Books Your July 2026 Reads Stories You May Like Doctoral Student Juggles Math and … Juggling! Remember Arriving on Campus? Now, Move-In Is a Major Event Stage Combat Group Wields Swords, Staffs—Even Lightsabers This month’s featured titles include a Victorian-era thriller and a psychologist’s self-help guide on coping with anxiety and panic For more titles by Big Red authors, peruse our previous round-ups. Have you published a book you'd like to submit? Scroll down for details! And did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out! Our Diaries, Ourselves Betsy Rubiner ’81 In this nonfiction work, journalist Rubiner explores (in the words of the subtitle) “how diarists chronicle their lives and document our world.” The idea for the book—whose title is a riff on the feminist classic Our Bodies, Ourselves—was sparked when Rubiner revisited her own diaries and contemplated donating them for academic study. She wound up taking a deep dive into the history of the diary as a source of self-care and self-expression for women—from Nobelist Marie Curie to pop star Taylor Swift. “I realized that although I have written in a diary almost every day since I was 13, I have never thought, really thought, about what I am doing or creating,” the Arts & Sciences alum writes in the preface. “Why did I keep stuffing my diary into suitcases, backpacks, and nightstand drawers? Why did I dig out my diary to write in a tent in the Michigan woods? … Why are diarists like me so driven to chronicle our thoughts and experiences?” Publishers Weekly raves that the book “bursts with insights that entertain,” while Kirkus opines that “journal lovers will adore this fascinating account of the diary.” An Artful Dodge Karen Lootens Odden ’87 The Christian Science Monitor calls this thriller set in Victorian London a “surprisingly moving tale with loyal and courageous characters.” Its protagonist is Kit, a 20-year-old master thief and pickpocket who’s part of a notorious all-female gang. Despite being highly adept at her criminal art, Kit longs for a normal life, and is determined to help her younger sister live respectably. But to have a chance at escaping the underworld, she has to help a master thief—recently returned after decades in an Australian penal colony—pull off one last, revenge-driven score. “Odden matches vivid details of the hard-knock life in Victorian London with complex backstories for her large cast,” Publishers Weekly says in a starred review. “Readers will be rapt.” A former English major on the Hill, Odden is a USA Today bestselling author whose previous work includes Down a Dark River and Under a Veiled Moon. Freedom from Panic Bonnie Zucker ’93 The popular podcast Anxiety Matters is—believe it or not—hosted by two psychologists named Dr. Bonnie Zucker, each of whom specializes in the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy to treat anxiety. Now, one of them has penned a self-help book on how to cope with panic attacks. The volume is subtitled Evidence-Based Techniques to End Avoidance & Stop Panic Before It Stops You. It offers concrete tips on forestalling panic attacks, which Zucker defines as a “sudden rush of physical sensations, such as a racing heart, difficulty breathing, chest pain, numbness and tingling, and hot flashes.” Zucker also describes numerous case studies of people who’ve suffered and overcome panic—including the author herself, who at certain points in her academic career faced severe anxiety around taking tests. Stories You May Like Doctoral Student Juggles Math and … Juggling! Remember Arriving on Campus? Now, Move-In Is a Major Event “People with panic attacks often feel very alone in their experience,” she writes. “If that is you, it might be helpful to realize that the opposite is true, as approximately 93 million people in the U.S. will experience at least one panic attack in their lifetime.” Within the Shop of the Divine Mary Gilliland ’73, MAT ’80 An award-winning poet who has taught on the Hill and elsewhere, Gilliland has published several collections of her work, including Ember Days, The Ruined Walled Castle Garden, The Devil’s Fools, and the chapbook Red Tide at Sandy Bend. Her latest volume of poetry is her first to be published in the UK. “By turns mystical and realist, Mary Gilliland’s intensely musical poems consider global apocalypse but also celebrate the generative power of creativity,” Alice Fulton, MFA ’82, Cornell’s Bowers Professor of English Emerita, says in a blurb for the new work. “Her vision is profound, enduring.” As Gilliland writes in a poem titled “The Mother”: “Stop rattling my door. I’ve worked my dusty / shift within the shop of the divine, / trued the wheel and dressed the block until it / worked me doubletime. I haven’t energy / to carve a roast. The kettle’s on, fire / banked, my hammer’s misplaced, apron gone.” Between Fixed and Fickle Audun Dahl In this scholarly volume from Harvard University Press, the Cornell psychology professor ponders why and how our moral views change across various life stages, situations, and historical eras. “Dahl describes a familiar pattern of thinking he calls the story of the ‘fixed and fickle,’” says Psychology Today. “First, we treat our own moral convictions as fixed and self-evident—so obvious that no reasonable, well-meaning person could see things differently. But when we encounter people who disagree, we conclude their moral sense must be fickle—easily corrupted by self-interest, irrationality, or unruly emotion.” But as Dahl explains, the reality is much more complicated; he goes on to describe the various types of situations that prompt people to alter their moral views, including being forced to rethink how they balance competing priorities. “We all descend from people whose acts would horrify us,” Dahl observes, noting the history of slavery in both the U.S. and his native country, Norway, where Vikings enslaved people a millennium ago. “People have kept violating values you’d think were enshrined by now. Their moral views even change from one situation to the next. … People who care about honesty in most situations still lie in other situations: the average person lies once or twice a day.” Outrageous Startup Growth Colin Hodge ’07 Hodge has cofounded several startups including Down, a top-10 U.S. dating app (which made headlines with its original name, Bang With Friends). In this business guide, the former computer science major and his coauthor tap principles from behavioral science to offer expert advice on launching, running, and growing successful companies. Their lessons include crafting ways to attract users by creating a fear of missing out (aka FOMO); finding “magic moments” that engender loyalty among customers; and understanding competitors’ own hidden psychological tactics. “If you learn to recognize what influences people’s behavior and decisions,” Hodge writes in the intro, “you can unlock a truly deep, foundational level of understanding about what helped one startup explode with growth while others fizzled or imploded.” Hodge recently penned a Chime In essay for Cornellians on his journey to writing the book. To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu. Please note that to be included, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher—not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, partner-published, or similar—and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes. Published July 13, 2026 Leave a Comment Cancel replyOnce your comment is approved, your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *Comment * Name * Class Year Email * Save my name, email, and class year in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ Other stories You may like Storytime with Corey Bygone Commencement Traditions, from ‘Orations’ to Senior Singing Alumni Meet the Overtons—A Big Red Family for Six Generations Quizzes & Puzzles Cornellian Crossword: ‘Rite of Spring’