Brandeis Magazine

Historian Williams follows up “Torchbearers of Democracy,” his award-winning book on African American soldiers who served during World War I, with an account of the life-changing disillusion and despair experienced by civil rights leader W.E.B. Du Bois after encouraging Black soldiers to fight for the Allied
cause in 1917. The widespread racism the soldiers endured convinced Du Bois to rethink what he thought he knew about race and democracy.

Wallace, a sociologist who studies race, ethnicity, and education, opens his book with a conundrum: Why are Black Caribbean youths seen as a high-achieving minority in New York City and a chronically underachieving minority in London? Using an appealing storytelling style, the author reveals how teacher expectations underlie this disparity, exploding the myth that student success (or failure) is tied to cultural characteristics.

An urgent wake-up call, co-written by Luisa Neubauer, heralded as the most famous climate activist in Germany, and translated by von Mering, professor of German, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Saving the planet, Neubauer writes, demands we “step out of our comfort zone” and take action.

Smith, the Marta F. Kauffman Chair in African and African American Studies, takes a wide look at West Indies culture — carnival songs, poems, novels, newspapers, photographs, and gardens — to understand empire and diaspora, immigration and indigeneity, and gender and the politics of desire in the Caribbean during the first half of the 20th century.

This compendium of scholarship and ideas on issues concerning African women everywhere highlights the voices of African women as they tell their own stories. Yacob-Haliso, an associate professor of African and African American studies, is also co-author of the recently published “African Refugees,” an overview of the lives of African refugees throughout history.

A unique guide that celebrates Cascadia — the area that runs from southeast Alaska to northern California, and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide — through an immersive combination of essays on natural and cultural history, poems, and illustrations. Bradfield, an award-winning poet, is associate professor of the practice of English.

“#UsToo” explores sexual misconduct within American faith communities by describing the actions of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian women who disclosed information about, and demanded accountability for, sexual abuse, abuse of power, and harassment by male co-religionists. McGinity is a research associate at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and a lecturer in American studies.

The director of Heller’s MBA program shows how entrepreneurs around the world develop enterprises designed to change their communities and how students might follow in these altruistic leaders’ footsteps. The book covers the fundamentals of structuring, financing, marketing, and scaling social ventures.

The first edition of an Advanced Placement high-school biology textbook, designed to be equivalent to a text used in a college-level intro to biology course. Biology professor Morris is the lead author of “Biology: How Life Works,” a much-acclaimed intro text for college students, now in its fourth edition.

Drawing on ongoing research at Brandeis’ Chaplaincy Innovation Lab, this collection of essays co-edited by Cadge, the Barbara Mandel Professor of Humanistic Social Sciences, offers guidance for training and inspiring chaplains who do much-needed work in hospitals, prisons, universities, and the military. Chapter titles include “Facilitating Resilience: Chaplaincy as a Catalyst for Organizational Well-Being.”

Kremmel, a lecturer in university writing, takes a look at the gory intersection between medicine and literature during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Many of the images that filled Gothic fiction (the patchwork of revivified body parts that creates Frankenstein, for one) had their roots in contemporary medical practices and theories; likewise, many medical ideas were influenced by the fiction of the day.

This adaptation of Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” marks the 100th anniversary of the popular free-verse poem. Remaining true to the original text, the reimagining adds a back story for the titular prophet, who offers his oft-quoted advice on love, marriage, freedom, death, and other aspects of the human condition.

How did the Donald Trump presidency change the way political operatives do business? Terris, a Washington Post features writer, takes readers inside exclusive Beltway parties, poker nights, and fundraisers for a fascinating, intimate look at movers and shakers with their finger to the wind, trying to find new ways to thrive or, at least, survive.

Does free speech actually endanger speech protection? Baron, emeritus professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, weighs the evidence, focusing on the legal control of language, and the history of protections in the areas of political speech, obscenity, threats, official language, and compelled speech.

Sins of omission, we’re often told, led to the current disrepair of public transport in America. Not so, says Bloom, a professor of urban policy and planning at Hunter College. Voters, for a variety of reasons, have actively decided against supporting public policies that would create high-quality mass-transit options in major cities. A fascinating reevaluation of how our bus, subway, and commuter rail systems got to be so bad, and why.

Barnum and Bailey stood on the shoulders of giants. The origins of the modern circus stretch back to the acrobatic shows that entertained crowds between chariot races in ancient Rome, the hippodromes of 18th-century England, and the Parisian one-ring circuses that delighted Toulouse-Lautrec. Simon writes a richly illustrated, entertaining history of the big top, paying homage to the progenitors of razzle-dazzle.

To imagine a new Judaism for complicated times, “Judaism Disrupted” considers bold, fundamental questions: How do we hold on to faith in a modern world? Do the time-honored traditions of rabbinic Judaism meet our spiritual needs? Is there another way to be a Jew?

We disregard inconvenient facts at our own peril — doing so may dismantle guardrails that keep us safe or erode commonly held beliefs that give our lives meaning. Del Rosso, associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver, takes a highly readable look at the pervasiveness of denial in our society and its corrosive effects.

Hatred of Jews and hatred of Muslims have been intertwined in Christian thought since the rise of Islam. Freidenreich, the Pulver Family Professor of Jewish Studies at Colby College, studies how — in an effort to target “them” and thereby define “us” — early Christian polemicists intentionally blurred the lines that differentiate Judaism from Islam.

Cooperation. The balance of force and skill. Applying these and other underlying “principles” of basketball to our lives can help us become more resilient, tolerant, and wise, maintains this book, based on a popular course the author teaches at NYU’s Tisch Institute for Global Sport.

Princeton history professor Zelizer and his co-editor ask a stellar team of historians to debunk what they see as some of the biggest myths masquerading as truth in American history. Topics include American exceptionalism, the Great Society, and voter fraud.

A study of the life and work of a quartet of women who altered the course of a decade and forever changed how the world viewed civil rights, urban planning, the environment, and women’s rights. Ella Baker, Jane Jacobs, Rachel Carson, and Betty Friedan didn’t just change minds, Golin explains — they built movements.

Teachers, principals, and other team leaders in educational settings are most successful when they act with intention, says MacDonald. She describes what intentionality looks like; why acting with purpose and direction improves teacher and student learning; and how decisive leaders guide their teams to advantageous outcomes.

From 1965 to 2019, this book’s author visited Russia and the former Soviet Union 175 times, meeting thousands of Jews who had compelling stories to tell. More than just a memoir, “Here We Are All Jews” provides a necessary historical record of the Soviet Jewry movement, and the resilience of Soviet and post-Soviet Jews.

A longtime employee of U.S. land-management agencies, Jenkins surveys the sometimes chaotic interplay between government bureaucracies and the natural world. The first half of the book considers “the bureaucracy of nature,” including the protection of endangered species and natural resources. The second describes “the nature of bureaucracy.”

Journalist Petra Kovach launches a true-crime podcast for reasons both professional (greater visibility) and personal (solving the murder of a friend, a controversial YouTuber). When her not-quite-legal investigative tactics cost her her job, the momentum of this novel shifts into overdrive, and the stakes get higher.

A journalist and publisher, Osnos has long studied the Helsinki Accords, the 1975 agreement signed by the Soviet Union, the U.S., Canada, and every European nation except Albania in an attempt to reduce tensions between the Eastern and Western blocs. The author details the accords’ lasting effects on international relations and human rights.

Meyers, a foremost expert in the archaeology of Israel, and the Bernice and Morton Lerner Distinguished Emeritus Professor in Judaic Studies at Duke University, describes his career-path challenges and successes, many shared with his wife, Carol, GSAS MA’66, PhD’75, professor emerita of religious studies at Duke. The memoir includes reflections on the couple’s time at Brandeis.

Gans, a sports attorney and former soccer exec, helps navigate the often confusing road to being recruited by a college soccer program. The book includes interviews with top college coaches, giving players and parents an inside look at what makes a difference when universities consider a young soccer hopeful.

To uncover a murderer in Haiti, an American reporter, a British nurse, a Haitian investigator, and an FBI agent mount a search that progresses from shantytowns, to fancy hotels, to rural hospitals. Set during a turbulent time in the country’s history — the period leading to the 2001 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse — this novel by a two-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in journalism brings a you-are-there immediacy to its tale of intrigue and danger.

With chapters titled “Can You Recognize Energy Talk” and “Overcoming Spiritual Illusions,” this how-to volume introduces a program of spiritual awakening that calls for 20-minute daily practices. “Look or listen or feel for truth,” Rosetree advises, “however it resonates personally for you.”

Berk, dean of Texas Tech University’s School of Medicine, pens a work of fiction that brings the early days of infectious-disease study to life. A young man born in 19th-century Vienna — motivated by the loss of his mother from the mysterious ailment known as childbed fever — meets Pasteur, Lister, and Koch, and undertakes a dogged hunt for the bacteria (then called animalcules) that were causing so much suffering and death.

In 1945, three young people in Manhattan’s Lower East Side grapple with their childhood memories and plans for the future while dealing with the sometimes challenging assortment of neighbors in their boarding house just off Grand Street. The author of this novel is a professor emeritus of French at NYU.

The first book-length biography of sculptor Chana Orloff (1888-1968) depicts her artistic development in Paris alongside Chagall and Modigliani; her struggle to survive the Holocaust; and her successes in rendering human figures filled with emotion from terra cotta, bronze, and stone.

A collection of essays on Rudolphina Menzel (1891-1973), a Jewish Vienna-born expert in dog psychology and behavior. Her career included consulting at a Berlin military-dog training institute in the 1920s and ’30s, and training dogs to protect Jewish lives in pre-state Palestine.