The Union Bookshelf regularly features new books written by (or about) alumni 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.
PETER Y. SUSSMAN '63
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
Alfred A. Knopf
Peter Y. Sussman was valedictorian of the Union College Class of 1963 and soon began an award-winning career as an editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. In 1993, after 29 years at the newspaper, Sussman left to work as a freelance writer and editor. In that same year, Sussman co-wrote Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog. Today, Sussman is again being recognized for his editing work. This time it's for his skill in compiling, annotating and editing letters penned by the writer and journalist Jessica Mitford, called Decca by friends.
In summarizing Mitford's life, the publishing company writes, “‘Decca' Mitford did indeed live a larger-than-life life: born into the British aristocracy-one of the famous (and sometimes infamous) Mitford sisters-she ran away to Spain during the Spanish Civil War with her cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill's nephew, then came to America, became a tireless political activist and a member of the Communist Party, and embarked on a brilliant career as a memoirist and muckraking journalist (her funeral-industry exposé, The American Way of Death, became an instant classic).”
In an e-mail message sent to the College, Sussman cited favorable reviews from England's Sunday Telegraph, the Sunday Times of London, and The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker magazines. The author J.K. Rowling, who wrote the popular Harry Potter series, reviewed “Decca” in the Sunday Telegraph's Seven magazine. Rowling wrote: “Peter Sussman has done a masterly job of editing these letters, which must have been a veritable minefield given that, as he says, ‘Decca's views were often stated intensely and provocatively.' His footnotes are exemplary, illuminating at least one relationship that had eluded me through 27 years of reading about the Mitfords. By grouping the letters chronologically, dividing them according to periods, he manages to give unobtrusive form and structure to a life that was lived chaotically.”
GEORGE GMELCH
Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Anthropology
Baseball Without Borders: The International Pastime
University of Nebraska Press
Maybe Boston Red Sox General Manager Theo Epstein read Baseball Without Borders before inking a six-year, $52 million deal with the star Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka? It is possible, agreed George Gmelch, a noted baseball writer and editor of Baseball Without Borders, a new anthology of essays about the game.
“I invited 14 people to write essays for the book. Most are original. I edited them and wrote two essays,” Gmelch said. “There is a lot of talk about the globalization of baseball with events like the World Baseball Classic. This is really a book about the places that these players come from, about what the local places are like.”
There are several essays in the book dealing with professional baseball in Japan. One essay deals with a drop off in interest in Japanese professional baseball due to the increasing popularity of Japanese Major League Baseball players like Ichiro Suzuki, of the Seattle Mariners, and Hideki Matsui, of the New York Yankees.
The essays are organized by region-Asia, the Americas, Europe and the Pacific-and written by journalists, historians, anthropologists and English professors. These original essays reflect diverse perspectives and range across a refreshingly wide array of subjects: from high school baseball in Japan and Little League in Taiwan to fan behavior in Cuba and the politics of baseball in China and Korea. The game may look the same in countries ranging from Japan to the Dominican Republic but, according to the publisher, “there is usually a very different history and culture influencing the nuances of the sport.” The game is “undergoing instructive, entertaining and sometimes curious changes in the process,” according to the publisher.
Gmelch, who is the Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Anthropology at the College, has co-authored or authored two other books about baseball that have been published by the University of Nebraska Press. In the Ballpark: The Working Lives of Baseball People and Inside Pitch: Life in Professional Baseball were released in 2006 by the press.
Gmelch is a former first baseman in the minor league system of the Detroit Tigers. Gmelch is currently on leave from Union and doing research for another book on how California's Napa Valley has changed due to the wine tourism industry. Gmelch will also be the guest lecturer during an alumni cruise up the Amazon River from March 16 to 25.
PHILIP KOSKY, GEORGE WISE, ROBERT BALMER & WILLIAM KEAT
Exploring Engineering: An Introduction for Freshmen to Engineering and the Design Process
Academic Press
Exploring Engineering was developed to meet the need for a better way to introduce incoming engineering students to the fundamental concepts of all engineering disciplines. It was also created to show students the great array of opportunities and possibilities of today's engineering fields-from mechanical engineering to bioengineering and mechatronics. This is the first text to introduce nearly all of the major engineering areas, and to do so with a strong interdisciplinary case study approach. This approach better prepares and enables students to draw upon knowledge not only from their own particular field of expertise, but also from related engineering, technical and scientific fields, allowing them more versatility in their future employment.
Exploring Engineering is flexible enough to offer a variety of approaches to the introduction of modern engineering, while still providing the most important essentials that hold all engineering disciplines together, particularly the mathematical, quantitative basis of engineering ,as well as, the modern computer tools that make today's engineering design so efficient and accurate. The book was named best new undergraduate textbook in 2006 by the Association of American Publishers.
The book's four authors are members of the Union College faculty. Philip Kosky is the G.E. Distinguished Research Professor of Engineering; George Wise is adjunct professor of engineering; Robert Balmer is dean emeritus of engineering; and William Keat is associate professor of mechanical engineering.
RAYMOND MARTIN,
Dwane Crichton Professor of Philosophy, and John Barresi
The Rise and Fall of Soul and Self: An Intellectual History of Personal Identity
Columbia University Press
Is there a whole self that remains fixed and unchanged? Does the concept of the soul have a use outside religious contexts? Are notions of the soul and the self still viable in today's world? In this ambitious new work, the first of its kind, Raymond Martin, chair of the philosophy department at Union, and John Barresi, a professor of psychology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, trace a wide range of theories concerning self and personal identity in order to reveal the larger intellectual trends, disputes and ideas that have revolutionized the way we think about ourselves.
Opening with a discussion of ancient Greece, where the ideas of Plato and Aristotle laid the groundwork for future thinkers, the authors continue on to discuss the ideas of church fathers, medieval scholars and Renaissance philosophers, including St. Paul, Philo, Augustine, Aquinas and Boethius. The book goes on to include more modern ways of looking at the self, and relating these concepts to theories of feminism, gender and ethics. The authors go on to point out that recent theorists have challenged the idea that a unified self or personal identity even exits.
Professor Martin has taught at Union since 2002 and is the author of several books, including Self-Concern: An Experiential Approach to What Matters in Survival and Personal Identity and The Elusive Messiah: A Philosophical Overview of the Quest for the Historical Jesus. He lives in Niskayuna, N.Y.
FRANK GADO
Editor
William Cullen Bryant: An American Voice
Antoca Press
William Cullen Bryant: An American Voice marks the first collection of Bryant's writings to be published since 1935, and the most comprehensive critical study of his poetry to date. This book, edited by Frank Gado, will introduce the surprising literary figure behind a familiar name. Though a mere vestige of William Cullen Bryant's fame survives through inclusion of a few poems in school anthologies, the 19th century celebrated him as one of its great men. He not only deserved that acclaim, but he was a more important writer than his century recognized.
Half of this volume consists of a Bryant showcase. Three dozen poems chosen from the hundreds he produced reveal him as a revolutionary of prosody seeking refuge from Calvinism in a pantheistic God. Extracts from his criticism are a homily promoting the prospects for American literary nationalism. Also included here is a pair of his tales which, although almost totally unknown, are among the best work in the genre written before the Civil War.
The other half of this new volume presents a concise biography and, of special interest, three groundbreaking new critical studies. Gado argues that Bryant is the founding father of American poetry. As a poet of nature, Bryant played a literary role comparable to the influence on art exercised by his good friend Thomas Cole, founder of the Hudson River School. But perhaps even more important was the example Bryant set for Walt Whitman in a relationship explored here for the first time. A much briefer piece discovers the consistent philosophical belief addressed by a lifetime of poems. The third essay is unique in its consideration of Bryant's short fiction, which has never before received attention.
“Frank Gado's first-rate selection of William Cullen Bryant's poetry and prose and his persuasive essays on Bryant's contribution to American prosody and culture restore Bryant, at last, to his rightful place in American literary history as the philosophical poet too long overlooked,” said Brenda Wineapple, the Doris Zemurray Stone and Washington Irving Professor of Modern Literary and Historical Studies at Union College.
For many years, Frank Gado was a professor of American literature at Union College and editor at Union College Press. He was educated at Dartmouth College and Duke University and is the author or editor of a number of books including First Person: Interviews with Six American Writers (1976) and The Passion of Ingmar Bergman (1986).
THOMAS H. LEE '55
Final Curtain: Saigon
iUniverse
Thomas H. Lee is not dead. After retiring from a career in the U.S. Air Force and having numerous jobs in the private sector, Lee found time to write a novel about an Air Force lieutenant colonel involved in covert operations in Saigon during the mid 1970s. Recently, Lee's Union College fraternity, Kappa Alpha, mistakenly recorded him as deceased. In a note sent to this magazine, Lee wrote, “I'm alive and well and have been for more years than I am willing to count. As proof of my vitality, I'm enclosing a check for the alumni fund and information about my recently published novel.”
Lee's book, Final Curtain: Saigon, tells the story of Air Force Lt. Col. Terry Lawson who, in July 1974, accepts an assignment in Thailand. Lawson is looking to get over a failed marriage and renew a love affair with the C-130 aircraft-the aircraft he flew during the height of the Vietnam War. While in Thailand, Lawson is called to Saigon to fix intelligence systems in the U.S. Embassy. That's where he meets an attractive French-speaking Vietnamese woman, Lan Le Ninh. Lawson becomes enthralled with Ninh and begins delving into a long-running secret military operation being carried out by the U.S. military in Southeast Asia.
After twenty years of flying heavyweight transports and developing large-scale computer systems in the Air Force, Lee himself retired as a lieutenant colonel. He has since worked as a senior consultant for Booz, Allen & Hamilton, as director of systems development for MCI, and as a founding partner of Cyrillion Technologies Inc.
Even though Final Curtain: Saigon is fiction, aspects of the story closely mirror Lee's own experiences in Southeast Asia. In the novel's prologue, an unnamed narrator who is visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. tells his reasons for recounting a story. The narrator says the story is based on highly confidential conversations with a former Vietnam War veteran. The narrator tells the reader, “For nearly thirty years I've honored his confidence and never repeated a word of what he told me. But now, standing before this remarkable memorial and knowing that Americans are again dying in a similarly unjustified war, I feel compelled to break that trust and relate his story. I think you'll see that it reveals, among other things, how national leaders can systematically lie to us without being exposed.” Read the prologue and chapter 1 at: www.finalcurtainsaigon.com.
WARREN F. BRODERICK '71, '74
with photographs by James E. West
Images of America: Grafton, Berlin, and Petersburgh
Arcadia Publishing
This book captures a vivid picture of a long lost way of life in upstate New York. Filled with unforgettable photographs by James E. West, the book artistically portrays the proud people, quiet streets, beautiful homes and breathtaking panoramas of eastern Rensselaer County from 1880 to 1915. A native of Grafton, West set up a photographic business in 1878, began working in earnest in the Grafton-Berlin-Petersburgh region, and traveled in his horse-drawn wagon, fully equipped with a studio and darkroom. The James E. West Collection, consisting of nearly 1,000 images, was acquired in 1983 by the New York State Library in Albany. About 200 of these images appear in Grafton, Berlin, and Petersburgh.
“Most of this never before published collection depicts not only individuals and family groups, but residents at work and play,” said author Warren F. Broderick. “Hopefully, readers can obtain a better picture of rural life in upstate New York towns that would soon change with the advent of World War I and the mobility that came with the automobile.”
Broderick works for the New York State Archives, and owns land in Grafton.
He is the author of five books and has published numerous journal articles on subjects ranging from Herman Melville to Native Americans in literature.
The Images of America series celebrates the history of neighborhoods, towns and cities across the country. Using archival photographs, each title presents the distinctive stories from the past that shape the character of the community today.
ANTONIO F. VIANNA '66
Yellow Moon
Authorhouse
A year after the bank robbery conviction of Jimmy Lupo, his daughter, Bella, reaches out to a private investigator to dig up evidence that her father had taken a fall and been wrongly imprisoned for the crime.
Although hard-nosed detective, Ned Francis, is initially skeptical, he eventually believes that Jimmy Lupo was framed. And although Francis slams into one dead end after another, the detective never gives up the search for justice. However, he begins to fall in love with Bella. He is captivated by her good looks and seductive ways. Is he really convinced of her father's innocence? Or is he blinded from the truth by his feelings for the woman? With strange obsessions and lust for power, a climactic standoff will shock the reader.
The author, a former Air Force officer is frequently on television and radio offering practical tips for taking charge of a career. He is a faculty member and head area chair for the University of Phoenix, teaching business and management courses.
He is the author of several motivational books including Career Management and Employee Portfolio Toll Kit Workbook and Leader Champions: Secrets of Success. His fiction forays include Tale from a Ghost Dance, centering on the visionary powers of a high-powered female executive; Talking Rain, a plot-twisting murder mystery; and The Veil of Ignorance, a suspense novel about a struggling college professor. Vianna, who majored in biology at Union, lives in Carlsbad, Calif.
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