Brandeis Magazine

Winter 2024/2025

On the Bookshelf

Faculty Books

Book cover of "The First Amerasians: Mixed Race Koreans From Camptowns to America"

By Yuri W. Doolan
Oxford University Press, $27.99

Many of the mixed-race children born to South Korean mothers and U.S. military fathers during the 1950s were adopted by American families who had been told the children’s biological mothers were unable or unwilling to care for them. Doolan, an assistant professor of history, shows how false this narrative tended to be and how damaging the adoptions often proved to the children and their birth mothers.

Book cover of "Realizing Value in Mesoamerica: The Dynamics of Desire and Demand in Ancient Economies"

Edited by Scott R. Hutson and Charles Golden
Palgrave Macmillan, $179.99

The essays in this collection take the measure of a little-studied question: What tangible objects — obsidian, perhaps, or jewels, or cotton thread — were considered most valuable in the economies of ancient Mesoamerica? Co-editor Golden, who has conducted archaeological research in Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico, is an anthropology professor and the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Book cover of "Desert Ascetics of Egypt"

By Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom
Arc Humanities Press, $19.95

From the 3rd century onward, storytellers mythologized the male and female monks who built Christian communities in the inhospitable Egyptian desert, dubbing them miracle workers and saints. Brooks Hedstrom, the Myra and Robert Kraft and Jacob Hiatt Associate Professor of Christian Studies, reconstructs what these monks’ day-to-day lives, conducted in the most austere of settings, were really like.

Book cover of "Yearning To Breathe Free: Jews in Gilded Age America"

Edited by A.D. Mendelsohn and Jonathan D. Sarna ’75, GSAS MA’75
Princeton University Press, $40

Essays by 20 scholars use a primary source — a book or a piece of art, for instance — to explore how the late-19th-century Gilded Age shaped Jewish life in the United States. Co-editor Sarna is a University Professor and the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History.

Book cover of "We’ll Fight It Out Here: A History of the Ongoing Struggle for Health Equity"

By David Chanoff, GSAS MA’73, PhD’74, and Louis W. Sullivan
Johns Hopkins University Press, $24.95

The winner of the 2023 Phillis Wheatley Book Award, “We’ll Fight It Out Here” describes the barriers Black Americans have faced in their struggle for equal access to health care and the hard-won successes that are opening doors to high-quality medical care for all. Co-author Chanoff is a visiting scholar in English.

Book cover of "Mumbai on Two Wheels: Cycling, Urban Space, and Sustainable Mobility"

By Jonathan Shapiro Anjaria
University of Washington Press, $33.99

According to Anjaria, an associate professor of anthropology, even heavily congested cities like Mumbai can create and maintain bike-friendly transportation policies. The key is consulting those who actually pedal the city, to understand how they experience the city’s infrastructure from their bicycle seat.

Book cover of "Israel/Palestine in World Religions: Whose Promised Land?"

By S. Ilan Troen ’63
Springer, $37.99

A well-reasoned, informative book that offers a better understanding of the secular and theological debates around Israel’s legitimacy. Troen is the Stoll Professor of Israel Studies, Emeritus.

Alumni Books

Book cover of "A Supreme Court Unlike Any Other: The Deepening Divide Between the Justices and the People"

By Kevin J. McMahon, GSAS PhD’97
University of Chicago Press, $24

Recent actions of the U.S. Supreme Court, including its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, are placing the bench at an ever-widening remove from the principles of American democracy, writes McMahon, the John R. Reitemeyer Professor of Political Science at Trinity College. Relying on historical and contemporary data, this volume explains the developments that have expanded the gap.

Related article: The Supreme Court’s Legitimacy Problem

Book cover of "Chopped"

By Dale M. Pollock ’72, P’06
Shadowbrook Publishing, $17.99

A novel based on a real-life 1849 murder that transfixed Boston, “Chopped” uses details drawn from a transcript of the accused killer’s trial to re-create how the body of Boston’s wealthiest man ended up dismembered, partially burned, and stashed beneath a Harvard Medical College chemistry lab. The combination of lurid crime and straitlaced setting makes for chillingly compulsive reading.

Book cover of "I Just Let Life Rain Down on Me: Selected Letters and Reflections of Rahel Levin Varnhagen"

Edited and translated by Peter Wortsman ’73
Seagull Books, $25

Born into a wealthy Jewish family in Berlin, Rahel Levin Varnhagen (1771-1833) was a celebrated woman of letters in German salon culture, whose home became a meeting place for the leading artists and intellectuals of her day. Wortsman compiles and translates into English a selection of her letters, illuminating her keen observations on her world.

Book cover of "Make a Home Out of You"

By Ginelle Testa, Rabb MS’22
She Writes Press, $17.99

An unflinching account of addiction and unhealed trauma, Testa’s memoir chronicles her upbringing as the child of an abusive mother and a drug-dealing father, and her introduction to drug and alcohol use at age 13. Her long road to recovery is tortuous but ultimately successful, offering hope to others.

Book cover of "Following Similar Paths: What American Jews and Muslims Can Learn From One Another"

By Samuel Heilman ’68 and Mucahit Bilici
University of California Press, $29.95

Two sociologists — one Jewish, the other Muslim — take stock of the commonalities their faiths share, comparing their religions’ historical evolution, sociological transformation, and beliefs and practices. Heilman is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College.

Book cover of "The Politics of Love: Gender and Nation in 19th-Century Poland"

By Natalie Cornett, GSAS PhD’21
Cornell University Press, $50.95

A fascinating look at a determined group of educated women known as the Enthusiasts, who bucked 19th-century Poland’s extreme nationalism by choosing to live independently, free from the burden of spouses or children. Holding firm to convictions most Poles deemed “unpatriotic,” the Enthusiasts took on an oppressive regime by ignoring constricting gender roles.

Book cover of "God’s Waiting Room: Racial Reckoning at Life’s End"

By Casey Golomski, GSAS PhD’13
Rutgers University Press, $29.95

The bonds that developed between the white residents and Black staff at a South African nursing home present a compelling picture of how people can outgrow their racist beliefs, at any age. Golomski, who spent years observing these interactions firsthand, is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Hampshire.

Book cover of "A Small Miracle"

By Tessa Venell ’08, Heller MPP’25, with Evan Sweeney
Self-published, $13

After suffering a traumatic brain injury in a car accident the summer before her senior year at Brandeis, Venell — now a program administrator at Heller — was given a 10% chance of functional recovery. Here, she explains how she beat those odds in what became a “triumph of the network,” aka the family members, friends, doctors, and therapists who served as her team.

Book cover of "Rebecca of Ivanhoe"

By Alison Bass ’75
Bedazzled Ink, $18.95

A tale conceived as a sequel to Sir Walter Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” this novel follows the journey of the beautiful Jewish healer Rebecca Manasses, who flees England to escape being burned as a witch. Amid the prejudices roiling medieval Spain, will Rebecca find happiness and safety in Toledo’s Jewish quarter?

Book cover of "Entitlement and Complaint: Ending Careers and Reviewing Lives in Post-Revolutionary France"

By David G. Troyansky, GSAS MA’78, PhD’83
Oxford University Press, $83

Troyansky, a Brooklyn College historian, sees the origin of modern-day notions about retirement in the arguments put forth by post-revolutionary France’s civil servants, who regarded pensions as a right, not a privilege. The book’s insights are rooted in the author’s knowledge of social, cultural, and political history, and gerontological theory.

Book cover of "Missy Wants a Mammoth"

By Pam Vaughan ’90, Heller MMHS’96, Illustrated by Ariel Landy
Pixel+Ink, $18.99

The first installment in an upcoming series of “Missy and Mason” children’s books introduces readers to first grader Missy, who has outsized ideas about what her next pet should be. Fortunately, Mason, her more practical older brother, is around to point out a few potential problems.

Book cover of "All of Us or None: Migrant Organizing in an Era of Deportation and Dispossession"

By Monisha Das Gupta, GSAS MA’94, PhD’99
Duke University Press, $27.95

The author draws on fieldwork in New York, Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Honolulu to show how migrants and refugees labeled as criminal aliens are organizing innovative antideportation efforts in the U.S. Das Gupta is a sociologist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.

Book cover of "Poles and Jews: A Call for Myth Reconstruction"

By Jennifer Stark-Blumenthal ’87
Academic Studies Press, $149

Poland’s enduring relationship with antisemitism has rightly led to anti-Poland feelings among many in the American Jewish community. And yet, Stark-Blumenthal argues, Americans’ criticism of Poland should perhaps be tempered by a clearer recognition of the strains of white supremacy threaded throughout their own country’s politics.

Book cover of "All Around They’re Taking Down the Lights"

By Adam Berlin ’83
Livingston Press, $17.95

This collection of short stories, which earned Berlin the Tartt First Fiction Award, spotlights male protagonists struggling to live up to masculinity ideals. Some of these characters work in the movie business; others, hamstrung by their tough-guy posturing, seem to believe notions the movies have fed them.

Book cover of "Civic Activism in South Korea: The Intertwining of Democracy and Neoliberalism"

By Seungsook Moon, GSAS PhD’94
Columbia University Press, $35

Through a close examination of advocacy groups and organizations in South Korea, a sociology professor at Vassar College traces the intricate relationship between neoliberalism and democracy in that country. Neoliberal governance both enables and constrains civic activism there, she concludes.

Book cover of "Blanche Ames Ames and Oakes Ames: Cultivating That Mutual Ground"

By Elizabeth F. Fideler ’64
Resource Publications, $24

A biography of artist Blanche Ames (1878-1969) and her Harvard University botanist husband, Oakes (1874-1950), a Massachusetts power couple who marshaled their intellectual gifts, social skills, and considerable financial resources to advance women’s suffrage, reproductive rights, and scientific knowledge. Borderland, their North Easton estate — which Blanche designed — is now a state park.

Book cover of "People We Miss"

By Kimmie Warmflash ’14
Independently published, $14.99

Drawing on a story she wrote for her three daughters when their grandfather died, Warmflash has penned a rhyming book that helps youngsters grieve the loss of important people in their lives. The book also suggests activities that let readers express difficult emotions or preserve happy memories.

Book cover of "The Flagship Experience"

By Evangelos Simoudis, GSAS PhD’91
Amplify Publishing, $28

This roadmap for the automaking industry explains how artificial intelligence and the technology behind software-defined vehicles are intersecting to make driving more fun. Manufacturers will soon be able to tailor the driving experience to the preferences of individual consumers, even as those preferences change throughout their ownership of a vehicle.

Book cover of "The Sea Glass Epidemic"

By Jodi Lyons ’88
Rand-Smith, $20

A fictional account of a 50-something woman dealing with undiagnosed Lewy body dementia, written by an author of nonfiction books about brain health. The sea glass metaphor refers to the protein deposits that develop in the brains of those who live with Lewy body dementia, the second-most-prevalent dementia diagnosis in the U.S.

Book cover of "The Beast and the Booth"

By Arnon Z. Shorr ’05
OxRock Productions, $5

This single-issue comic book, set during the holiday of Sukkot, follows the adventures of a 14-year-old girl who befriends a boy with a terrifying secret. Shorr explores Jewish cultural themes within the outlines of a classic werewolf story.

Book cover of "U.S. Insurance Regulation: A Primer"

By Richard G. Liskov ’71
Edward Elgar Publishing, $105

A resource for legal practitioners and insurance executives, this compendium of insurance-regulation insights covers key themes, including the regulatory roles of the federal government and the states, and the organization and operation of state insurance departments. Liskov is a senior counsel at law firm ArentFox Schiff and a lecturer at Boston University’s School of Law.

Book cover of "The Fight That Saved the Libraries: A True Rhode Island Story"

By Linda J. Kushner ’60
Stillwater River Publications, $15

In 2004, a small group of citizens began a fight to stop the closure of five public-library branches in low-income neighborhoods in Providence, Rhode Island. The little guys prevailed in this municipal David-and-Goliath matchup — and created a new library system in the process.

Book cover of "The Culling"

By Nathan Samuels ’02
Independently published, $15.99

A science-fiction novel filled with twists and turns, written by a primary-care nurse practitioner. The book’s dystopian plot mines the ugly side effects of genetic engineering and the pitfalls of our relentless quest for perpetual youth.

Brandeis University Press

Book cover of "Jewish Country Houses"

Edited by Juliet Carey and Abigail Green
Photography by Hélène Binet, $60

Before the Holocaust upended their lives, many wealthy Jews were proud owners of countryside villas in England and continental Europe. Lavishly illustrated, “Jewish Country Houses” offers an intimate look at these homes, whose designs tell a complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection.

Book cover of "Freshwater Fish of the Northeast"

By David A. Patterson
Illustrated by Matt Patterson, $29.95

A new edition of a beautiful guide for Northeastern anglers, devised by a father-and-son writer-illustrator team. The pencil-and-acrylic drawings are detailed and lifelike. The text includes information on the habits and habitats of more than 60 species of fish, including such lesser-known specimens as the blueback trout and the slimy sculpin.