Did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out here!<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And for more books by Big Red authors, peruse our previous round-ups<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Farzon Nahvi \u201907<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In what Kirkus<\/em> calls a \u201cmoving, thoughtful memoir<\/a> of life in the medical trenches,\u201d Nahvi chronicles his experiences as an ER physician\u2014including during the early days of the COVID pandemic in NYC hospitals\u2014and contemplates what he has learned about society and humanity on the front lines of the healthcare system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA common misconception of medical professionals is that our natural emotions become replaced by a cool, calculating demeanor,\u201d writes the Human Ecology alumnus. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhere someone else might feel sadness or panic, for example, a paramedic, nurse, or emergency room doctor is thought to block out his or her feelings and take action. The truth, however, is that those powerful visceral emotions are not replaced by an indifferent calm. They are simply papered over by it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now an ER doctor<\/a> in New Hampshire who serves on the clinical faculty at Dartmouth\u2019s Geisel School of Medicine, Nahvi has been featured on NPR\u2019s \u201cFresh Air\u201d<\/a> and published in major media such as the New York Times<\/em> and Washington Post<\/em>. In 2019, he testified before Congress as an expert witness on Medicare for All.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manuel Mu\u00f1oz, MFA \u201998<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMu\u00f1oz\u2019s prose is shining and hypnotic, and suffused with care and tenderness,\u201d says an NPR review. \u201cThis is one of the best short story collections to come around in recent years.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The author\u2019s<\/a> latest comprises 10 tales, mainly set in communities of Mexican and Mexican-American farmworkers outside Fresno, CA, in the 1980s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The collection<\/a> has earned a host of critical praise, including starred reviews from Kirkus<\/em> and Publishers Weekly<\/em>. <\/p>\n<\/div> Says the L.A. Times<\/em>: \u201cLucid and elegantly written, The Consequences<\/em> tells the stories of characters who ache for one another or for ephemeral moments of release; who ache\u2014bodily\u2015from a life spent harvesting the sweetness that will grace other tables.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Mu\u00f1oz has penned two previous short story collections (Zigzagger<\/em> and The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue<\/em>) as well as the novel What You See in the Dark<\/em>. His honors include three O. Henry Awards and an appearance in the 2019 Best American Short Stories<\/em> anthology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Eric Alterman \u201982<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Arts & Sciences alum points out in a recent Class Notes column<\/a>, his 12th book\u2014subtitled A History of America\u2019s Fight Over Israel<\/em>\u2014stems from work he did on the Hill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI actually started it as my honors thesis under [Walter] LaFeber,\u201d he writes, \u201cand crazily (nerdily) kept my notes and even used some of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the faculty of Brooklyn College, Alterman<\/a> is a contributing writer at the Nation<\/em> and the American Prospect<\/em>. Here, he traces the roots of the U.S.\u2019s relationship with Israel from the 19th century onward.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n He explores such factors as the political impact of the Six-Day War of 1967 and the alliances that a pro-Israeli stance have engendered between American Jews and conservative Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Publishers Weekly<\/em> calls the book<\/a> a \u201cthought-provoking and thorough study of America\u2019s political relationship with the modern state of Israel,\u201d going on to say: \u201cEvenhanded yet incisive, this is an accessible history of a complex geopolitical matter and a persuasive call for more open-minded debate on an issue tearing at the fabric of the American Jewish community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amy Epstein Feldman \u201991<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Feldman\u2019s work of fiction<\/a> for middle-grade readers follows a child who gets a long-desired smartphone for his 10th birthday\u2014and an education in what is (and isn\u2019t) suitable to share online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The title character\u2014no relation to the University founder!\u2014is a boy whose popularity kicks into high gear when he starts posting funny photos on social media, beginning with a shot of a chicken nugget that resembles a rear end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n His humorous butt-shaped shots escalate\u2014until one of them crosses the line, getting him into hot water at school and elsewhere.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cThis is an age-appropriate introduction to the legal and social dangers of underage Internet use and\u2014though the term is not used\u2014sexting,\u201d says Kirkus<\/em>. \u201cEzra ends up facing consequences for distributing lewd images of a minor, even though that minor is him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The book is the first for the Arts & Sciences alumna, an attorney<\/a> based in the Philadelphia area. Says Publishers Weekly<\/em>: \u201cEzra\u2019s droll first-person narration, desire to be liked, and evolving maturity deftly render this a humorous and self-reflective tale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Vincent Kiernan \u201981<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Published by Cornell University Press\u2019s Three Hills imprint, this nonfiction work<\/a> is subtitled A Journalist\u2019s Dangerous Ambition in the Shadow of the Bomb<\/em>. It explores the career of William Leonard Laurence, a science writer for the New York Times<\/em> who won a 1946 Pulitzer Prize in reporting for his coverage of the bombing of Nagasaki, Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While lauded for his journalism, Laurence\u2014who briefly worked as a press-release writer for the Manhattan Project\u2014faced criticism for his support of the militarization of atomic energy, sometimes being labeled a propagandist for the government. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Later in his career, he was involved in cheating and plagiarism scandals, and was eventually forced to retire from the Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Says Foreign Affairs<\/em>: \u201cKiernan\u2019s research was meticulous, and he finds much to deplore in Laurence\u2019s behavior: the journalist\u2019s zeal for speculative scientific breakthroughs that led him to ignore skeptics; his exaggerated prose and occasional plagiarism; and most of all, his loss of objectivity from getting too close to power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n A veteran of two decades in journalism before going into academia, Kiernan is dean of the Metropolitan School of Professional Studies at the Catholic University of America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nyani Nkrumah, PhD \u201901<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In what the New Yorker<\/em> calls an \u201cimmersive debut novel<\/a>,\u201d Nkrumah crafts a coming-of-age tale set in rural Mississippi in the 1980s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Its main narrator is an 11-year-old Black girl named Ella who has been neglected and mistreated. She forms a relationship with Ms. St. James, a mysterious white grad student from Princeton who has come to do research in the racially divided community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI sat on the front step, reluctant to head back into the steaming house,\u201d Nkrumah writes, in Ella\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cIt was getting dark, and the sinking sun gave the clouds a heavenly golden-red aura. I reached up and waved to God, who I could just see by his wispy beard. I didn\u2019t need a Bible or preacher to tell me God was there; all I had to do was to look outside, past the buildings and the roads that humans had created, to the magnificent magnolia trees that spread out on their own, branches outstretched as though the trees were praising God. Then, finally, I would look up, way up, past the clouds, past the edge of the earth, almost into the Third Heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nkrumah<\/a>, who holds a doctorate in natural resources from CALS, is a longtime international development official at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Frank O\u2019Connell \u201965, MBA \u201966<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt times my view of the world is a bit of a kaleidoscope,\u201d O\u2019Connell writes. \u201cIdeas seem to flow like a stream. I can get stimulus from every person and thing around me. I think in half-baked ideas, analogies, stories, and vignettes, and I build quickly from others\u2019 ideas. That is random thinking at its finest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this combination memoir and management guide<\/a>, O\u2019Connell endorses an unconventional approach to pursuing success that embraces far-fetched ideas while staying grounded in hands-on knowledge.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n He shares strategies and wisdom<\/a> gleaned from decades in business\u2014at such firms as Reebok, HBO Video, SkyBox Trading Cards, Gibson Greetings, Fox Video Games, and Indian Motorcycles\u2014as well as from his early days growing up on a farm in Upstate New York and studying on the Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI can easily place myself in the consumer\u2019s shoes, or perhaps I have never left those shoes,\u201d he writes. \u201cNo matter what executive level I have achieved or what company I have run, I have always stayed grounded with the mass consumer \u2026 I am constantly blown away by how little both the big corporations and start-ups really know about their customer and ultimate consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Classic by a Cornellian<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Darryl Ponics\u00e1n, MA \u201965<\/strong> \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This acclaimed 1970 novel<\/a> gained greater fame three years later, when it was adapted into a now-classic film<\/a> starring Jack Nicholson. Set during the height of the Vietnam War, it follows two career sailors in the U.S. Navy who are tasked with a seemingly easy gig: escorting a young prisoner from Virginia to New Hampshire, where the teen will serve an eight-year sentence for petty theft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trio embarks on a five-day road trip in which the two older men aim to give their na\u00efve charge a taste of life before he\u2019s incarcerated.<\/p>\n<\/div> They also grapple with their own emotions, not only about the unfairness of the youth\u2019s situation, but the horrors of the war itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ponics\u00e1n followed up in 2005 with a sequel, Last Flag Flying,<\/em> that reunites the three on another journey: the former teen prisoner\u2014now middle aged\u2014must bury his son, a Marine killed in Iraq. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was adapted into a 2017 film, directed by Richard Linklater and starring Bryan Cranston, Laurence Fishburne, and Steve Carell. Another of Ponics\u00e1n\u2019s novels, Cinderella Liberty<\/em>, was made into a 1973 movie starring James Caan and Marsha Mason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/03\/code-gray-A.jpg\")
<\/figure>Code Gray<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nThe Consequences<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>We Are Not One<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nEzra Exposed<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Atomic Bill<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nWade in the Water<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Jump First, Think Fast<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Last Detail<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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