PENN IN INK: Pathfinders, Swashbucklers, Scribblers & Sages
By Samuel Hughes, staff. Xlibris, 2006. $19.00, paperback; $29.00, hardback.
Gazette senior editor Samuel Hughes has been writing about Penn people, places, and history since 1991. Now, in Penn In Ink: Pathfinders, Swashbucklers, Scribblers & Sages, he has collected a wide-ranging sample of his award-winning work for the magazine. The remarkable characters he has profiled here provide a rich human dimension to the history of the University as it evolved over the past 2½ centuries.
Included are profiles of such alumni and faculty luminaries as the late Leon Higginbotham Hon’75, Robert Strausz-Hupé Gr’46, Noam Chomsky C’48 G’51 Gr’55 Hon’84, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, and Martin Seligman Gr’67, as well as thoughtful looks at scandals past: from the battle royal between Ben Franklin and his provost-turned-nemesis William Smith to the firing of Wharton professor Scott Nearing C’06 Gr’09 early in the last century to the Water Buffalo incident (via a profile of history professor Alan Kors) to fabulator Stephen Glass C’94. A revamped essay on the friendship between poetic giants Ezra Pound C1905 G’06 and William Carlos Williams M’06 Hon’52 follows profiles of Penn’s “swashbuckling dentists”—Thomas Evans, Zane Grey D1896 Hon’17, and Doc Holliday. It concludes with a fantasia on what might happen if, one day, medical technology could “regenerate” Penn’s founder with all his appetites intact.
In his eloquent introduction, history professor Michael Zuckerman C’61 praises Sam’s “artistry,” “integrity,” and “extraordinary gift for appreciation.” We may be biased, but whether re-reading these pieces or seeing them for the first time, we think you’ll agree.
For more information and to order the book, visit XLibris or contact the Gazette. —J.P.
