Reediana Briefs

Real Analysis, by Peter Loeb ’59 (Springer-Birkhauser 2016). Peter’s new mathematics textbook explores core concepts and accessible methods, including a novel presentation of differentiation and absolute continuity using a local maximum function, resulting in an exposition that is both simpler and more general than the traditional approach. 

A Wizard’s Guide to Study Skills, by Irene Hartzell ’60 (Kids Like Learning 2016). Designed for middle-school-aged students, this guide will help students learn more efficient ways to study, gain time management skills, increase reading speed and comprehension, learn test-taking strategies, and build confidence and a sense of self-worth. 

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A People’s History of the American Revolution: How Common People Shaped the Fight for Independence, by Ray Raphael ’65 MAT ’68 (The New Press 2016, 2002, 2001). A sweeping narrative of the wartime experience, this book views the revolution through the eyes of farmers, laborers, rank-and-file soldiers, women, Native Americans, and African Americans. Their stories have long been overlooked in the mythic telling of America’s founding, but are crucial to a comprehensive understanding of the fight for independence. Using long-ignored primary sources, Ray creates a gritty account of rebellion, filled with ideals and outrage, loss, sacrifice, and sometimes scurrilous acts . . . but always ringing with truth.  

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Sky Rivals: Two Men. Two Planes. An Epic Race around the World, by Adam Penenberg ’86 (Wayzgoose Press 2016). Once, the world was riveted by a pair of adventurous, record-seeking aviators—Wiley Post and Jimmie Mattern—whose names have fallen into obscurity despite their sensational exploits in the 1920s and ’30s in crudely constructed planes.  Adam successfully recreates the excitement and tension of those days, when crowds waited at airports and ticker-tape parades were held to celebrate these heroes. 

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Just a Teacher, by David Tourzan ’95 (Ellaquent Press 2015). David, an Oregon Education Assoc. award-winning teacher with 20 years’ experience teaching math and science, offers a brutally honest account of rural, low-income schools that is both inspiring and entertaining, with a blend of comedy and simmering indignation. He confronts major obstacles to improving education in the U.S. as he takes on underfunded schools, overtested students, union bureaucracy, school lunches, and even student body fluids. The full spectrum of teaching is revealed in unflinching detail. All proceeds go to fund local nonprofits.

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Atelier Crenn: Metamorphosis of Taste, by Dominique Crenn and Karen Leibowitz ’99 (Houghton Mifflin HarCourt 2015). Karen, whose San Francisco restaurant The Perennial has been recently called one of the 12 best restaurants in America by GQ, has cowritten a cookbook with Michelin-starred chef Dominique Crenn. Crenn credits Karen with having “translated the amorphous spirit of Atelier Crenn into words.” This project is equal parts art book, poetry collection, and modernist cuisine cookbook. Recipes range from surprising takes on familiar favorites (fish and chips) to creative and imaginative dishes inspired by nature, like “A Walk in the Forest,” a dish of “earthy scents and flavors,” which “should be plated as a trail, with the burnt pine meringue and pumpernickel soil forming a path from which the mushrooms and herbs spring up.” 

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The Nature of California: Race, Citizenship, and Farming since the Dust Bowl, by Sarah D. Wald ’01 (University of Washington Press 2016). Drawing on ethnic studies and environmental humanities scholarship, Sarah’s book is an examination of the relationship between American cultural conceptions of farm and farmwork and citizenship. “To look at representations of farm labor is to read the story of the nation, national belonging, and national exclusion.” Sarah says that “studying agrarian narratives helps identify the cultural logic through which various groups are written into and out of the nation, as well as the roles nature and land ownership play in the way we envision national belonging.” 

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In the Event of Atomic War, by Devon Pack ’02 (Espresso Press 2012). An anthology of Devon’s poetry, arranged into 15 collections such as “Decade of the Man-Child Comedy Poems,” these poems are smart and raw. Often political and always deeply personal, the anthology displays an assortment of moods and subjects, as well as a restless and evolving poetic sensibility. Devon says the book waspublished by Espresso Press for Powell’s City of Books, who liked “the design and look of the book” and wanted to use it as a showpiece for debuting their publishing machine and small press kiosk.” 

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Shock and Awe—The First Edition, by Ethan Rafal ’07 (IHA Editions 2016). A 12 year, autobiographical project examining the relationship between protracted war and homeland decay, Shock and Awe is a meticulously crafted image, text, and found object journal that blurs the line between author and subject and between personal and authoritative histories. Completed over countless years traveling the U.S., the project pulls from the traditions of documentary photography and writing set on the American road. The First Edition reproduces both the look and feel of the original, handmade journal, which was created with transfer prints, found materials, and handwriting, and bound in the remains of an abandoned vehicle. The upcoming Shock and Awe Book Tour returns the journal to the people and places depicted.

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Man and Wife, by Katie Chase [Admission 2012–] (A Strange Object 2016). An electrifying debut that crackles with humor and insight, this debut collection of award-winning short stories examines the lives of girls and women as they take part in puberty rites, marriage rituals, and deathbed confessions.