshawsky ’92
From New Christians to New Jews: Seventeenth-Century Spanish Texts in Defense of Judaism
LinguaText

The cover of From New Christians to New Jews features an image of a tree, some buildings, and a boat on a river.

Warshawsky studies diasporic New Christian authors of the 1600s and early 1700s to show how emergent or “New” Jews used the literary language of Catholic Spain to communicate their experiences as conversos and former conversos. Conversos are Jews who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries, and their descendants. In six essays, Warshawsky analyzes writings that position their authors as Iberian and Jewish at a time when the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions prevented such identities from coexisting openly.

Jon Michael Varese ’94
The Company
Hachette UK

The cover of The Company is green with a pattern that alludes to Victorian wallpaper.

Set against the backdrop of the real-life arsenic wallpaper controversy of the late 19th century, Varese’s The Company is a dark and haunting slice of gothic Victoriana, following one woman’s fight to preserve all that she holds dear.

Jennifer Celeste Briggs ’99
Watching Sarah Rise: A Journey of Thriving with Autism
She Writes Press

The cover of Watching Sarah Rise features a figure walking between shrubs in a sunny forest.

Briggs’ memoir about her daughter Sarah, a feisty girl with autism and a unique genetic blueprint, may resonate with families who have supported a child with special needs. Briggs is equally feisty and determined, which leads her to make a commitment that dramatically changes her and Sarah’s lives — as
well as those of many others.

Ursula Whitcher ’03
North Continent Ribbon
Neon Hemlock Press

The cover of North Continent Ribbon features features white clouds, blue sky, green mountains, and a tall skinny building reminiscent of Seattle's Space Needle. There is also a figure with a long braid in the foreground.

In Whitcher’s North Continent Ribbon, every contract is a ribbon, and every ribbon is a secret, braided tight and tucked behind a veil. Artificial intelligence threatens the tightly woven network. Stability depends on giving each machine a human conscience — but the humans are not volunteers. In the midst of strife, individual people struggle to hold onto their jobs and protect their lovers, those trusted few who could draw back the veil.

Anna Elena Torres ’07
Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature
Yale University Press

The cover of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish features a drawing of a figure on a gradient background that's light red at the top and yellow-orange at the bottom.

Torres examines Yiddish anarchist aesthetics from the 19th-century Russian proletarian immigrant poets through the modernist avant-gardes of Warsaw, Chicago, and London to contemporary antifascist composers. The book also traces Jewish anarchist strategies for negotiating surveillance, censorship, detention, and deportation, revealing the connection between Yiddish modernism and struggles for free speech, women’s bodily autonomy, and the transnational circulation of avant-garde literature.

Scott Weiss ’11
The Neronian Grotesque
Routledge

The cover of The Neronian Grotesque features a pattern with red figures on an off-white background.

During the reign of Nero, Roman culture produced some of its most spectacular works of art and literature, and some of its strangest. Weiss’ The Neronian Grotesque is a fascinating study of literary and artistic production in the Neronian period, and has wider implications for anyone working in the field of Roman cultural history and visual studies more broadly.

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.

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