The Union Bookshelf regularly features new books written by alumni authors and other members of the Union community. If you're an author and would like to be included in a future issue, please send us a copy of the book as well as your publisher's news release. Our address is Office of Communications, Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. 12308.
Thomas P. Weil '54
Health Networks: Can They Be the Solution? dissects the effectiveness of health networks in America and their impact on access, quality, cost reduction, and national health policy. Weil believes that the formation of integrated delivery systems represents a more sophisticated attempt to restructure America's health system than any previously undertaken. He evaluates whether recently formed health networks can generate enough fiscal savings to provide greater access to and quality of healthcare despite the current trend in cutbacks in reimbursement from Medicare and managed care plans. The book concludes with a discussion of how U.S. health networks might divest certain programs, services, and facilities in the case of an almost inevitable economic turndown.
Weil's extensive academic background, teaching experience, and three decades of day-to-day healthcare consulting permit him to bridge theory and practice on many issues while arriving at pragmatic, yet provocative, solutions.
To obtain a copy of Health Networks: Can They Be the Solution? go to www.amazon.com.
Stephen Zuckerman '62
New Clichés for the 21st Century is a plucky and provocative book of new perspectives on timeless topics. “If only I could remember what I forgot,” and other classic Zuckerisms, run the gamut from silly to sagacious, all with Zuckerman's stamp of droll whimsy. One reader in Minneapolis states, “It makes me smile to know that many of life's complicated questions need not be answered…but can be calmed with a Zuckerism.” From the first chapter, “The Doctor Is In,” to the last, “The Pondering Jew,” nothing is too sacred to escape a satirical poke. Zuckerman is a practicing doctor of internal medicine, and a successful venture capitalist.
Daniel R. Schwarz '63
ReReading Conrad explores essential works such as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, and Nostromo, addressing issues raised by recent theory and discussing the ways in which contemporary readers have come to read Conrad differently. Schwarz does this without abandoning such crucial Conradian themes as the disjunction between interior and articulated motives and the discrepancies between dimly acknowledged needs, obsession, compulsions and actual behavior. As a leading Conradian scholar, Schwarz has assembled his work over the past two decades into one crucial volume. His essays take account of recent developments in theory and cultural studies, including postcolonial, feminist, gay, and ecological perspectives and shed new light on an author who has spoken to readers for over a century. Schwarz is a professor of English and Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow at Cornell University, where he received Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences Russell Award for distinguished teaching. To obtain a copy of ReReading Conrad or other works by Schwarz, got to www.amazon.com.
Willard Goodwin '69
Hugh Kenner: A Bibliography provides the first complete record of Hugh Kenner's published works. Kenner, the noted modern literary critic, wrote definitive studies of Elliott, Beckett, and Joyce as well as his most famous work The Pound Era, widely considered the most important book on Ezra Pound. Goodwin's bibliography presents an efficiently arranged history of Kenner's works, including descriptions of his thirty-two books and pamphlets, book and periodical contributions, broadcasts, essays, and translations. This comprehensive presentation invites the reader into a full study of a well-respected modernist critic. This bibliography is a useful source of study for literary historians, critics, students, editors, and fans of Hugh Kenner. Goodwin is an independent scholar living in Austin, Tex. His essays, book reviews, and bibliographies have appeared in a variety of publications including Joyce Studies Annual, Libraries and Culture, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and American Libraries. To obtain a copy of Hugh Kenner: A Bibliography, go to www.whitston.com.
Raymond Angelo Belliotti '70
Raymond Belliotti, distinguished professor of philosophy at the State University College of New York at Fredonia, has published What is the Meaning of Human Life? This book addresses the relationship between a meaningful life and religion; the threat nihilism and the loss of rational foundations pose for personal integrity; the responses available to the threat of cosmic meaninglessness; the role suffering and struggle in creating meaning; the nature and function of value; the question whether happiness is overrated as a goal of life; and how, if at all, we can learn to die meaningfully. Belliotti is also the author of Justifying Law (1992), Good Sex (1993), Seeking Identity (1995), and Stalking Nietzsche (1998). To obtain a copy of What is the Meaning of Human Life?, go to www.amazon.com.
Steven Glazer '85
Strewn across thirty-one towns in the Upper Valley region of Vermont and New Hampshire are treasures: historic one-room schoolhouses, gushing waterfalls, covered bridges, old cemeteries and cellar holes, bogs, hollow maples, ancient ceremonial sites and towering, stately oaks. Valley Quest: 89 Treasure Hunts in the Upper Valley, edited by Steven Glazer, will introduce these hidden, special places to you. Valley Quest clues and maps lead to places such as Gile Mountain, Velvet Rocks, Glen Falls, Dunbar Hill Cemetery, and the Jonathan Wyman Saw Mill. At the end of each quest…perhaps in a stonewall or hollow tree-is a treasure box containing a sign-in guest book and a handmade rubber stamp. Valley Quest was born out of a 150-year-old tradition in southwest England. “Letterboxing,” as this tradition is called, has become hugely popular, with over 2,000 boxes hidden in both natural and cultural locations. Glazer is also the editor of The Heart of Learning Spirituality in Education. To obtain a copy of Valley Quest: 89 Treasure Hunts in the Upper Valley, go to vital.communities@valley.net.