Main Menu · Search ·Current Issue ·Contact ·Archives ·Centennial ·Letters to the Editor ·FAQs
Publication coincides with
a NOVA public television program based on the book scheduled
for early October. |
The Houses of McKim, Mead & White, by Samuel G. White '68 (Rizzoli, $70). The architect-author is a great-grandson of Stanford White, whose firm built a number of structures for Harvard (including the Union and the Johnston Gate) and knockout private homes, some for Harvard people. About 30 sumptuous dwellings are the subject of this sumptuous book.
Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World, by James Chace '53 (Simon & Schuster, $30). In this first full biography of Truman's secretary of state, the Luce professor at Bard College reveals that when Dean Acheson, LL.B. '18, LL.D. '50, entered the Harvard Law School, he roomed with fellow Yalie Cole Porter and seven others in a house on Mercer Circle. After a rowdy party one night, neighbors complained to the dean of the Law School, and all nine roommates were threatened with suspension. "As the story goes," writes Chace, "Porter told the authorities that the only reason he had entered Harvard was to please his family, so why not expel him and reprimand the others? The solution seemed to please everyone: Acheson was kept on while Porter happily escaped Cambridge for New York, where he staged his first Broadway musical, See America First, in 1916."
Mortal Refrains: The Complete Collected Poetry, Prose, and Songs of Julia A. Moore, the Sweet Singer of Michigan, by Thomas J. Riedlinger, M.T.S. '96 (Michigan State University Press, $24.95). Nineteenth-century poet Moore specialized in "obituary poetry"--verses written to accompany death notices in newspapers. Many people have found her poems hilariously bad. Twain immortalized her style in the writings of Emmeline Grangerford in Huckleberry Finn. An 1878 review of her published poetry judged that "Shakespeare, could he read it, would be glad that he was dead."
The Human Christ: The Search for the Historical Jesus, by Charlotte Allen, A.M. '67, G '88 (The Free Press, $26). The author, a freelance writer and contributing editor at Lingua Franca, argues that "the Jesus-searchers of every era" have found in the distant man from Galilee images of themselves: "the deists found a deist, the Romantics a Romantic, the existentialists an existentialist, and the liberationists a Jesus of class struggle." Jesus has given flesh to "some of the best and worst ideas of Western civilization over the past 2,000 years."
Tibaldo and the Hole in the Calendar, by Abner Shimony, with illustrations by Jonathan Shimony '87 (Copernicus, $21). Fiction for readers young and old about Renaissance astronomy, medicine, and a 12-year-old Italian boy whose birthday falls within the 10 days dropped from October in 1582 to effect a reform of the calendar.
Day Job: A Workplace Reader for the Restless Age, by Jonathan Baird '92 (Allen & Osborne, $29.95). A high-velocity visit to the corporate world by a Gen Xer restless in it, brought to us in part by publisher Laurance Allen, AMP '88, once publisher of the Harvard Business Review. Best visit "https://www.dayjob.com" for a sense of the nature of this unorthodox package. This magazine's review copy arrived wrapped in straw.
Cape Ann and Vicinity: A Guide for Residents and Visitors, by Karin M. Gertsch, A.L.B. '92 (Acorn Press, P.O. Box 403, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Mass. 01944, $14.95, paper). Explorers of Essex, Ipswich, Rockport, or Gloucester (now celebrating its 375th anniversary as America's oldest seaport and fishing community) might equip themselves....
Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living, by Peter J. Gomes, B.D. '68, Plummer professor of Christian morals and Pusey minister in the Memorial Church, with a foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr., Du Bois professor of the humanities (Morrow, $23). Forty selected sermons by master preacher Gomes.
The Illustrated Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, by Dava Sobel and William J.H. Andrewes (Walker, $29.95). This magazine commissioned freelance writer Sobel in 1994 to report on a four-day symposium on longitude organized by Andrewes, the Wheatland curator of Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments. Her article for the magazine turned into a book, which became a bestseller in the United States, selling more than 400,000 copies to date, and which has been translated into many languages. This rich new edition adds to Sobel's text 180 images, selected by Andrewes, of people, clocks, shipwrecks, and other relevancies; about a third are from various Harvard collections.