Bookshelf

Bookmarks Spring 2021

March 23, 2021 by Staff Comments Off

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.

Book Talk Correction

March 23, 2021 by Staff Comments Off

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

Bookmarks Fall/Winter 2020

December 4, 2020 by Staff Comments Off

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.

Bookmarks Spring/Summer 2020

June 23, 2020 by Staff Comments Off

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.

Bookmarks Winter 2020

March 4, 2020 by Staff Comments Off

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

Bookmarks Fall 2019

October 14, 2019 by Staff Comments Off

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsessions

Rachel Monroe ’06, hailed as one of the “queens of nonfiction,” by New York Magazine, pens the stories of four women’s obsession with true crime and explores our collective morbid fascination.

Frost Fair Dance

Dancer and poet Celestine Woo ’89 offers a book of poems that, as one editor praised, “glide across the page” —an apt description as Woo uses modern dance and movement as themes throughout her work.

Best Practices in Educational Therapy

Ann Parkinson Kaganoff ’58, a board-certified educational therapist and educator for six decades, offers strategies and solutions for novice and veteran educational therapists alike.

Doing Supportive Psychotherapy

John Battaglia ’80, professor of psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin, has written a guide for learners and professionals alike on how to forge meaningful, impactful therapeutic relationships with patients.

One Small Sun

The poetry of Paulann Petersen ’64 takes readers from Oregon to India, taps into memory and tells the tales of an aging woman’s life.

The Road Through San Judas

The inspiration for this novel by Robert Fraga ’61 came from his time as a volunteer in Northern Mexico, where he learned of the conflict between landless Mexican farmers and a wealthy Juárez family who wanted their land.

Can’t Stop Falling: A Caregiver’s Love Story

In a memoir written to inspire people helping loved ones who are suffering, W C Stephenson ’61 tells the story of his wife’s rare neurological disease and his role as her caregiver.

Forty Years a Forester

Professor of Environmental Analysis Char Miller edited an annotated edition of the memoir of Elers Koch, a key figure in the early days of the U.S. Forest Service with a major role in building relationships and policies that made the bureau the most respected in the federal government.

Bookmarks Spring/Summer 2019

May 17, 2019 by Staff Comments Off

Collisions at the Crossroads:
How Place and Mobility Make Race

Genevieve Carpio ’05, assistant professor of Chicana and Chicano studies at UCLA, examines policies and forces restricting free movement—from bicycle ordinances to incarceration—and how they constructed racial hierarchies in Los Angeles and the Inland Empire.

Luxury, Blue Lace

S. Brook Corfman ’13 offers poetry exploring the overlapping personalities that can be found in one person. His poems earned him a starred Publishers Weekly review, praising it as “a work of rare beauty and thoughtfulness.”

More Than Birding:
Observations from Antarctica, Madagascar, and Bhutan

In this travel memoir, Harriet Denison ’65 shares her adventures in birding, animal encounters and cultural experiences in breathtaking locations on three continents.

Learning to Be a Foreigner:
Field Notes from Sichuan

In this novel, Nancy E. Dollahite ’64 tells a love story between a woman and a country and a woman and a man, based on her experience living in China in the 980s.

Buzz Stories at Thirty Thousand Feet

David Price ’71, son of the late Harrison “Buzz” Price, writes about his father, best known for determining by mathematical formulas where to build Disneyland and Walt Disney World.

The Also-Rans:
One Step Short of the Presidency

David P. Green ’58 profiles and examines the candidates who didn’t make it to the White House, from Republican Wendell Willkie in 1940 to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The Philosophical Baroque:
On Autopoietic Modernities

Erik S. Roraback ’89, who teaches critical theory, international cinema and U.S. literature at Charles University, reframes modernity as a multicentury baroque, as part of the Literary Modernism book series.

The Nature of Hope:
Grassroots Organizing, Environmental Justice, and Political Change

Professor of Environmental Analysis Char Miller is the co-editor of this collection of essays exploring how ordinary citizens have come together to organize action for environmental justice.

Bookmarks Winter 2019

February 4, 2019 by Staff Comments Off

The Blue Wave Starts with Me:
A Volunteer’s Guide to Getting Out the Vote for Democrats
Ron Boyer ’76 penned a book for people asking themselves, What can I do to help elect Democrats?

Business Chemistry:
Practical Magic for Crafting
Powerful Work Relationships
Kim Christfort ’96 and Suzanne Vickberg offer a guide to putting cognitive diversity to work.

Dark Knowledge
In his historical novel, Clifford Browder ’50 writes about a young man in New York in the late 1860s investigating the illegal pre–Civil War slave trade.

Sea Change:
The Unfinished Agenda of the 1960s
Dorothy May Emerson ’65 pens personal stories about a young life lived on the edge of hope, change and possibility in California in the 1960s.

Searching for My Heart:
Essays About Love
This book by Dawn Downey ’73 contains stories with themes of alienation, shame and the self-awareness that leads to love.

No Hard Feelings
Emotions at Work (and How They Help Us Succeed)
Liz Fosslien ’09 and Mollie West Duffy take a look at emotions in the workplace and how to navigate them.

Summary Execution:
The Seattle Assassinations of Silme Domingo and Gene Viernes
Michael Withey ’68, P’91 tells a true story that could be a crime thriller: a double murder replete with assassins, FBI informants, murdered witnesses and a foreign dictator.

The Power of the Impossible:
On Community and the Creative Life
Erik S. Roraback ’89 surveys cultural figures and icons like Spinoza and Ivan Ledi and examines global community formation and creativity.

Peregrinations:
Walking in American Literature
Amy T. Hamilton ’98 explores physical bodies and movement in American stories and history.

Sara When She Chooses
Deedra Cooper ’76, who writes under the name Cat Jenkins, takes the fictional character Sara on a trip to her grandmother’s house—a primitive home that she hates to visit.

The American Road Trip and American
Political Thought
Professor of Politics Susan McWilliams Barndt shows how Americans have long used road trips not only as escapism but also as a vehicle to explore questions about American politics.

San Antonio:
A Tricentennial History
W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History Char Miller has written the first general history of San Antonio, Texas, the nation’s seventh-largest city and one shaped by environmental, social, political and cultural pressures.

Bookmarks Summer/Fall 2018

September 5, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Presenting for Humans

Insights for Speakers on Ditching Perfection and Creating Connection

Lisa Braithwaite ’87 challenges preconceived notions about public speaking and guides the creation of meaningful and memorable presentations.

Fascinating New Yorkers

Power Freaks, Mobsters, Liberated Women, Creators, Queers and Crazies

Clifford Browder ’50 profiles the famous and forgotten, from J.P. Morgan’s nose to a pioneer in female erotica.

Aldo

In this mystery/thriller /love story by Betty Jean Craige ’68, a university president is held hostage when a dangerous ideologue tries to eradicate the school’s genetics institute.

Everyday Creatures

A Naturalist on the Surprising Beauty of Ordinary Life in Wild Places

George James Kenagy ’67 offers13 personal essays on nature, gleaned from observations, discoveries and experiences of deserts, mountains, forests and the sea.

Come West and See

This debut collection of short stories by Maxim Loskutoff ’07 describes a violent separatist movement, with tales of love and heartbreak.

Win

The Atlantis Grail (Book Three)

In this fantasy novel by Vera Nazarian ’88, nerdy Gwen Lark must fight her way through a difficult contest as the fate of two worlds, Earth and Atlantis, hangs in the balance.

The Big Note

A Guide to the Recordings of Frank Zappa

Charles Ulrich ’79 offers a guide to Frank Zappa’s music composed from hundreds of interviews, letters and email correspondences spanning 35 years.

Woodswork

New and Selected Stories of the American West

Miles Wilson ’66 offers a collection of short stories set in the American West—geographically, culturally and psychologically—ranging from fable to realism and ranchers to fathers.

Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution

Thomas C. Wright ’63 offers an interpretation of the Cuban Revolution era, synthesizing its trends, phases, impact and influence on Latin America.

Understanding Nanomaterials

Professor of Chemistry Malkiat Johal and his former student, Lewis Johnson ’07, co-wrote this second-edition textbook, providing a comprehensive introduction to the field of nanomaterials as well as an easy read.

The AI Delusion

Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics Gary Smith argues that our faith in artificial intelligence is misplaced and makes the case for human judgment.

Bookmarks Spring 2018

March 22, 2018 by Staff Comments Off

Permission to Die
Candid Conversations About Death and Dying

Rabbi Anthony Fratello ’94 teamed with a neurologist, a psychotherapist and a physician to empower readers to think about death and dying.

Spiritual Citizenship
Transnational Pathways from Black Power to Ifá in Trinidad

Nicole Fadeke Castor ’89 explores the role of Ifá/Orisha religious practices in shaping local, national and transnational belonging in African diasporic communities.

My Pomona College

Emeritus Professor of Economics James D. Likens offers a memoir of 47 years on the faculty of Pomona College, stretching from the turbulent ’60s to the new millennium.

Indecorous Thinking
Figures of Speech in Early Modern Poetics

Professor of English Colleen Rosenfeld examines the use of figures of speech by such poets as Edmund Spenser and Mary Wroth as a means of celebrating and expanding the craft of poetry.

Bones Around My Neck
The Life and Exile of a Prince Provocateur

Tamara Loos ’89 examines the life of Prince Prisdang Chumsai, Siam’s first diplomat to Europe, and, through him, the complexities of global imperialism.

A Second Course in Linear Algebra

This new textbook by Professor of Mathematics Stephan Garcia and coauthor Roger Horn helps students transition from basic theory to advanced topics and applications.

Where There’s Smoke

Professor of Environmental Analysis Char Miller edited this interdisciplinary anthology on the troubling environmental consequences of illegal marijuana production on public, private and tribal lands.

The Party’s Primary
Control of Congressional Nominations

Hans J.G. Hassell ’05 explores the ways in which political parties work behind the scenes to shape the options available to voters through the primary process.

The Ballad of Huck & Miguel

In a provocative tribute to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Tim DeRoche ’92 transports Huck to modern-day L.A., following his escape down the concrete gash of the Los Angeles River in the company of an undocumented immigrant falsely accused of murder.

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