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arts_briefly01_0715CAPTIVE NATION: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era By Dan Berger Gr’10 (UNC Press, 2014, $34.95.) From the 1950s through the 1980s, black activists managed to bring the prison system into public view while arguing that confinement was an inescapable part of black life in the United States. Drawing on extensive research, Berger, an assistant professor of comparative ethnic studies at the University of Washington-Bothell, shows how prison became the center of black radical imagination and examines the implications for the current era of mass incarceration. Buy this book

arts_briefly02_0715WATERED COLORS By Michael H. Levin C’64 (Poetica Publishing, 2014, $16.) From Martha’s Vineyard to Treblinka, birth to old age, Levin’s debut volume of poetry crosses myriad borders to paint lasting images of anonymous doormen and beloved pet dogs, brothers and fathers, the living and the dead. Levin, a lawyer and writer, last wrote for the Gazette about his family-history project, “Work in Progress” [Sep|Oct 2014]. Buy this book

THE NATS AND THE GRAYS: How Baseball in the Nation’s Capital Survived WWII and Changed the Game Forever
By David H. Hubler and Joshua H. Drazen C’95 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, $65.) World War II had a profound effect on all aspects of American society, including professional baseball. In Washington, the Nationals (American League) and the Homestead Grays (Negro Leagues) faced very different challenges to their survival. Drazen and Hubler focus on the close ties between President Franklin Roosevelt and Nats’ owner Clark Griffith, as well as the growing movement to integrate Major League Baseball. Buy this book

arts_briefly03_0715TELEVISIONARIES: Inside the Chaos and Innovation of the Digital Revolution By Marc Tayer WG’85 (MediaTech, 2015, $19.95.) The invention of digital TV a quarter-century ago had a profound impact on the world of media and communications technology. Tayer, a 30-year veteran of that tech industry, focuses on the entrepreneurs, engineers, and media titans behind that revolution, and examines both the ways that content and technology drive its continued evolution and the politics that have enabled it. Buy this book

FLIGHT INSTRUCTIONS: A Journey Through Guilt to Forgiveness By Kathleen Perkins SW’87 G’90 GrS’90 (Mill City Press, 2015, $15.95.) “What kind of person makes the life-changing decision—make that a lives-changing decision—to essentially abandon her husband of fourteen years and their three young daughters, shattering five lives in the process?” asks Perkins, who did just that in 1972 when she was 33. She has spent the last 40 years of her life “reassembling those relationships as well as struggling to understand and forgive myself,” a journey of self-discovery that led her to this memoir. Buy this book

arts_briefly04GALÁPAGOS REGAINED By James Morrow C’69 (St. Martin’s Press, 2015, $28.99.) In Morrow’s 10th novel, Chloe Bathurst is caring for the exotic reptiles and birds on Charles Darwin’s estate when she learns about the Great God Contest, which offers 10,000 pounds for an essay that proves or disproves the existence of a Supreme Being. Resolving to exploit Darwin’s species theory to win the prize and free her destitute father from Holburn Workhouse, she sets off on a wild adventure to the Galápagos Islands. Buy this book

ODIN’S CHILD: Book One of Odd Tangle-Hair’s Saga By Bruce Macbain Gr’75 (Blank Slate Press, 2015, $18.95.) It’s the 11th Century CE and the golden age of Viking conquest is fading when a blood feud forces young Odd Tangle-Hair from his Icelandic home. With revenge on his mind, he sets off on a series of adventures that takes him to the borders of Russia—and back. Macbain, whose previous novels were set in ancient Rome, views Odd as a “thinking man’s Viking.” Buy this book

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