Books Your June 2026 Reads Stories You May Like Cornellian Crossword: ‘Fall Festivities’ ‘Leading an Institution I Love Through These Challenging Times’ How a 1940 Football Game Became an Icon of Good Sportsmanship This month's featured titles include a novel about academia, a civil rights advocate's memoir, and a dive into punk rock archives 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! The Adjunct Maria Adelmann ’07 Booklist calls the Arts & Sciences alum’s latest novel “a darkly funny, deeply incisive exploration of academia’s underbelly.” Her protagonist is a young woman scraping together a living as an adjunct professor when her latest gig puts her on the same campus as her former PhD advisor. She already has a complicated history with her ex-mentor that has bedeviled her own career—and now she learns that his new novel, about a prof with a shady past, includes a character that may be based on her. “This exposé of academia from the perspective of its most vulnerable residents offers a vital message at a time when it’s easy to forget what’s supposed to be at the center of all institutions: people—messy, unpredictable, and filled with fragile hope,” says Kirkus, calling the book “a crucial new take on the time-honored tradition of the campus novel.” Adelmann previously penned the novels How to Be Eaten and Girls of a Certain Age, among other work. Backtalker Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw ’81 A prominent legal scholar and civil rights advocate on the Columbia faculty, Crenshaw is a founder of critical race theory. She’s widely known for having coined the concept of “intersectionality”—the confluence of racism and sexism that exacerbates both. Her memoir “charts Crenshaw’s extraordinary journey from precocious child to renowned public intellectual,” says a New York Times review, which praises the book as a “rousing call to see the story of the future as one in which ‘the spirit of freedom was nurtured by talking back.’” The memoir traces Crenshaw’s experiences from her Ohio childhood—when she was encouraged to express her opinions and to be aware of racism—through the untimely deaths of both her father and brother to her years on the Hill (where she majored in government and Africana studies), at Havard Law School, and in the worlds of academia and activism. “My parents did not teach me to take on the pain of injustice as if I deserved it,” she writes, recalling her heartbreak after being passed over throughout kindergarten for a classroom musical rite that always featured white girls. “They refused to hide the truth that the wound was inflicted. … Their only question was how I would remember this day when my finger ran over the scar.” The Next Big Thing Rob Marciano ’91 This photo-laden volume from an imprint of National Geographic is subtitled Innovations for a Better, Smarter, Stronger Tomorrow. In it, a CBS News meteorologist and reporter explores technologies that could shape our future in four areas—energy, electricity, infrastructure, and information—while his coauthor, a physicist, weighs in on the science. Topics include nuclear fusion, single-person electric aircraft, AI, skyscrapers made of wood, solid-state batteries, quantum computers, robots, and 3D-printed homes. “Often, when we talk about the future, there are a lot of worst-case scenarios,” the CALS alum writes in the introduction. “And it’s true that if we don’t change the way we do nearly everything, entire ecosystems could collapse. But right now—especially after I’ve taken a deep dive into the innovative science and technologies on our horizon—I’m hopeful we can meet that crisis and change our planet’s future.” The book got a blurb from former NASA astronaut Mike Massimino, who called it “an optimistic look into the future with a preview of the technologies that will make the world a better place” and “an inspiring journey that clearly and smartly describes the science and engineering that will make it all possible.” Stories You May Like Cornellian Crossword: ‘Fall Festivities’ ‘Leading an Institution I Love Through These Challenging Times’ Little Helper Joy Lin, MMH ’10 This children’s book for kids aged four to six takes inspiration from traditional Chinese philosophy. It's the latest from the Hotelie, a Taiwanese-American artist who works under the pen name Regina Linke. It tells the tale of a boy named Ah-Fu, who just wants to have fun on a beautiful day—flying a kite, riding in his grandfather’s oxcart, and having a picnic. But impediments crop up, including a tangled string, a busy cousin, and a fallen tree. That prompts Ah-Fu to come up with some creative solutions, both salvaging his day and helping others. “Linke’s thoughtful narrative cleverly reveals the interconnectedness of the villagers’ lives,” says Kirkus in a starred review. “Her meticulously detailed art—an enhanced realism in gorgeously soft, full color—is a splendiferous delight.” Linke’s previous children’s books are Big Enough and The Oxherd Boy. We’re Having Much More Fun Judith Peraino The volume, from Cornell University Press, sprang out of an exhibit in Kroch Library highlighting its collection of punk rock artifacts and memorabilia, as well as the 2016 conference Punkfest Cornell. It’s coauthored by Peraino, a music professor in Arts & Sciences who teaches a class on the history of punk, along with a former colleague who’s now on the faculty at Berkeley. As the publisher observes, the editors “celebrate the ways punks have built and documented their own misfit collectives since the mid-1970s, assembling alternative worlds of riotous music, art, fashion, and writing.” It comprises more than 400 images—of flyers, photos, letters, and more—as well as interviews and essays. As Peraino noted in the Cornell Chronicle, the editors aimed to depict the genre in all its regional, generational, and other diversity, observing, “There’s a big tent element to the misfit culture.” Lucky to Have You Sarah Jefferis, MFA ’99 An alum of Cornell’s master’s program in poetry who also holds a doctorate from Binghamton University, Jefferis is a visiting lecturer on the Hill, teaching rhetorical writing in Dyson. She previously published the poetry collections Forgetting the Salt and What Enters the Mouth. “Lucky to Have You is a collection of narrative lyric poems that meditate on romantic loss and love,” explains the publisher, Finishing Line Press. “Loss and luck are synonymous; luck always appears amid heartbreak, and in moments of unexpected luck, aged sorrow rears its wrinkled forehead.” The collection comprises three sections: on finding love, keeping it, and losing it. “These imitation love poems travel up and down the East Coast, from Virginia to New York," continues the publisher, "and shadow all kinds of marriages that died under the weight of addiction and infidelity, or power dynamics across religious assaults, or the possibility of first dates, or the stalled gift of situationships, or deep, authentic interracial love swamped in an America that refuses to face its own history.” 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 June 16, 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 Alumni ‘Expect the Unexpected,’ Fauci Tells Weill Cornell Medicine Students Quizzes & Puzzles July / August ’23 Trivia Roundup Cornelliana ‘Waffle Stompers’ and Mini Fridges: What You Brought to the Hill