For more titles by Big Red authors, peruse our previous round-ups<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you published a book you’d like to submit? Scroll down for details!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n And did you know that Cornell has an online book club? Check it out!<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mary Beth Norton<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you think Dear Abby invented the personal advice column, think again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As Norton\u2014Cornell\u2019s Mary Donlon Alger Professor of American History Emerita\u2014explains in her latest work of nonfiction<\/a>, the genre debuted in late-17th-century England, in a newssheet called the Athenian Mercury<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMany, though by no means all, were young, just starting out in marriage or a trade,\u201d Norton writes of the publication’s numerous advice-seekers. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey confronted all the problems common to that stage of life, including conducting courtships, acquiring property, and engaging in premarital negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book, published by Princeton University Press, Norton reproduces dozens of the queries (lightly edited for clarity to modern eyes) and divides them into six topics including choosing a spouse, matrimony, and \u201cdangerous liaisons\u201d\u2014meaning those outside wedlock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe intriguing exchanges offer a distinctive window into the conservative gender politics of the late Stuart period, in which women\u2019s purity was paramount and marriage was the goal to which all individuals were expected to aspire,\u201d says Publishers Weekly<\/em>. \u201cThis fascinates.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the foremost experts on Colonial America, Norton is a past president of the American Historical Association and a 1997 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her previous books include 1774: The Long Year of Revolution<\/em>, which chronicles the run-up to America\u2019s war for independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alissa Worly Jerud \u201908<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYour kids are at the center of your world and you love them more than anything,\u201d Jerud writes in her intro. \u201cAt the same time, being with them can be unimaginably taxing and sometimes downright infuriating.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jerud is a clinical psychologist<\/a> and a clinical assistant professor at Penn; she\u2019s also a mom who has struggled with how best to react when her kids are a handful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Her self-help book<\/a> offers (in the words of the subtitle) a \u201cshame-free guide to navigating emotional storms and deepening connection.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div> As the former Arts & Sciences psychology major writes, although parents typically focus on how to change their kids\u2019 behavior, it\u2019s inevitable that children will push their parents\u2019 buttons\u2014so it\u2019s healthier and more useful for the adults to adopt coping mechanisms that help them be less reactive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And while the book is focused on child-rearing, its principles can be adapted to other situations that require coping with difficult feelings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Jerud writes in a recent personal essay<\/a> in Cornellians<\/em>: \u201cInstead of dreading or trying to avoid moments of emotional pain, I now see these as valuable opportunities to strengthen my muscles for tolerating distress, thus enabling me to better weather whatever challenging emotions I encounter down the road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anna Bruno, MBA \u201910<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Booklist<\/em> calls Bruno\u2019s literary mystery<\/a> a \u201cfinely crafted meditation on family, community, class, wealth, insidious power, and the limits of religion.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s set in a prestigious Jesuit high school in suburban Pittsburgh, where two senior girls, Frankie and Shiv, are doing an investigative story for a journalism course on a student death from nearly two decades earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The boy, a star hockey player, died of a drug overdose that authorities dismissed as unsuspicious.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Now, the young reporters are delving into the case\u2014interviewing school officials and the late student\u2019s friends and family to learn the truth about his death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBruno nimbly toggles between Frankie and Shiv\u2019s investigation and chapters chronicling the lives of their interview subjects, playing fair with readers and planting a few major surprises along the way,\u201d says Publishers Weekly<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor the most part, though, mystery-solving takes a backseat to weightier considerations of growing up and finding purpose. A less assured writer might have failed to make it all coalesce, but Bruno pulls it off, thanks to her keen sense of what\u2019s at stake for her teenage characters and Frankie\u2019s indelible voice. It\u2019s a winner.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bruno previously penned<\/a> the novel Ordinary Hazards<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Irina Troconis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Troconis, an assistant professor<\/a> of Romance studies, is a native of Venezuela. Her scholarly book<\/a> was inspired by trips to her home country in the 2010s, after the death of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2014the revolutionary leader turned authoritarian president who ruled the nation for 14 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As she noted during her visits, images of Ch\u00e1vez remained ubiquitous\u2014as though his ghostly eyes were still observing the populace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey were everywhere,\u201d Troconis says in an interview<\/a> in the Cornell Chronicle<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div> \u201cOn buildings, on T-shirts, on billboards, on posters, on earrings, on keychains, and on necklaces. And yet, the people I saw going about their day did not seem disturbed by them. In fact, they barely paid any attention to them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the book, Troconis examines how Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s \u201cspecter\u201d has lingered in the country\u2019s public, private, and digital spaces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Says the publisher, Duke University Press: \u201cDrawing from a diverse corpus that includes tattoos, toys, memes, graffiti, and a hologram haunting the streets of downtown Caracas, Troconis contends that, in moments of failed transitions, political tensions, and crises of legitimacy, the state brings the dead back to life to negotiate the terms of its survival.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stacy Smith Ross \u201988<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Human Ecology alum is a former consultant turned motivational speaker<\/a>, offering advice and inspiration to fellow parents of children with mental illness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her memoir<\/a> shares the story of how she and her husband\u2014her Cornell sweetheart, Howie Ross \u201988\u2014faced the challenges of raising a daughter with borderline personality disorder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI tried so many times to fix her,\u201d she writes, recalling a New Year\u2019s Eve when she had to call the police on her 16-year-old daughter as a danger to herself and others.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n \u201cI saw this coming. I wanted to fix her before it grew into this. Get her help or meds or whatever she needed. Damn those teachers who told me she was fine. Damn the misdiagnoses, one after the next. Damn the hospital stays that ended too soon before the fixing could happen, or the answers could be found.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ross is also a contributor to a 2014 volume in the \u201cChicken Soup for the Soul\u201d series, titled Reboot Your Life: 101 Stories about Finding a New Path to Happiness<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Megan Shea, PhD \u201909<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A doctoral alum<\/a> in theater arts, Shea is on the clinical faculty at NYU. In her first book, she (in the words of the publisher, Routledge) \u201canalyzes playwrights, directors, and performers who shatter gender norms to gain agency within the patriarchal institutions restricting them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scholarly book<\/a> includes chapters on such topics as a 20th-century adaptation of Sophocles\u2019s Antigone<\/em>; the 1996 Suzan-Lori Parks play Venus<\/em>, which explores the sexualization of Black women; and the tragic story of Anna Nicole Smith as interpreted by comedian Margaret Cho.<\/p>\n<\/div> The book, the publisher says, \u201cexamines the nature of these performances to interrogate how theatrical and performative resistance works and why performance might be a vehicle for altering patriarchal structures that withhold agency from women and trans\/genderqueer+ people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also an actor, director, and playwright, Shea authored the award-winning short play Penelope and Those Dang Suitors<\/em>, a gender-bending take on Homer\u2019s Odyssey<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As she writes in her book\u2019s introduction: \u201cFeminist resistance depends upon the unsettling of prescribed social identities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To submit your book for consideration, email cornellians@cornell.edu<\/a>. Please note that to be included, books must be recently published by a conventional publisher<\/strong>\u2014not self published, pay-to-publish, publish on demand, partner-published, or similar\u2014and be of interest to a general audience. Books not featured will be forwarded to Class Notes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n Published July 16, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n This month\u2019s featured titles include a look at the world\u2019s first advice column and a literary mystery set in a Jesuit high school<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":10399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"alumni_hub_syml_posts":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[644],"tags":[],"cornell_year_post":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-55333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/alumni.cornell.edu\/cornellians\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/07\/humbly-beg-A.jpg\")
<\/figure>\u2018I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer\u2019<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nEmotion-Savvy Parenting<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Fine Young People<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nThe Necromantic State<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/figure>Searching For Slippers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\nTragic Resistance<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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