Japanese diaries; computer history; young activists

Leaves from an Autumn of Emergencies: Selections from the Wartime Diaries of Ordinary Japanese

by Samuel Hideo Yamashita '68 (University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. 300 pages, $60 cloth, $26 paperback)

Samuel Hideo Yamashita, the Henry E. Sheffield Professor of History at Pomona College, has been collecting and translating wartime letters and diaries written by ordinary Japanese for more than a decade. This collection of diaries gives readers a first-hand look at the effects of the Pacific War on eight Japanese. The diaries chronicle the last years of the war and its aftermath as experienced by a navy <i>kamikaze </i>pilot, an army straggler on Okinawa, an elderly Kyoto businessman, a Tokyo housewife, a young working woman in Tokyo, a teenage girl mobilized for war work and two schoolchildren evacuated to the countryside. Yamashita's introduction provides an overview of the historiography on wartime Japan and offers insights into the important, everyday issues that concerned Japanese during a disastrously difficult time.

The Computer Industry

by Jeffrey R. Yost '90 (Greenwood Press, 2005. 288 pages, $49.95 hardcover)

This book is intended for students and general readers interested in the development of computers and related technology as well as the history of the computer industry. Jeffrey Yost traces the emergence and development of the computer industry in the United States as seen in the economic, historical and social context of its times from the early 20th century to the present. He discusses IBM and Bill Gates, Apple and Macintosh, and the Internet and the World Wide Web, along with the lesser-known histories of the mainframe digital computer, the invention of the transistor, software development, supercomputing and minicomputing.

Yost, who earned a Ph.D. in the history of technology and science from Case Western Reserve University, is associate director of the Charles Babbage Institute for the History of Information Technology at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Ol' Man River: Memoirs of a Riverboat Captain

by William D. Bowell Sr. '49, edited by Bilione Young (Afton Historical Society Press, 2005. 224 pages, $32 cloth)

William Bowell is well known in the Twin Cities as the founder of the Padelford Packet Boat Co., although he was already middle-aged when he started his excursion boat business. The St. Paul native tells of serving as a paratrooper during World War II and fighting in the Battle of the Bulge; his education at Macalester, where he met his future wife, Lillian Flatten Bowell '49, and honed his entrepreneurial skills selling popcorn at Macalester football games and working as a free-lance photographer. He was a museum curator, copywriter, print salesman, catalog publisher and co-owner of a plastic-mold injection company before launching his excursion boat business on a nearly deserted Harriet Island in downtown St. Paul in 1970. It was an immediate success for Bowell, a descendant of a Pennsylvania steamboat captain, and helped transform the St. Paul riverfront. He sold the business and its four excursion boats to his children and nephew in 2001. In 2004, he gave his collection of books, paintings and other artifacts to the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa, to open the Captain William Bowell River Library. He received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Macalester this month.

Letters from Young Activists: Today's Rebels Speak Out

edited by Dan Berger, Chesa Boudin and Kenyon Farrow (Nation Books, 2005. 256 pages, $14.95 paperback)

The contributors to this book, who range in age from 10 to 31, come from all kinds of backgrounds and are united in working towards racial, economic, environmental and global justice. They include Nell Hirschmann-Levy '02, a labor organizer for the Service Employees International Union in Oakland, Calif., and Ismail Khalidi '05, a writer and actor who was born to Palestinian parents in Beirut and grew up in Chicago. The preface is by Bernardine Dohrn, former member of the Weather Underground, writer, activist and professor of law at Northwestern University.

A Little Taste of Freedom: The Black Freedom Struggle in Claiborne County, Mississippi

by Emilye Crosby '87 (University of North Carolina Press, 2005. 354 pages, $55 cloth, $21.95 paper)

Emilye Crosby explores the impact of the African American freedom struggle on a small, rural, predominantly black community. Through a long-term study of the freedom movement in Claiborne County, where she grew up, she questions common assumptions, contending that legal successes at the national level in the mid-1960s did not end the movement but rather emboldened people across the South to initiate new challenges on local issues. Studying both black activists and the white opposition, Crosby employs traditional sources and more than 100 oral histories to analyze the political and economic issues in the post-movement period, the impact of the movement and the resilience of white supremacy, and the ways in which these issues are closely connected to competing histories of the community.

Crosby is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York-Geneseo. Her book received the McLemore Prize from the Mississippi Historical Society and an Honorable Mention for the Liberty Legacy Award of the Organization of American Historians. In her acknowledgement she gives thanks to Macalester Professors Peter Rachleff, Jim Stewart, and Norm and Emily Rosenberg.

The Power of Becoming: Achieving Personal Fulfillment

by Paul R. Mork (Beaver's Pond Press, 2005. 208 pages, $18.95 paperback)

Paul Mork earned his B.A. from St. Olaf College and, in 1972, his M.Ed. with an English emphasis from Macalester. A secondary teacher and coach for 47 years, most of them at White Bear Lake High School, he retired from teaching to write this self-help guide about how people can find meaning, peace and happiness in their daily lives. Drawing from his own experiences as a coach and teacher of college prep English, he explores such topics as belief, love, work and fun.

You May Now Kill the Bride

by Deborah Donnelly (Bantam Dell, 2006. 335 pages, $5.99 paperback)

In the fifth book of this mystery series, Seattle bridal consultant Carnegie Kincaid travels to the San Juan Islands of Puget Sound to direct her best friend's wedding and meet her mother's millionaire beau. When a bizarre mausoleum yields an unburied corpse, Carnegie finds herself marooned with murder.

Deborah Dezendorf Wessell '72, writing as Deborah Donnelly, has been a university librarian and an executive speechwriter. She lives in Portland, Ore., with her writer husband and two Welsh corgis.

Steamed: A Gourmet Girl Mystery

by Susan Conant and Jessica Conant-Park (Berkley, 2006. 304 pages, $22.95 hardcover)

Susan Conant, the author of the Dog Lover's mysteries and the Cat Lover's mysteries, teams with her daughter, Jessica Umbarger Park '93, for a new culinary mystery series featuring Chloe Carter (known on the Internet as GourmetGirl). A social work student, Chloe is on a never-ending quest for the perfect meal and the perfect man.

Jessica Park has a master of social work degree from Boston College. She is married to chef William Park. Susan Conant, who has a doctorate in human development from Harvard, is a six-time winner of the Dog Writers Association of America's Maxwell Award.