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 A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kenney and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever
by Josh Karp '88 (Chicago Review Press, 2006)
Karp, a Chicago-based journalist, chronicles the rise and fall of National Lampoon magazine and its founder, Doug Kenney. The golden boy of 1970s American comedy, Kenney wrote Animal House and Caddyshack and helped paved the way for the tone of modern comedy, including "Saturday Night Live." A millionaire screenwriter/producer, he died mysteriously in 1980 at the age of 33 when he fell off a cliff in Hawaii.
Willing the Good: Jesus, Dissent and Desire
by Paula M. Cooey (Fortress Press, 2006)
Cooey retrieves and valorizes the reforming impulse from Reformation times, follows it back through the early church's internal and external battles and traces it back to Jesus himself. She shows how a strong affirmation of dissent as a Christian duty can inform a more open and faithful church as well as a publicly relevant theology and ethics. Cooey is the Margaret W. Harmon Professor of Christian Theology and Culture at Macalester.
Chicago's Progressive Alliance: Labor and the Bid for Public Streetcars
by Georg Leidenberger '87 (Northern Illinois University Press, 2006)
Leidenberger tells the story of the Progressive-era coalition of reformers and workers advocating municipal control of the main mode of transportation for Chicago's diverse population. By examining the alliance's formation, political tactics and ultimate demise, he offers insights into the history of labor, class relations and political culture in urban America. Leidenberger is a professor of history at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana in Mexico City.
 Landscapes in Music: Space, Place and Time in the World's Great Music by David B. Knight '64 (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006)
Using landscape as its unifying concept, this book explores orchestral music that represents real and imagined physical and cultural spaces, natural forces, and humans and wildlife. Knight is a geographer and orchestral musician who has performed with groups in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Scotland.
Minnesota Running Trails: Dirt, Gravel, Rocks and Roots
by Kate Havelin '83 (Adventure Publications, 2006)
Havelin, an experienced runner, writes about her favorite trails, how to get there, the best routes to take and trail highlights. The book covers the state's best trails from Afton State Park to Zumbro Bottoms. Havelin also wrote the story on healing arts in this issue (read it).
Parallel Play
by Stephen Burt (Graywolf Press, 2006)
Burt's second collection of poems describes lovers, friends, travelers and revelers attempting lives dependent on each other but still pulled inevitably into preoccupations of their own self-awareness. He looks for answers in his own life and among his coterie of characters and venues--from the rock clubs of New York City to the basketball courts of the WNBA, from the canvases of Kline and Richter to the canvassers in a hard-fought election. Burt is chair of the English Department at Macalester.
Zachary Zormer: Shape Transformer
by Joanne Anderson Reisberg '60 (Charlesbridge, 2006)
A math adventure book, this teaches children such tricks as how to make a Moebius strip, how to make a 4x6-inch piece of paper big enough to walk through and how to use a flashlight to demonstrate the reasons for seasons. A former teacher, Reisberg lives in Minneapolis.
 Mosquito
by Alex Lemon '00 (Tin House Books, 2006)
Lemon's debut book of poetry explores his experiences as a brain surgery patient. Mosquito blends autobiography and poetry, bearing witness to a young man's journey through serious illness and his emergence into a world where eroticism, hope and wisdom allow him to see life in a wholly new way. Lemon, who received a 2005 Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, is a visiting instructor in Macalester's English Department.
Windows & Roses: Selected French Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Susanne Petermann '79 (self-published, 2006. www.lulu.com)
These are only the second translations published of Rilke's French poems. Petermann has published her own poems in various journals and self-published an illustrated memoir regarding her difficult journey through breast cancer. She lives in southern Oregon.
Scooters: Everything You Need to Know
by Eric Dregni '90 (Motorbooks, 2005)
Dregni, a lifelong scooter rider and collector, offers a wealth of information about the fastest-growing segment of the American motorcycling market. He tells what kind of scooter to buy, how to buy it and where. He is the author of five other scooter books, three of them written with his brother Michael Dregni '83.
All this writing: the universality of human nature
I don't know what will happen to all this writing. I don't know what will happen to my own writing. I just know I've never been quite able to throw it away, that I've been cheerfully willing to carry heavy boxes of filled notebooks with me move after move in the decades of my life. I just know that every year more people decide to write, and though we may feel very vulnerable to these words while living our story, or when imagining our next of kin reading our writing after we've gone, over time our writing takes on a patina of universality. We know this because we read the diaries and journals of others and experience the universality of human nature, presented in a million situations and conditions, yet somehow the same.
 --from Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story (New World Library), (c) 2005 by Christina Baldwin |
Storycatcher: Making Sense of Our Lives through the Power and Practice of Story
by Christina Baldwin '68 (New World Library, 2005)
Baldwin, a pioneer of the personal writing movement, encourages everyone to become "Storycatchers"--people who value story and find ways in the midst of everyday life to honor storytelling. Each chapter features suggestions, examples and anecdotal materials designed to help readers think meaningfully about the stories of their lives. Storycatcher won the motivational category in the annual Books for a Better Life Awards sponsored by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.
As Long As We Both Shall Live: Long-Married Couples in America
by Robert Fass '81 (self-published, 2006. www.longmarriedcouples.com)
Begun in 1997, this book is an exploration of the changing institution of American marriage in words and images. A photographer and writer living in New York City, Fass traveled from Maine to Hawaii documenting couples who have been married for 40 years or more. The book was published in conjunction with a touring exhibition which will tour Germany and Austria beginning in September 2006.
 Taking Sides: Clashing Views on African Issues
edited by William G. Moseley (McGraw-Hill, 2007)
In this second edition of Taking Sides, Moseley, a Macalester geography professor, presents 20 controversial African issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. The issues range from "will biotech solve Africa's food problems" to "should international drug companies provide HIV/AIDS drugs to Africa free of charge."
Terwilliger Bunts One
by Wayne Terwilliger, Nancy Peterson and Peter Boehm (Globe Pequot Press, 2006)
Terwilliger recounts how a skinny kid who couldn't hit a curveball turned himself into a major-league second baseman, coach of two Rookies of the Year and winning minor-league manager. Still coaching at 80, "Twig" talks first-hand about historic moments, baseball greats and other celebrities, Marine battles at Saipan and Iwo Jima, enthusiasm, winning and staying young. Co-author Peterson, Macalester's publications director since 1982, is a friend of Terwilliger and webmaster of www.wayneterwilliger.com.
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