John’s Turn

In this children’s book, Mac Barnett ’04 celebrates individuality through the story of a kid who finds the courage to show others his talent for dancing.

True Blue: White Unionists in the Deep South during the Civil War and Reconstruction

Clayton Butler ’10 investigates the lives of white Unionists in three Confederate states who enlisted in the U.S. Army, shedding light on the complex story of the Civil War era.

Swimming to Syria

This chapbook by Sandy Feinstein ’74 is a collection of poems reflecting her experiences teaching at the University of Aleppo and traveling throughout Syria.

Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay

Liz Fosslien ’09 and Mollie West Duffy weave science with personal stories and original illustrations to examine uncomfortable feelings and lay out strategies for managing them.

Archipelago of Resettlement: Vietnamese Refugee Settlers and Decolonization across Guam and Israel-Palestine

Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi ’13 examines a question: What happens when refugees encounter Indigenous sovereignty struggles in the countries of their resettlement?

She Came from Mariupol

Alfred Kueppers ’93 has translated Natascha Wodin’s homage to her mother’s story of leaving Ukraine for Germany as part of the Nazi forced labor program during World War II.

Geology Underfoot in Death Valley and Eastern California: Second Edition

In a revised, full-color edition of this popular book, Allen Glazner ’76 and Arthur Sylvester ’59 guide readers through some of California’s most spectacular and scenic geology.

Hunting Nature: Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World

Thomas P. Hodge ’84 explores Ivan Turgenev’s relationship to nature through his passion for hunting, making a case that hunting profoundly influenced his writing.

Saving Ryan

Physician-scientist Emil Kakkis ’82 writes about his 30-year journey to develop a treatment for mucopolysaccharidosis (MPS), an ultra-rare genetic disease, and the young patient it saved.

Exploring the World of Japanese Craft Sake: Rice, Water, Earth

In this guide with 300 color photos, Nancy Matsumoto ’80 and Michael Tremblay invite the reader into the story of sake, offering histories, current trends and recommendations.

The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan

Paul Roquet ’03 takes a critical look at virtual reality, uncovering how the technology is reshaping the politics of labor, gender, home and nation in Japan.

Yours Always

Henry Scott ’78 tells the story of his great-grandparents, a Southern man and a Northern woman, through their nearly 1,500 letters, their diaries and related historical accounts.

PIT

Art Professor Lisa Anne Auerbach collects photographs she took at Chicago punk and hardcore shows—in particular in mosh pits—in 1985 when she was a teenager.

What Is Love?

In this picture book, Mac Barnett ’04 and illustrator Carson Ellis present a fable about the nature of love, told from the perspective of a child.

Don’t Wait, Create: How to be a Content Creator in the New Digital Revolution

Erica Berry ’19 writes about the changing nature of the entertainment industry and how successful digital content creators found their creative voices, providing a roadmap for aspiring content creators.

Eyewitness to AIDS: On the Frontlines of a Pandemic

Bob Biggar ’64, a physician-epidemiologist from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, tells the story of AIDS and the HIV epidemic from its earliest discovery in 1981 to 2021, giving insight into how science brought this pandemic under a measure of control.

Dreaming of California

Grant Collier ’96 spent many months taking photos in California to capture the images for this children’s book about Pandora the Pelican and her exciting journeys through California past and present.

A century has passed since the 1921 San Antonio flood, a disaster that devastated the city but also sparked a movement.

With the coming release of the paperback edition of Environmental Analysis and History Professor Char Miller’s 2021 book, West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement, PCM’s Sneha Abraham talked with Miller about what happened when the waters receded—and the issues that remain more than a hundred years later. The interview has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

PCM: In relation to the 1921 San Antonio flood, you examine spatial inequities, ethnic discrimination, environmental injustice. How are those things revealed?

Char Miller: One of the things that I’m really fascinated with regarding this flood and hurricanes and other similar disasters is that these events are ephemeral. A flood comes, it goes, and then it’s gone. A flood just runs downriver until it heads into, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico. But what it reveals are all of the social issues that may not be talked about, but which are very evident on the ground. For example, the spatial inequity in a place like San Antonio is evident if you ask a pretty simple question, “Who died, and where did they live? And who didn’t die, and where do they live?”

And, in this case, you can, like an archaeologist, do a very quick schematic. Those who lived in the flood plain tended to be poor, tended to be Hispanic, but not exclusively, and tended to live in a landscape that repeatedly flooded. It’s not just the 1921 flood, there are floods dating back to the 18th century when the Spanish arrived. Those who did not die even though their streets flooded tended to live in much more substantial homes that were designed to withstand periodic moderate flooding—almost invariably in all-white neighborhoods.

Then you start to look at the physical geography. And it’s not just that one group is in the flood plain; the other group is elevated. By 1921, the spatial differentials were that in San Antonio the people who were dying or getting injured or whose homes were getting destroyed tended to be black and brown, and those who didn’t tended to be white. So that’s one way to see it. If you look at the second layer, which is political inequity, that’s built into the system also. And so, although Spanish-surnamed residents and African Americans voted, they were voting for white candidates because that’s who dominated the political arena. So even if you had the power of the vote, you didn’t have power.

The third issue is economic inequities. Those who lived in victimized neighborhoods were themselves manual laborers and, therefore, had little-to-no money to cushion themselves as a consequence of one flood after another, after another, after another. And so, with the ’21 flood, you can see that although the downtown core got ravaged and the West Side barrio got splintered, downtown recovered and the West Side barrio didn’t.

And those are post-flood examples of political disempowerment, of political and environmental injustice and the linked spatial inequities. The city grieved for those who died and then immediately turned its resources, its public funds, to support and protect the downtown core, which it believed was the only economic activity and social life that mattered. The Anglo power elite built a big dam and then straightened out the river and did all sorts of work over the next decade, virtually none of which was useful to anybody whose family had been destroyed in the 1921 flood.

PCM: Similar to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 …

Miller: Yes, totally right. Katrina, Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Name your hurricane and they reveal that same kind of story. It’s dramatic in a sense, but also predictable. And that’s the piece that, I think, drove me crazy while working on the book, which is that there are really two stories. One of which is the disaster as a disaster. The other is the repeated disasters that go back to the 18th century.

Even though I don’t talk about climate change in the book, it’s actually an analog for what happened in San Antonio for decades. “We had a flood; let’s do something.” “Nah, let’s not.” “We had a flood; let’s do something.” “Nah, it’s too expensive.” And they kept delaying, calculating that in the short term it’s cheaper not to do anything. In the long term, if people died, the elite could say to themselves, well, they’re not our bodies. They were other people who were going to bear that burden disproportionately. So that’s one part of the story.

The other part of the story is that, yes, there was a disaster, and yes, it solidified for a period of time the control of Anglo domination over the city’s budget, over its politics, over its social life, and managed to even further segregate Spanish-surnamed communities, the West Side barrio.

But—and this is a piece of the story that is crucial—out of that disaster came a local Latino environmental justice movement that quickly became one of the most dominant grassroots organizations of any city in the United States. And it was another flood that turned that story around. The flood in 1974 spurred the West Side to say, “All right, enough of this s—.” You can quote me on that one.

Two years prior, the West Side had been organizing a group called COPS, Communities Organized for Public Services, a parish-based, largely female-led organization that is in and of itself fascinating.

And they flipped the narrative so rapidly that it’s almost impossible to believe. They used the 1974 flood to challenge the political status quo, secured half a billion dollars over the next 10 years to turn ditches into flood-control channels, repair street infrastructure, and build better houses, water and sewer hookups, a set of connected resources the West Side had wanted for 50 years since the ’21 flood. They fought such that the city had to create a new charter so that city council representatives were no longer elected by at-large elections but via single-member districts. This new format gave people like Henry Cisneros, who was later mayor of San Antonio and then U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, a chance to get onto the city council and take its budget and start moving it to disempowered neighborhoods, African American and Mexican American. They broke the back of the power elite and came up with a whole political system. And then COPS became sort of the University of COPS, training and sending activists to Los Angeles and Houston, Tucson, Phoenix, Denver and Chicago.

San Antonio was for Mexican American/Chicano political development what Atlanta was for the Black Civil Rights Movement. It was the incubator and the galvanizing force that then sent people across the country. And, you know, you can’t have that story without the ’21 flood. And, in a way, what COPS’ victory represented for me was a kind of homage to those who died in 1921. They were going to better the landscape—built and natural—than the flood-prone one their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had endured, and they did it.

PCM: Why did you choose to examine the 1921 San Antonio flood?

Miller: Partly because I lived in San Antonio for 26 years. I lived near the Olmos Dam and was totally puzzled by it, but it taught me about watersheds. I also worked for what was called the Open Space Advisory Committee for the City of San Antonio, and everyone was thinking watersheds there, too.

Talking to the committee’s representatives from the west and south side was a lesson in politics. They knew all about the local watersheds and what flood control had achieved and what it had not accomplished. That hit home, literally, because the community in which we lived was built at the exact same time the dam was dedicated. It was a high-ground lure for the elite who wanted to get out of town, literally, and get elevated above and behind the dam. It was then a white enclave and an automobile suburb—the first car-dependent subdivision in San Antonio. It was these people who helped fight for the dam’s construction so that it would protect their downtown businesses and other economic assets—using public funds to protect private capital.

In 1939, New Deal photographer Russell Lee captured a key outcome of this skewed public spending. He set up his camera on the bank of Apache Creek, which in 1921 ripped through the barrio. In the foreground is a shack much like those throughout the West Side. In the middle ground is San Fernando Cemetery, where many of the 1921 flood’s victims were interred. In the background, no more than 1.5 miles away, tall post-flood skyscrapers rise up. Lee doesn’t need to say a word: He has perfectly caught the systemic injustices that prevailed in San Antonio two decades after the 1921 flood.

These strategies to withstand disasters normalized class and race and injustice. They weren’t just normalized; they were set in concrete. If you had concrete, you were protected even more. And if you still had an earthen ditch, you were utterly at the whim of nature. And its whim was felt in 1935, 1946, the 1950s through the mid-1970s, as floodwaters poured through the West Side. Running through the 1960s it was pretty nasty on the West Side. Most of their streets through the early ’70s were hard-packed dirt. Many areas were without potable water. They had to walk to find a faucet somewhere. The Peace Corps trained volunteers in San Antonio so they would understand what they might encounter when they arrived in South America.

COPS, the Communities Organized for Public Services, which emerged in the 1970s, is one expression of the West Side’s anger and the ultimate success of its grassroots activism. But you have to backdate that a little to 1960 when Henry B. Gonzalez, also a West Side resident whose family had gone through the ’21 flood, became the city’s U.S. congressman. He used his seniority to start channeling money to the West Side. COPS did the same thing with local dollars.

The combination of bottom-up and top-down pressure meant that West Side residents themselves disrupted, even destroyed, some of the markers of systemic racism. It doesn’t mean racism and classism have been fully vanquished, but the since the 1970s Spanish-surnamed politicians have dominated the public arena.

PCM: You talk about these calamities not being natural disasters. What do you mean by that? 

Miller: Disasters, whether hurricanes, tornadoes or a flood like that which wracked parts of Tennessee last year, blast through human communities. We want to call them natural disasters so that we can say that we have no control over them. But, in fact, we do have control. If we build houses in fire zones and they are incinerated, that’s not natural. It’s a result of policymaking. The same is true when communities greenlight subdivisions in a flood plain, riparian or coastal. Human decisions have human consequences.

The argument in West Side Rising, much as it is when I write about wildfires, is that because these are human actions they can be reversed. As an example, in 1998 San Antonio experienced yet another mega-flood. All local flood control infrastructure worked as planned. But this inundation revealed that there were other unprotected watersheds; a lot of people lost their homes. The city and the county acted swiftly, committing local funds to buy floodplain-sited houses from willing sellers.

I had been tracking that story and realized that the same strategy could be applied in the wildfire zones in California. Why not buy people out before their houses burn or buy them out after a firestorm swept through a community? The Golden State could replicate San Antonio’s success, which depends on a simple insight: that human-made disasters can be prevented. Equally so with climate change.

PCM: You’re a mentor for many students.
For this project, how did you bring San Antonio home to Claremont? 

Miller: West Side Rising and a companion documentary volume, The Tragedy of the San Antonio Flood, benefited enormously from the talents of a team of Pomona and Scripps students. I received a wonderful grant from the Digital Humanities at The Claremont Colleges initiative funded by the Mellon Foundation and used the funds to hire Anam Mehta ’21, Natalie Quek SC ’19 and Katie Graham SC ’19 to digitize a large collection of photographs and aerial maps that the U.S. Army had produced in the immediate aftermath of the 1921 flood. Anam also created several maps that appear in the two texts. Nicole Arce ’21 pored through Spanish-language documents and newspapers and provided a number of key translations. It was a blast working with them and being schooled by their insights—as happens with their peers every day in class.

Char Miller, W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History

Adam Rogers ’92 showed his first glimmer of interest in the mysteries of color perception with a middle school science project. He simply colored in a square on a piece of paper, held it up and asked the class, “What color do you see?”

Most students saw red, but one replied, “Pink.” Decades later, the science writer delves deeper into the ways that humans relate to color in his new book, Full Spectrum: How the Science of Color Made Us Modern. Here he explains a bit about how the book began, what he learned while writing it and what science journalism is like today.

PCM: Where did the idea for a book about the science of color come from?

Adam Rogers: As a science reporter at Newsweek in the ’90s, I found out about this pigment, this one molecule, this one chemical called titanium dioxide. It makes the color white.

It’s the super-light metal that you make artificial hips and Soviet-era submarines out of. Titanium, you take one atom of that, two atoms of oxygen, you stick those together and you get this stuff with a super-high refractive index, very opaque, very bright. And when you make it into a powder, if you do the right chemistry on it, you can make the color white, and it also becomes a ubiquitous chemical in all of the things around [us]. It’s in a lot of different kinds of paints; it’s in paper; it’s in a lot of plastics; it’s in pills and some foods.

I got obsessed with this idea that there was this one thing that was just everywhere—and essentially invisible. Except that it was also a color. I couldn’t shake that.

PCM: How long did it take you to write the book, and what are some of the places that it took you?

Adam Rogers: From the time I said, “OK, it’s going to be a book” to now is, I think, four years. I was late; I ran late on it. I went to the place in Cornwall, in England, where titanium was discovered, where somebody first identified that there was some new element in the dirt in the bed of a creek. I spent some time wandering around museums in Paris trying to see the colors instead of just seeing the art. I went to a professional coding conference in Indianapolis and tried to talk to the people who use color to put on things like cars.

There was some time spent in university labs, talking to folks about their research looking into the brains of monkeys and trying to understand what happens in those brains when they see color. In Boston I was talking to folks about trying to 3D print or paint forgeries of paintings that would be indistinguishable from the actual painting because of the way that they responded to the color around them.

PCM: Early in the book you write about color perception and tiny microbes and the possible origin of color perception. Can you tell us about that?

Adam Rogers: There has to be some early example of life that first started to be able to see color…[maybe] a totally different branch of life on the tree that’s billions of years old that would have been the first living things on Earth that turn out to have been able to distinguish between basically blue light and red light. Because one of those [colors] would have told them how to hide, and one of them would have been a place where they could hunt, where they could go look for food.

To do that, those critters had to develop the pigments that would respond differently, that would send a signal inside their own little single cells that would say either, “OK, now we’re getting this one wavelength; go toward it,” or “Now we’re getting this other wavelength; go away from it.” So the question then is how did they evolve that [ability]? The hypothesis is that it began as a form of photosynthesis—that you develop these very complicated molecules, versions of which still exist today in plants, that will be able to use the photons coming into the bodies of these microorganisms, of these microbes.

PCM: Do you ever find yourself out of your scientific depth?

Adam Rogers: All the time. I have no scientific depth in some respects. My formal science training was at Pomona, and that was it. I was a science, technology and society major. I have slightly more than half of a biology degree [and studied a lot of] history. That turned out to be really meaningful, because I find myself still writing STS stuff. Somebody had to point it out to me, that I’m still doing STS.

PCM: With the degree of science denial and the politicization of science and the general lack of scientific literacy in America today, it must be frustrating. Do you run up against that as a writer?

Adam Rogers: I do. Ten years ago I would have said, “Well, it’s on me to make sure that people understand my writing.…People won’t know what I’m necessarily talking about from the jump, and I have to compel them to come into a story and give them reasons to keep reading and then explain to them stuff that’s right and true.” I still think all of that. I think that some of this [science denial or limited scientific literacy] is the media’s fault, but some of it’s not. People have so little understanding now not only about science and the way that you might learn it in a classroom, but also about just who scientists are…and how you know something is maybe more true than something else. Societally, we have been terrible at explaining that to people. We don’t really teach it, we don’t really make it a priority, and I think we’re reaping some of that now.

PCM: What advice do you have for young people out there who are interested in pursuing a career in science writing?

Adam Rogers: I hope that they will. It is a hard time in journalism now, for social reasons and economic reasons. But I remain optimistic that even if the kind of places that do journalism will change, there still will be places to do journalism, and I think that writing about science—don’t tell any of my colleagues—I think it’s the most important beat. Don’t tell anybody I said that.

—Abridged and adapted from Sagecast, the podcast of Pomona College

The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu

The debut novel by Tom Lin ’18, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection, is a reinvention of the American Western, this time starring a Chinese American assassin.

Someone to Watch Over Me

Set in 1947 Hollywood, this mystery thriller by Dan Bronson ’65 follows an actor turned studio publicist tasked with finding a missing actress.

Japan’s Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century

Politics Professor Tom Phuong Le posits that Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize is due to factors of demographics, culture and perspectives on security.

Bird versus Bulldozer: A Quarter-Century Conservation Battle in a Biodiversity Hotspot

Using the story of the coastal California gnatcatcher, ecologist Audrey L. Mayer ’94 offers an optimistic perspective on regional conservation planning strategies benefiting both humans and wildlife.

Building the Population Bomb

Emily Klancher Merchant ’01 writes the history of U.S. demography and population control, challenging the conventional notion that population growth in and of itself is inherently a problem.

Control the Narrative: The Executive’s Guide to Building, Pivoting and Repairing Your Reputation

Lida Citroën ’86 writes about the power of personal branding and offers advice on how to make your reputation an asset.

Parabellum

In this crime novel by Greg Hickey ’08, four individuals emerge as possible suspects in a deadly mass shooting in Chicago.

Project Inferno (Infiltration)

William W. King ’70 has penned a futuristic novel (the first in a series) about an ordinary household object that is weaponized to attack America.

Ruminations on a Parrot Named Cosmo

Betty Jean Craige ’68 was inspired by her African grey parrot to write 75 short humor essays about her pet’s language learning, animal consciousness and the cognitive similarities between parrots and humans.

The Mindfulness Sidekick: Mental Wellness to Maximize Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation

For individuals with long-term depression, Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is widely considered a breakthrough treatment, and in this book Amy Halloran-Steiner ’94 journeys with patients, teaching the medicine of mindfulness.

Water Music: Adventures of a Journeyman Surfer

David Rearwin ’62 started surfing 70 years ago. At the age of 80, he continues—and chronicles—his escapades at sea.

Time in Maps: From the Age of Discovery to Our Digital Era

Historian Caroline Winterer ’88 is co-editor of a volume that examines how maps from across the world have depicted time in inventive ways.

Tattoo on My Brain: A Neurologist’s Personal Battle Against Alzheimer’s Disease

Dr. Daniel Gibbs ’73 offers a memoir about his diagnosis of Alzheimer’s—the very disease he treated in patients for 25 years.

Out of Print: Mediating Information in the Novel and the Book

Julia Panko ’02 examines how the print book has fared with the proliferation of data across the 20th and 21st centuries.

Horse Brain, Human Brain
The Neuroscience of Horsemanship

This work on human and equine brains, by brain scientist and horsewoman Janet L. Jones ’84, was recently listed as one of Book Authority’s “Ten Best Human Brain Books to Read in 2021.”

My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites

Named to a New York Times list of  the “Best Poetry of 2020,” the daily journaling practice of S. Brook Corfman ’13 investigates the ordinary.

Leavetakings

Corinna Cook ’07 presents nine essays, all set in Alaska and posing the question of what coming and going can reveal about place.

Mountain Climber
A Memoir

After nearly six decades of climbing, Bill Katra ’68 recounts his mountain adventures, detailing his experiences and reflecting on the wisdom he’s gained from them over time.

ASPC Manual of Preventive Cardiology

Nathan D. Wong ’83 has co-edited an updated review on the current guidelines and practice standards for the clinical management of cardiovascular risk factors and prevention of cardiovascular diseases.

Not About Dinosaurs

This collection of poems by Linda Neal ’64 digs deep into matters of living, dying and extinction.

Survive
(The Atlantis Grail Book 4)

Vera Nazarian ’88 has released the fourth and final book in The Atlantis Grail series, in which under the threat of annihilation, the fate of the entire human species is at stake.

Posthuman Bliss?
The Failed Promise of Transhumanism

Susan B. Levin ’84 challenges transhumanists’—advocates of radical enhancement—claim that science and technology support their vision of posthumanity.

The City and the Wilderness
Indo-Persian Encounters in Southeast Asia

Professor of History Arash Khazeni recounts the journeys and microhistories of Indo-Persian travelers across the Indian Ocean and their encounters with the Burmese Kingdom and its littoral at the turn of the 19th century.

The publishing information that accompanied last issue’s Book Talk with author Ronald Fleming ’63 was incorrect. Here is the correct information:

The Adventures of a Narrative Gardener:
Creating a Landscape of Memory
By Robert Lee Fleming
GILES | 168 pages | $39.95

The Arrest

Professor and noted author Jonathan Lethem’s most recent novel is speculative fiction about societal collapse, two siblings, a man who came between them and a nuclear-powered supercar.

Separate but Faithful:
The Christian Right’s Radical Struggle to Transform Law and Legal Culture

Politics Professor Amanda Hollis-Brusky co-authors with Joshua C. Wilson the first book-length treatment of “Christian worldview” law schools and their impacts on law and politics, based on fieldwork and interviews with leaders of the Christian Right legal movement.

The Phantom Pattern Problem:
The Mirage of Big Data

Economics Professor Gary Smith and Jay Cordes ’93 pose the question as to whether data patterns are worth believing—and posit that the “evidence” is ultimately meaningless.

Ripples of Air:
Poems of Healing

Charlotte Digregorio ’75 offers hundreds of her award-winning poems, along with her essays on poetry.

Hunting Nature:
Ivan Turgenev and the Organic World

Thomas P. Hodge ’84 explores Ivan Turgenev’s relationship to nature through hunting—his life’s passion.

Signature

Hunter Dukes ’13 explores the cultural history of autographs through first-person recollections from his travels through California, England, Greece, Finland and Russia.

Reading Minds:
How Childhood Teaches Us to Understand People

Henry M. Wellman ’70, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, presents research on theory of mind and examines ideas about the frontiers of research, from robots to religion.

Modern Family:
The Untold Oral History of One of Television’s Groundbreaking Sitcoms

Marc Freeman ’89 tells the history of the popular TV show through the eyes of the cast, creators and crew.

The Power of the Impossible:
On Community and the Creative Life

Erik S. Roraback ’89 surveys cultural figures and icons like Spinoza and Ivan Lendl and examines global community formation and creativity.

The Browning of the New South

Jennifer A. Jones ’03 takes an ethnographic look at changing racial identities in an evolving­ Southern city.

The Sweeney Sisters

Lian Dolan ’87 returns with her biggest, boldest, most entertaining novel yet—a hilarious, heartfelt story about books, love, sisterhood and the surprises we discover in our DNA.

The Eye That Never Sleeps

Clifford Browder ’50 offers a classically told detective novel that creates a web of intrigue while giving the reader a tour of a bygone era of America through the filter of New York City.

Nontechnical Guide to Petroleum Geo­logy, Exploration, Drilling & Production

Norman J. Hyne ’61, in the new fourth edition of his widely used textbook, provides broad insight into the nature of gas and oil production today.

The Religion of Physics

Philip C. Groce ’62 melds science and religion into a conceptual framework that God can be defined as energy.

Aphrodite’s Pen

Jody Savage ’75, writing as Stella Fosse, seeks to empower older women writing about erotic experiences in life, the bedroom and beyond.

Devotional Thoughts on the Lord’s Supper, Offering and Prayer

Ronald Johnson ’71 compiles 64 talks given prior to the Lord’s Supper, 14 talks for the offering and two talks on prayer.

The 9 Pitfalls of Data Science

Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics Gary Smith and co-author Jay Cordes ’93 tell cautionary tales of data science successes and failures, showing readers how to distinguish between good data science and nonsense.

Living the California Dream: African American Leisure Sites During the Jim Crow Era

Alison Rose Jefferson ’80 explores how during the Jim Crow era in Southern California, a growing population of African Americans pioneered America’s “frontier of leisure” and worked to make recreational sites and public spaces open and inclusive.

Heartthrob
del Balboa Café al Apartheid and Back

Professor of Romance Languages and Literature Susana Chávez-Silverman has penned a memoir that is a love story woven together in both English and Spanish, traversing from San Francisco to South Africa and asking us to consider how things could have been.

Donuts Are Meant to be Eaten

Alex Cook ’82 introduces the Barton clan in this first of a family dramedy series that covers a range of experiences: from what it feels like to be an adolescent male in the late ’70s in the South to offering insight into the life of a disillusioned wife and mother in a post tech revolution world.

Dreaming of Arches National Park

This children’s book co-written and photographed by Grant Collier ’96 and set in Arches National Park, is a story of the adventures of Cayenne, a coyote that doesn’t like to sleep.

A Knowledge Representation Practionary: Guidelines Based on Charles Sanders Peirce

Mike Bergman ’74, web scientist and entrepreneur for a series of internet companies, writes of his experience in installing semantic technology and artificial intelligence projects for enterprise customers over many years.

Chasing Gods

This novel by Willard Berry ’61 is a chronicle of the calamitous life of his third great-grandfather, who lived from 1788-1852. Berry came across this ancestor’s strange life while doing genealogical research.

US Democracy Promotion in the Arab World: Beyond Interests vs. Ideals

Mieczysław (Mietek) Boduszyński, professor of politics and international relations and former U.S. diplomat goes beyond the question of whether the U.S. should promote democracy in the Arab world and pushes further to examine the why, where and how.

BOOK SUBMISSIONS

If you’ve had a book published and would like to submit it for inclusion in Bookmarks, please send a review copy to Sneha Abraham, PCM Book Editor, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711