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Archibald Cox, in 1985 Jane Reed |
Archibald Cox: Conscience of a Nation, by Ken Gormley, J.D. '80 (Addison-Wesley, $30). Special prosecutor Cox ('34, LL.B. '37, LL.D. '75, now Loeb University Professor emeritus) became a hero to many Americans in his 1973 battle of wills with President Nixon over the Watergate tapes. Nixon ordered that Cox be fired and the top two officials of the Justice Department resigned in protest, one of them Attorney General Elliot Richardson '41, LL.B. '44, LL.D. '71, who contributes a foreword to this book. Much less known outside Harvard precincts are Cox's contributions as troubleshooter at the University during the troubles of 1969 through 1971.
The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880-1955, by Richard Norton Smith '75 (Houghton Mifflin, $35). A rollicking biography of the controversial publisher-editor of the Chicago Tribune.
On Our Own: Unmarried Motherhood in America, by Melissa Ludtke, NF '92 (Random House, $25.95). A million babies born in the United States each year--a third of the whole--have single mothers, most of whom raise their children on their own. Journalist Ludtke focuses on two disparate groups, adolescent mothers and those over 35. She weaves together their experiences with research on children and families and the perspectives of policymakers, psychologists, and social commentators. Soon after writing this book, Ludtke, single herself, adopted a Chinese baby.
Posterity Lost: Progress, Ideology, and the Decline of the American Family, by Richard T. Gill '48, Ph.D. '56, former master of Leverett House and lecturer on economics, with a foreword by James Q. Wilson, LL.D. '94 (Rowman & Littlefield, $29.95). Gill explores the link between the weakening of the family and the weakening of our faith in progress. "A superbly insightful work," says Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D. '68, IOP '91 (Simon & Schuster, $25). Goodwin set out to write about becoming a Brooklyn Dodger fan. In the doing, she found that Pee Wee Reese and associates were inseparable from the rest of her life as a young girl reaching adolescence in a suburb of New York in the fifties. Thus this memoir.
Anomalies available for Victorian admiration and scrutiny included giants, of girth as well as height, such as the affable Daniel Lambert (701 pounds). From
The Platypus and the Mermaid. |
Planet Quest: The Epic Discovery of Alien Solar Systems, by Ken Croswell, Ph.D. '90 (Free Press, $25). In a twinkling, astronomers have advanced from not knowing whether any stars other than ours have planets to sighting more than half a dozen planetary outposts, implying that billions of planets exist in our galaxy alone. Recent discoveries may one day lead sky-watchers to an Earthlike planet perhaps harboring life.
Living Architecture: A Biography of H.H. Richardson, by James F. O'Gorman, Ph.D. '66, with photographs by Cervin Robinson '50 (Simon & Schuster, $50). This is the first detailed portrait of Richardson, of the class of 1859, "unquestionably the greatest American architect of the nineteenth century." The author, professor of art at Wellesley, is a distinguished architectural historian. Photographer Robinson's splendid work is splendidly reproduced.
How Late Desire Looks, by Katrina Roberts '87, instructor in creative writing at Harvard Extension School (Gibbs Smith, $9.95, paper). A music box in book form: 26 poems that beg to be read aloud.
The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis, by Orlando Patterson, Cowles professor of sociology (Counterpoint, $24.50). Patterson recommends that policy-makers retain affirmative action for another 15 years, issue housing vouchers to move people closer to the good industrial jobs and better schools, limit for a decade the influx of low-skilled immigrants, and institute a policy to reduce teenage childbearing by barring high school boys who impregnate girls from playing status-enhancing varsity sports. He favors intermarriage as a means of promoting full integration.