Did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out!<\/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 Helen Schulman \u201983<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The latest entry<\/a> from the bestselling novelist is torn from the headlines of the #MeToo movement; the New York Times<\/em> calls it \u201cdeeply knowing, properly indignant, and\u2014maybe the best revenge\u2014very funny.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was inspired (as the author notes) by a further betrayal that the actor Rose McGowan suffered as she sought to bring Harvey Weinstein to justice for sexual assault: the efforts of a female private investigator to gain her confidence and funnel info to Weinstein\u2019s defense team.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Here, the assault victim is a TV star named Merry. She develops a close friendship with an older woman named Nina\u2014who purports to work for a women\u2019s rights group\u2014after they meet in a Paris ice cream shop. It proves, of course, to be a set-up: Nina is really Samara, a former Bosnian war refugee working for a shady agency hired by the creepy director whom Merry is accusing of rape in an upcoming memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou might think that a book inspired by the role of Rose McGowan in the fall of Harvey Weinstein would have a fairly predictable story arc,\u201d Kirkus<\/em> says in a starred review, \u201cbut this barn burner of a novel handily incinerates that assumption.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schulman\u2019s previous novels include This Beautiful Life<\/em>, named one of the New York Times\u2019<\/em>s 100 Notable Books of 2011. She\u2019s also a tenured professor<\/a> at The New School, where she serves as fiction chair of the creative writing program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Natasha Pickowicz \u201906<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A multiple James Beard Award nominee, Pickowicz is an NYC-based pastry chef<\/a> with an avid following. Her debut cookbook<\/a> has garnered widespread praise from the food press, with nods from Bon Appetit<\/em>, Food & Wine<\/em>, Eater<\/em>, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCelebrated for her fine-dining pastry work and fundraiser bake sales,\u201d says Vanity Fair<\/em>, \u201cNatasha Pickowicz brings a community spirit to this soulfully precise book.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div> Indeed, the book is subtitled 100 Baking Recipes Built for Pleasure and Community<\/em>. In it, she offers instructions for such tasty (and unconventional) treats as Citrusy Macaroons, Nubby Granola Shortbread, Shoyu Peanut Cookies, and a dramatic-looking biscotti dubbed Fennel, Chocolate, and Hazelnut Spears\u2014and that\u2019s just in the cookie section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Raves Booklist<\/em>: \u201cPickowicz\u2019s melodic prose makes you want to curl up with her book, a cup of tea, and one of her pecan and black cardamom buns and revel in the originality of such outside-the-box recipes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In summer 2022, Pickowicz and bestie Alison Leiby \u201906 were featured in the Washington Post<\/em> for their \u201cFriendship Sandwich<\/a>\u201d\u2014a concoction they\u2019ve made and shared since their undergrad years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly Hoffer, MA \u201921<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A doctoral candidate<\/a> in English on the Hill, Hoffer holds an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers\u2019 Workshop. She won the Lightscatter Press Prize for this first volume of poetry<\/a>; its publication is part of the award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAlive with formal daring, the poems in Undershore<\/em> examine the speaker\u2019s ongoing grief following the loss of her mother,\u201d explains the publisher. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe book engages the botanical world, shorelines, desire, intimacy, and grief, all to reveal the unexpected and inevitable way these concerns merge into one another through language\u2019s alchemy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Hoffer writes in a poem titled \u201cVisitation\u201d: \u201cmy mother sitting at a table opening \/ bread her fingers moving with a bitter \/ hiccup. the table shines under the torn food \/ she breaks open for \/ me and she pulls a hyacinth from the center\u2014 \/ her breeding seed, counting each piece \/ my eyes shine with bluepetals and \/ she asks me if \/ my brothers are all right if my sister \/ is still afloat in the giant sad sea \/ of losing a lover to heroin.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mike Weilbacher \u201978<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The CALS alum is executive director of Philadelphia\u2019s Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education<\/a>, located on 365 bucolic acres in the city\u2019s northwest. His book is a guide<\/a> to the natural offerings in and around Philly, with spots for birding, hiking, and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The volume includes a look at the city\u2019s history and how its development was shaped by its geographic features, as well as a primer on the Lenape people who were the region\u2019s original residents. <\/p>\n<\/div> Weilbacher details the many animal and insect species that can be found in Philly\u2014from coyotes to bald eagles to monarch butterflies\u2014and offers more than two dozen nature walks to spot them; he also warns of ongoing threats to the city\u2019s natural treasures and ways that residents can help combat them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThough far better known for Ben Franklin and Betsy Ross, cheesesteaks and hoagies, M. Night Shyamalan and Patti LaBelle, opinionated sports fans and a funny brogue,\u201d Weilbacher writes, \u201cWilliam Penn\u2019s proposed \u2018greene Country Towne\u2019 has become exactly that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Traci Parker \u201903<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Parker, an associate professor<\/a> of Afro-American studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, previously penned Department Stores and the Black Freedom Movement: Workers, Consumers, and Civil Rights from the 1930s to the 1980s<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, she co-edits a compilation geared toward both classrooms and a general readership\u2014spanning from the labor struggles of the 1930s to midcentury sit-ins and boycotts to the modern-day Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n The volume<\/a> gathers such documents as speeches, newspaper and magazine articles, flyers, activist manifestos, posters, oral histories, and legal decisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The editors take a broad perspective, decentralizing well-known figures and recognizing the contributions of women, LGBTQIA+ communities, and others historically left out of similar narratives. The end result, says the publisher (University of Massachusetts Press), is \u201cthe most diverse, most inclusive, and most comprehensive resource available for teaching and learning about the civil rights movement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gerold Yonas \u201961, BEP \u201962<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n An engineering physics alum, Yonas holds a doctorate from Caltech. He served as chief scientist for the Strategic Defense Initiative (commonly known as \u201cStar Wars\u201d) and blogs as SDI Guy<\/a>; he was also a vice president at Sandia National Labs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yonas draws on his extensive scientific background for his debut novel, a techno thriller<\/a> in which rival nations jockey for control of technology that could provide unlimited clean energy. His protagonist is based at Los Alamos, famed site of the World War II-era Manhattan Project that created the nuclear bomb.<\/p>\n<\/div> The researcher leads the team developing the novel energy process\u2014and he\u2019s under government pressure to channel the tech into weapons of mass destruction. But after a mysterious lab accident and the disappearance of two colleagues, he joins forces with a female FBI agent in a race to stop possible Armageddon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aaron Sachs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n NYU Press published this nonfiction work<\/a>, subtitled Why Dark Comedy Matters in the Fight Against Climate Change<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sachs, a history professor<\/a> in Arts & Sciences, contemplates how \u201cgallows humor\u201d can help humans confront global warming\u2014endorsing the age-old tradition of using jokes to cope with horrors as a way to raise climate activists\u2019 morale and spur solidarity against a crisis that seems increasingly insurmountable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sachs cites a wide variety of examples<\/a> of laughter serving as a balm in our very darkest hours.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n They include medieval jokes about the Black Death; humor from Jewish prisoners during the Holocaust; and a 2012 routine by comedian Tig Notaro, in which she mined laughter and pathos from her recent cancer diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cDark humor can be an incredible spur to resilience,\u201d Sachs writes. \u201cNo amount of progress on any front will negate the need for good, humane communities to stand together and support each other in the effort to laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Classic by a Cornellian<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Stewart O\u2019Nan, MFA \u201992<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFaithful<\/em> is ultimately a quasi-religious book,\u201d novelist Dennis Lehane wrote in Entertainment Weekly<\/em>, \u201cabout what all great religions should be founded upon: love\u2014in all its blindness and terror and euphoria and purity and, yes, addiction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nearly two decades ago, the oft-published O\u2019Nan teamed up with another famously prolific fiction writer\u2014horror master Stephen King\u2014to chronicle the 2004 season<\/a> of their beloved Boston Red Sox, from spring training to the final game. <\/p>\n<\/div> It would prove to be a historic one: the first time in 86 years that the Sox won the MLB championship. \u201cOf all the books that will examine the Boston Red Sox\u2019s stunning come-from-behind 2004 ALCS win over the Yankees and subsequent World Series victory,\u201d said Publishers Weekly<\/em>, \u201cnone will have this book\u2019s warmth, personality, or depth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With baseball season in high gear, it\u2019s a fine time to revisit the two New Englanders\u2019 2005 homage to their home team and America\u2019s pastime, which comprises both sweeping analyses of the season and minute dissections of individual innings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFaithful<\/em> isn\u2019t just about the Red Sox,\u201d said the Boston Globe<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s also about family, friendship, and what it truly means to be a baseball fan and to be\u2014well, faithful, come hell or high water.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/lucky-dogs-A.jpg\")
<\/figure>Lucky Dogs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nMore Than Cake<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Undershore<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nWild Philly<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>The New Civil Rights Movement Reader<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nThe Dragon\u2019s C.L.A.W.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2023\/07\/stay-cool-A.jpg\")
<\/figure>Stay Cool<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Faithful<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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