The Magazine lists a selection of general interest books, films, and albums by alumni. For additional alumni releases, browse the Magazine’s Goodreads bookshelf.
Waking Gods
Sylvain Neuvel, PhD’03
Author
In Sylvain Neuvel’s sequel to Sleeping Giants (Del Rey, 2016), a team of researchers is working to unravel the mysteries of a towering robot buried on Earth thousands of years previously, when a second robot appears. And a third, and then a whole army. A war breaks out for control of the planet, and the researchers’ discoveries become humanity’s last line of defense against a complete takeover.
Minor Characters Have Their Day: Genre and the Contemporary Literary Marketplace
Jeremy Rosen, AM’04, PhD’11
Author
The trend started in the late 1960s with works like Wide Sargasso Sea and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and now authors from Geraldine Brooks (March) to Margaret Atwood (The Penelopiad) have published books that retell classic literature from another character’s perspective. University of Utah assistant professor Jeremy Rosen investigates the new genre of “minor character elaboration” and argues it reflects both a neoliberal emphasis on individual experience and publishers’ desire to market new novels to great books readers.
The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism
Henry Olsen, JD’90
Author
Republican icon Ronald Reagan is the true heir of Democratic hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt, argues Ethics and Public Policy Center senior fellow Henry Olsen—both presidents focused on providing working-class Americans the economic security and dignity of a steady job. Conservatives have been making gains over the past three decades by embracing this New Deal populism, posits Olsen, and should continue to promote the vision that Roosevelt and Reagan shared.
Fallout
Sara Paretsky, AM’69, MBA’77, PhD’77
Author
In Sara Paretsky’s latest V. I. Warshawski mystery, a film student goes missing in a Kansas college town. Warshawski’s investigation draws her into the racial tensions that have long plagued the area, and that may hold clues to the disappearance.
The Great Rescue: American Heroes, an Iconic Ship, and Saving Europe During World War I
Peter Hernon, AM’72
Author
When the United States entered World War I in 1917, the US Navy seized a German luxury ocean liner from New York Harbor, renamed it the USS Leviathan, and used it to ferry American soldiers to fronts in France. On the centennial of America joining the fight, journalist Peter Hernon uses the ship and its array of passengers—generals and reporters, nurses and a future president—to offer a unique history of the Great War.
Blast the Sugar Out! Lower Blood Sugar, Lose Weight, Live Better
Ian K. Smith, MD’97
Author
The author of the best-selling Shred nutrition series, physician and media personality Ian K. Smith offers a new five-week plan for reducing sugar consumption with the goals of both losing weight and improving overall health. Providing simple low-sugar substitutions, exercise ideas, and more than 45 recipes, Blast the Sugar Out! aims to help readers eat, and love, healthy foods.
Late in the Empire of Men
Christopher Kempf, AM’16
Author
In his debut poetry collection, Christopher Kempf uses his own coming of age in Ohio and California to explore the United States’ larger history of westward expansion and colonialism. Through imagery and reappropriated rhetoric, Kempf explores how American culture shapes and confines young men.
The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses
Carolyn Purnell, AM’07, PhD’13
Author
Enlightenment thinkers, seeking to make sense of their world, employed sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell in ways that seem shocking today—blindfolded children, intentional addictions, pianos made of live cats. Historian Carolyn Purnell delves into this often-bizarre history of sensation and shows how Enlightenment-era sensory experiments continue to shape the way people experience life three centuries later.