Books Your March 2025 Reads Stories You May Like Is it Seasonal Depression—or the ‘Winter Blues’? Keeping Pets Safe During the Dog Days of Summer Why Supporting New Parents Is the Epitome of ‘Hospitality’ This month’s featured titles include a debut novel, a leadership guide, and a psychologist’s look at the power of saying ‘no’ Did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out! 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! The Edge of Water Olufunke Grace Bankole ’01 “Bankole debuts with a beautiful narrative about two Nigerian women who seek independence from their patriarchal culture,” says Publishers Weekly in a starred review, calling the novel “one to savor.” The plot follows a mother and daughter: the elder, a rape victim who was coerced into marrying her attacker, wants a better life for her child—who grows up to dream of living in the U.S. despite a prophecy that she’ll encounter danger there. The daughter’s story eventually takes her to New Orleans, where she becomes a single mother and struggles to survive during Hurricane Katrina. Kirkus calls Bankhole’s book a “global, multigenerational novel suffused with heart, feeling, devastation, and hope” while Booklist praises it as a “powerful and emotional debut novel that deftly explores the complexities of identity, family, and belonging.” A government major in Arts & Sciences, Bankhole is a Maryland native who grew up in both the U.S. and Nigeria. Lead Bigger Anne Chow ’88, ME ’89, MBA ’90 Chow’s notable career—in which she was twice named to Fortune’s Most Powerful Women in Business list—has included serving as CEO of AT&T Business. Publishers Weekly calls her management guide a “sensible primer on creating a welcoming workplace.” In the book, subtitled The Transformative Power of Inclusion, the former electrical engineering major argues that creating an inclusive environment—for people of various races, ages, physical abilities, family status, and more—is not only better for employees, but also benefits a company’s bottom line. “Lead Bigger will engage you in a leadership journey that is contemporary, practical, and compelling,” Martha Pollack, Cornell’s president emerita, says in a blurb. “Drawing on her decades of experience as a successful leader, Anne Chow shares how taking a broader, human-focused view of our work, workforces, and workplaces will inspire greater performance and wellbeing, increasing the satisfaction of your customers, teams, and stakeholders.” Chow previously coauthored The Leader’s Guide to Unconscious Bias: How To Reframe Bias, Cultivate Connection, and Create High-Performing Teams. Firesign Jeremy Braddock In this nonfiction work—subtitled The Electromagnetic History of Everything as Told on Nine Comedy Albums—a Cornell English professor explores the cultural impact of the Firesign Theatre, an avant garde comedy troupe popular in the 1960s and ’70s. As Braddock—an associate professor who specializes in modernist literature and culture—notes in an interview with the Cornell Chronicle, he became a Firesign fan in his early teens, when he received their records from an uncle who came of age in the ’60s. “It is not an accident that album was originally, and remains, a word for a kind of book,” he writes in the volume, published by University of California Press. “Why did it take a stoner comedy act, working in the heart of the culture industry at the peak of the counterculture period, to explore this connection most thoroughly? How did they use this insight as the basis of a much wider-ranging investigation of media, culture, and social life? And how did their sui generis novelty albums find a place on the Billboard charts?” Stories You May Like Is it Seasonal Depression—or the ‘Winter Blues’? Keeping Pets Safe During the Dog Days of Summer Says a critique in the L.A. Review of Books: “His analysis of their first nine albums, released by Columbia between 1968 and 1975, is astute throughout, and in its strongest sections, a more compelling book of this kind could hardly be imaginable, at least for a lifelong Firesign listener with an interest in the interplay of culture and technology.” Lazarus Man Richard Price ’71 The ILR alum is an accomplished novelist and screenwriter whose work includes Sea of Love, The Color of Money (for which he received an Oscar nomination), and the TV series “The Night Of.” Publishers Weekly calls his latest novel a “remarkable excavation of urban angst” that “once again proves he’s the bard of New York City street life.” It follows the aftermath of the deadly collapse of a five-story tenement building in Harlem in 2008. The plot traces the lives of several characters impacted by the tragedy—including a struggling undertaker who uses it as an opportunity to drum up business and an NYPD detective who becomes obsessed with finding a resident who mysteriously disappeared. “Half a century after launching an astonishing career that includes some of the best crime writing for books and screens, Price has let the mercy in his stories rise to the surface,” says the Washington Post. “On the margins, bullets still fly and drugs still flow, but the deadly alleys of Clockers and ‘The Wire’ give way here to a community just trying to account for its dead and find a way forward.” An Urban Odyssey Sam Hall Kaplan ’57 Kaplan’s book—part memoir, part critique of the milieus of media and design—is subtitled A Critic’s Search for the Soul of Cities and Self. “From the stoops of Brooklyn and the streets of East Harlem to the newsrooms of New York and Los Angeles, from the freeways of Southern California to the shores of Malibu,” says the publisher, an imprint of Academic Studies Press, “An Urban Odyssey traverses the award-winning author’s seven decades in the media and the public and private sectors, as well as his time teaching and advocating for a more equitable, livable city.” Over his long career, the CALS alum has worked as a reporter and critic in major print and broadcast outlets and as an urban planner in Southern California, among other activities. “Like many persons, I formed my first image of Los Angeles at the movies,” he writes. “Such films in my youth as The Big Sleep, Double Indemnity, and The Postman Always Rings Twice presented the city as a place of seedy bars, slick nightclubs, strange mansions, and sordid hotels in which tough, honest, timeworn detectives confronted criminals and con men on behalf of conflicted, not-so-innocent women. … For an area blessed with sunshine, there were a lot of shadows.” Defy Sunita Sah “Thank goodness for Sunita Sah’s spirited book … which unpacks the act—and art—of refusal,” says the Guardian, going on to say the “professor’s manifesto is a rousing call to action—or inaction, as it may be.” Sah, who’s both a physician and an organizational psychologist, is on the faculty at the Johnson School; she grew up in England as the daughter of immigrant parents, facing constant expectations to be obedient. In her nonfiction book, subtitled The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes, she explores the science behind the choices we make. As Sah argues, there are rational reasons for (and benefits to) refusal in the face of social pressure to comply on issues large and small. “Defiance is often misunderstood as rebellion for rebellion’s sake or as a purely disruptive act,” she says in an interview with the Cornell Chronicle. “But true defiance is deeply constructive: It’s about alignment—saying ‘no’ to what doesn’t serve your values and ‘yes’ to integrity and truth.” To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu. Please note that to be included in our listings of new titles, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher—not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, or similar—and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes. Published March 7, 2025 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 Students Doctoral Student Juggles Math and … Juggling! Bear Hugs O, Christmas Tree! Bryant Park’s Evergreen Grew on Alum’s Farm Campus & Beyond Look Back: How Two Cornellians Cracked the ‘Small World’ Problem