Two of Pomona College’s most prominent alumni authors, Vikram Chandra ’84 and Ved Mehta ’56, have new books out in India.

The latest from Chandra, author of the bestseller Sacred Games, is Mirrored Mind: My Life in Letter and Code, which explores computer coding and novel writing and the connections and trajectories of the seemingly opposing methods of expression.

Mirrored Mind will be released in the U.S. in September as Geek Sublime: Writing Fiction, Coding Software. Chandra, who has spent years as a computer analyst and years as an acclaimed fiction writer, creates a work described by the publisher as “part literary theory, part tech story, and part memoir.” The book ranges from discussions of the Silicon Valley coding culture to an analysis of the writings of the fourth century Sanskrit grammarian Panini to an examination of his own relationship to Western literature. 

The Telegraph (U.K.) called it “a delight to read and never prescriptive… a thought-provoking set of linked essays that are part memoir, part analysis of geeks, part aesthetic treatise.” Meanwhile, Chandra’s bestseller Sacred Games may become a TV series.

Ved Mehta ’56, the author of 27 books and many articles, has released The Essential Ved Mehta. The book contains excerpts from almost all of his nonfiction writings, beginning with his first novel Face to Face, published in 1957. Mehta was a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1960 to 1993, writing prolifically during his tenure. The Essential Ved Mehta contains Mehta’s published pieces that include his many writings on India and politics, as well as family stories and personal memoirs that delve into living with blindness since the age of 4.

Mehta also offers personal commentary that he wrote specifically for this collection as a reflection on each piece. In an interview with WWD, the author “says that he feels that the U.S. and India have equal weight in his consciousness, and that he thinks of himself as belonging to neither of the countries as a writer. Rather, he’s a ‘rootless writer,’ he says, adding that good writing should not be limited by geography.”

Both The Essential Ved Medhta and Mirrored Mind are published by Penguin India.

One of Professor Char Miller’s latest books, Death Valley National Park: A History, is a co-authored volume based on the manuscript drafted by late UNLV history professor Hal K. Rothman. Hal was an editor for the Environmental History journal and was a prominent writer, public speaker and environmental historian; he died from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) in 2007 at the age of 48. Death Valley National Park: A History is the first comprehensive history of the park, from its beginning as a national monument in 1933 to its present day prospects and conflicts. The book discusses the three-million-acre park’s founding, evolution and early people, and it also examines the past and current impacts of mining, solar power, politics and urban development on this arid landscape. Here, Professor Miller, director of the Environmental Analysis Program at Pomona College, discusses the book in an abridged and edited interview.

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As a boy growing up in Baltimore, Aaron Becker ’96 knew a trick: when he drew pictures, he became all-powerful. “Drawing was a way of making sense of what life was about,” Becker says, “On a piece of paper I could make all the rules that I wanted to.” This year, with the release of his debut children’s book, Journey, Becker has created a world that invites its audience to follow the spirit of that child of years ago. Journey features a girl who uses a magical pen to slip from her distracted family to a rich world of her own timbre. With not a single word of text, Journey unfolds over 40 pages of captivating illustrations, detailed but not busy. The book has won widespread positive notice. Amazon included it among its “Best Books” for young readers in summer 2013 while the New York Times called it a “masterwork.” School Library Journal placed the book on its list of contenders for the Caldecott Medal, the most notable award for picture books.

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Though it is set in Queens, Pomona College Professor Jonathan Lethem’s latest novel, Dissident Gardens, contains a fun little nod to his SoCal college home. Deep in the novel about “three generations of All-American radicals,” as Lethem is unspooling a bit of background about purist music teacher Harris Murphy, we learn that Murphy was part of the short-lived duo which contributed one song to the anthology LP Live at the Sagehen Cafe.

For those who are decades away from campus life, the Sagehen Cafe is the sitdown eatery in the Smith Campus Center, adjacent to the Coop Fountain.

Lethem says it is the only Pomona allusion he dropped into the book (available Sept. 10), but he did pass along the news that Thomas Pynchon’s new novel, Bleeding Edge (available Sept. 17), also set in New York, contains a brief reference to Pomona College in its first few pages.

Perhaps it is no surprise that Pomona was recently named to Flavorwire’s list of the most literary colleges …

More from the magazine about Jonathan Lethem, Pomona’s Roy Edward Disney ’51 Professor in Creative Writing.

A pair of new tomes from Pomona people take fresh looks at two of the West Coast’s top cities. Latinos at the Golden Gate: Creating Community & Identity in San Francisco, by Pomona College Professor Tomás F. Summers Sandoval Jr., is “among the first books detailing the experiences of Latin American immigrants and their descendants in San Francisco over the course of a century and a half … ,” according to the web story. A state or two to the north, Bill Mullins ’68 has written Becoming Big League: Seattle, the Pilots and Stadium Politics. He tells the “story of Seattle’s relationship with major league baseball from the 1962 World’s Fair to the completion of the Kingdome in 1976″ focusing on “the acquisition and loss, after only one year, of the Seattle Pilots.”

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Update on 07/24/13: Animal Wise by Virginia Morell ’71 was one of the top three picks in the SciAm Summer Reading Poll! Join Morell in a Google Hangout with the other two authors on Friday, July 26, at 9 a.m. PST.

The editors of Scientific American are offering readers a chance to vote for their favorites among 50 new science books that were recommended by the magazine’s staff and contributors, and a pair of Sagehen authors appear side by side on the online ballot. All Natural by Nathanael Johnson ’01 is right next to Animal Wise by Virginia Morell ’71. Fortunately, you are allowed to vote for up to three tomes.

More about Animal Wise
More about All Natural
Scientific American ballot

In his new book, The Leading Man: Hollywood and the Presidential Image, historian Burton Peretti ’82 explores how Tinseltown and the U.S. presidency are sometimes strange, sometimes highly compatible bedfellows that build a relationship based on mass communication. “It may seem surprising to claim that a president or other politician could cross over to the fantasy world of the movies, but it has happened,” Peretti writes in his introduction. “Such transformations have, in fact, been a major development in American political history.” So did Hollywood seek out presidents or did presidents seek out Hollywood? Peretti says the answer is yes and yes. The attraction was mutual. “Presidents were fascinated by the cultural power wielded by the movies, while moviemakers were drawn to the dramatic realm of power in the real world,” says Peretti.

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A determined midwife and her knife-wielding servant set out to solve a murder mystery in Samuel Thomas’ first novel, The Midwife’s Tale, released in January. Thomas, a historian and former professor focused on Reformation England, weaves together fact and fiction to tell the story of Bridget Hodgson, the midwife and her servant Martha, both real women living in 17th century England. Thomas (Pomona College Class of 1991) takes his readers into Bridget’s world during the siege of York, not only creating an exciting mystery story but also revealing the complex political and religious issues of the era. The Midwife’s Tale has been met with positive reviews and is the first release in what is to become a four part series. Thomas now resides in Ohio and teaches high school history in addition to writing novels. He talks midwives, mystery, writing and more in the abridged and edited interview below.

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. Romy Natalia Goldberg ’02 spent four years exploring Paraguay by foot, bus, train and VW camper van, gathering information for a travel guide recently released by Other Places Publishing. Along the way she found community and adventure in the South American nation’s busiest cities and its most remote spots, traveling through fields of sugar cane to stunning waterfalls and on flooded roads to vibrant local carnivals. Goldberg’s travel guide complements her website and blog on Paraguay, making her research efforts some of the most comprehensive for prospective visitors.

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Nathanael Johnson ’01, who wrote an interesting piece for PCM about C-sections a few issues back, has a new book out. The award-winning journalist who has written for Harper’s and produced stories for NPR says he spent his whole life preparing for  All Natural: A Skeptic’s Quest for Health and Happiness in An Age of Ecological Anxiety. Raised in an “all-natural” family, Johnson is drawn to the controversies over natural birth, diet, the environment and alternative medicine—all ultimately as a way to understand his family and early childhood. In All Natural he examines both the polarization and nuances involved in determining whether the natural approach to living really is best for humankind.

 What inspired the book?

 I grew up in a family that really believed that many of humanity’s attempts to protect itself from nature were misguided. For instance, my dad insisted that I go diaper free as a baby because he thought that the natural perfection of my developing pelvis would be deformed if I constantly had a big wad of absorbent material between my legs for two to three years. Part of me starts to scoff, but then I’d think, “That actually is a plausible hypothesis.” It’s hard to assess because stories in the popular press written about the all-natural constellation of concerns are usually utterly dismissive, or utterly credulous.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing it?

I had no idea how to organize it at first, and if I’d been lazy it would have just been a series of essays without any narrative through-line, and without any larger argument. So I resolved to build the book around the development of my thinking – to tell stories from my all-natural childhood, then bring the reader along as I fact-checked the family ideology. I spent days cutting chapters apart with scissors and moving the sections around. The process is like working on a big puzzle, but all the pieces are invisible – you have to hold them in your mind. And to complicate things even more, you can change the shape of any piece, or decide that it’s actually part of a different puzzle.

Were there are startling realizations during your research?

Lots! I was surprised to learn that childbirth is getting more dangerous in this country, and that more U.S. citizens are killed by unnecessary medical care than the numbers who die because they can’t get access to care. I was shocked and bemused by the way the demands of modern America have reshaped the bodies (and the mating habits) of pigs. I expected to find at least one blind spot in the orthodoxy about vaccination, because so many intelligent, admirable people are worried by shots, so I was amazed when every fear and theory about the dangers of inoculation led to scientific dead ends.

Are you working on any writing projects now?

I started keeping a journal when my daughter was born and I was struck by how often I was writing about her our adventures with the urban wildlife of San Francisco. So I’m playing with the idea of starting with these toddler’s-eye-view stories from my journal, and then researching our observations and writing down the most interesting bits to produce a father’s field guide to the urban ecosystems that so many of us walk through without ever noticing.