Princeton Alumni Weekly | The Weekly Blog: Katherine F. Greenwood Archives

May 23, 2013

MacKay '63 explores life of Wall Street criminal

Malcolm MacKay ’63 (Photo Courtesy: Malcolm MacKay ’63)

New book: Impeccable Connections: The Rise and Fall of Richard Whitney, by Malcolm MacKay ’63 (Brick Tower Press)

The author: MacKay is a lawyer and businessman. As a boy and young man he knew Whitney after he had served time in prison. MacKay is the author and co-author of several Brooklyn histories and has contributed to The New York Times Magazine and Business Week.

The book: Richard Whitney was a successful bond broker and long-time president of the New York Stock Exchange. He argued against federal regulation of the securities industry and in 1934 appeared on the cover of Time magazine. But his life came crashing down when in 1938 he was shipped off to Sing Sing for embezzling his clients’ securities. “I have thought about Richard Whitney, and why he did what he did, all my life,” writes MacKay. “This book tells his story.”

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May 17, 2013

Rawlins *97 explores a forgotten beach-house architect

Christopher Rawlins *97 (Photo: Megan Greenlee)

New book: Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction, by Christopher Bascom Rawlins *97, foreword by Alastair Gordon (Metropolis Books/Gordon DeVries Studio)

The author: Rawlins is the principal of Rawlins Design, a New York-based architecture and interiors firm. His projects include beach houses and midcentury modernist restorations. He also has taught architectural design at Lehigh University.

The book: The author rented a beach house designed by Horace Gifford for himself and set out to find out about the career of an architect who had been largely forgotten. Fire Island Modernist examines Gifford, who died in 1992 of AIDS, and the houses he designed in the 1960s and 1970s on New York’s Fire Island, a narrow strip of land 31 miles long. Gifford “perfected a sustainable modernism in cedar and glass, as attuned to natural landscapes as our animal natures,” wrote Rawlins.

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May 10, 2013

Romeo '03 pens comic romance

Lia Romeo ’03 (Photo Courtesy: Lia Romeo)

New book: Dating the Devil, by Lia Romeo ’03 (Bell Bridge Books)

The author: A playwright, Romeo has co-authored the humorous book 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, and has written the plays Hungry — a comedy that deals with a high-school girl’s struggles with body issues and boy problems — and Green Whales, a romantic comedy about a philosophy professor who suffers from a genetic disorder that makes her look like a teenager and a man with pedophiliac tendencies. Dating the Devil is Romeo’s debut novel.

The book: The main character of this comic romance is Lucy, a 26-year-old public-relations assistant in New York, living in a small apartment with two good friends who are stunning and successful. After being dumped by her boyfriend, Lucy dates lots of guys — who have been underwhelming — and she is almost ready to give up on meeting someone special. Until she meets Lewis — he’s tall, handsome, and nearly perfect — though he sometimes tries to get her to do things she shouldn’t. Then she realizes that there’s a problem … he’s the devil.

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May 3, 2013

New musical apps that are soothing and fun

Miriama Young ’07 and the icon for her Hushabye app. (Photos Courtesy: Miriama Young ’07)

Two Princeton musicians recently have launched apps for children — one to calm them and another to teach them. Miriama Young ’07, a composer and musicologist in Sydney, Australia, has created an app to soothe babies and help them to fall asleep. Inspired by her own newborn that suffered from colic and cried constantly, the Hushabye app provides the kind of sounds that helped her child — white noise, heartbeat, and gentle singing. With Young’s app, the user can create her own mix of real heartbeat, water sounds, and her own lullaby.

A concert pianist and piano teacher in New York City, Donna Weng Friedman ’80 has come up with a fun way to introduce young children to classical music. She has designed interactive apps — Music Bee Club apps — that feature original children’s stories inspired by masterpieces. The first of three apps, The Flight of the Bumble Bee, was released in April.

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April 26, 2013

Rosenbaum '90 makes doughnuts

Stephanie Rosenbaum ’90 (Photo: David Gartner)

New book: The World of Doughnuts: More than 50 Delicious Recipes from Around the Globe, by Stephanie Rosenbaum ’90 (Egg & Dart Press)

The author: A food writer and cook, Rosenbaum is the author of Kids in the Kitchen: Fun Food; Honey from Flower to Table; The Astrology Cookbook: A Cosmic Guide to Feasts of Love; and Anti-Bride Guide: Tying the Knot Outside of the Box. She has been a restaurant critic for the San Francisco Bay Guardian and for San Francisco magazine. Last year, she worked as an assistant chef at the Headlands Center for the Arts, an artists’ residency program located in the Marin Headlands (Sausalito, Calif.).

The book: A lot of people eat doughnuts on the go (with a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts joe). But in this cookbook, Rosenbaum shows readers how to make these treats at home by providing more than 50 recipes and tips. The recipes range from the classic jelly doughnuts to buñuelos (popular in Mexico) and Greece’s honey-soaked loukoumades to powdered sugary beignets from New Orleans.

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April 19, 2013

Clay '94 examines the making of French theater

Lauren Clay ’94 (Photo Courtesy: Vanderbilt University)

New book: Stagestruck: The Business of Theater in Eighteenth-Century France and Its Colonies, by Lauren R. Clay ’94 (Cornell University Press)

The author: An assistant professor of history at Vanderbilt University, Clay studies Old Regime and revolutionary France and its empire, focusing on urban cultural and civic life and the emergence of a commercially oriented society.

The book: Clay explores the making of the French theater industry during the pre-revolutionary era, when more than 80 provincial and colonial cities opened their first public playhouses. Clay “examines why and how professional public theater became a regular aspect of cultural and social life for city dwellers throughout France and its colonies,” she writes. Clay argues that theaters emerged as the most prominent new urban cultural institutions of the 18th century and shaped the cultural practices, commercial expectations, and social norms of the many spectators.

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April 12, 2013

Colgan *10 explores oil and war

Jeff Colgan *10 (Photo Courtesy: Jeff Colgan *10)

New book: Petro-Aggression: When Oil Causes War, by Jeff D. Colgan *10 (Cambridge University Press)

The author: An assistant professor at the School of International Service at American University in Washington, D.C., Colgan studies international security and global energy politics. His article on petro-aggression in the journal International Organization won the Robert O. Keohane Award for the best article published by an untenured scholar. Previously he worked at the World Bank and McKinsey and Company.

The book: This study examines the relationship between oil-exporting nations whose revenue from net oil exports are at least 10 percent of their GDP — which he calls “petrostates” — and aggressive foreign policy. Cogan argues that oil income creates some incentives that increase the chance that a nation will be involved in interstate conflict and other incentives that decrease the likelihood of aggression. The key, he says, is the petrostate’s leader and domestic politics. “When a leader comes to power through a tumultuous domestic revolution … he is much more likely to have aggressive, risk-tolerant, ambitious preferences,” wrote Colgan on the blog New Security Beat. “Oil and revolutionary leaders are a deadly combination.” Petrostates, he writes in the book, “are among the most violent states in the world.”

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April 5, 2013

Campbell '01 talks leadership in new book

Former Marine Lt. Donovan Campbell ’01 (Photo: Austin Walker)

New book: The Leader’s Code: Mission, Character, Service, and Getting the Job Done, by Donovan Campbell ’01 (Random House)

The author: A former Marine officer, Campbell served three combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. His first book, Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood, was based on his time in Iraq. He was awarded the Combat Action Ribbon, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and a Bronze Star with Valor. Today, he is a management and technology consultant with Credera in Dallas.

The book: Many of our leaders have “pursued gain … at the cost of their individual character,” argues Donovan. What we need today are the kinds of leaders reflective of what he learned as a military officer — the servant-leadership model. He describes that concept and explores how to develop character and the six virtues that underpin character — humility, excellence, kindness, discipline, courage, and wisdom. This leadership model, he argues, can be applied to anyone: “whether they lead at work, at home, in business, in government, in their neighborhoods, or in their communities.”

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March 29, 2013

Coleman '60 tells story of children saved during the Holocaust

Fred Coleman ’60 (Photo: Oliver Alabaster)

New book: The Marcel Network: How One French Couple Saved 527 Children from the Holocaust, by Fred Coleman ’60 (Potomac Books)

The author: As a foreign correspondent, Coleman was Newsweek’s bureau chief in Paris for five years and the magazine’s bureau chief in Moscow for eight. He won the Newspaper Guild of New York’s Page 1 Award for the best reporting from abroad for magazines. He also is the author of The Decline and Fall of the Soviet Empire.

The book: Coleman tells the story of a young French Jewish couple — Syrian immigrant Moussa Abadi and Odette Rosenstock — who created a clandestine operation to save Jewish children in Nazi-occupied France. With the help of the bishop of Nice and Protestant pastors, the couple hid Jewish children in the homes of Protestant families and in Catholic schools and convents. In conducting research for the book, Coleman interviewed some of the now grown children that the couple saved, including Julien Engel ’54.

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March 22, 2013

Harper '88 edits anthology on food and family

Lisa Catherine Harper ’88 (Photo: Lisa Johnson Photography)

New book: The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat, edited by Lisa Catherine Harper ’88 and Caroline M. Grant (Roost Books)

The editors: The author of A Double Life: Discovering Motherhood, a memoir of pregnancy and early motherhood that won the River Teeth Prize for Literary Nonfiction, Harper has taught creative writing and literature in the San Francisco Bay Area. Grant is editor-in-chief of the website Literary Mama and the associate director of the Sustainable Arts Foundation. Five years ago, Harper and Grant started the blog Learning to Eat, where they write about how they feed their families and explore larger questions such as “Does family dinner, every night, really matter?” That blog sparked their anthology.

The book: This anthology of 28 original essays explores family food, how food reflects the dynamic of family life, and why food matters in our lives beyond the table. The contributors include food writers, parents, journalists, and chefs, who discuss what food means to their families. Among the contributors are Jeff Gordinier ’88 (who wrote “Why Won’t My Kids Eat Foie Gras?”); Paul Kogan ’88 (who co-wrote the title essay with his wife); Keith Blanchard ’88 (who wrote about his candy addiction); and Greg Dicum ’91 (who discussed wrestling with his own veganism while raising his child). Family meals are more than a means to fill our bellies, “they help create and define our relationships,” write the editors.

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March 15, 2013

Picoult '87's latest novel adresses the Holocaust

Jodi Picoult ’87 (Photo Courtesy: Jodi Picoult ’87)

New book: The Storyteller, by Jodi Picoult ’87 (Atria)

The author: Picoult, the best-selling novelist, is the author of 21 novels, including My Sister’s Keeper, Nineteen Minutes, and Sing You Home. In an interview on her website, Picoult said that The Storyteller was inspired by The Sunflower, by Simon Wiesenthal, in which the author recalls that a dying Nazi wanted to confess to and be forgiven by him when he was a concentration camp prisoner.

The book: A lonely young woman, Sage Singer, befriends an elderly man, Josef Weber – a pillar in the community. He shocks her by asking her to kill him. She refuses but finds out why he made such a request: he confessed that he is a former Nazi guard. Singer, whose grandmother (Minka) is a Holocaust survivor, must grapple with the news. Part of the novel tells of her grandmother’s experience during the war. The novel explores evil, atonement, accountability, and forgiveness.

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March 8, 2013

Masello '74 writes a new thriller

Robert Masello ’74 (Photo: Martha Melvoin)

New book: The Romanov Cross, by Robert Masello ’74 (Bantam Books)

The author: A journalist, television writer, and author of both nonfiction and fiction books, Masello has written the supernatural thrillers The Medusa Amulet, Blood and Ice, Vigil, and Bestiary. His nonfiction book, Robert’s Rules of Writing, is used in many college classrooms.

The book: This page-turning novel combines a possible pandemic and the history of the Russian royal family. Army major and epidemiologist Frank Slater heads to a small island off the coast of Alaska where the permafrost has begun to melt and bodies of people who had been killed by the Spanish flu of 1918 lie. His job is to determine whether the thawed bodies are carrying the virus and could set off a pandemic. That island was at one time settled by a sect devoted to Rasputin, the infamous Russian monk, and has a connection to the fall of the Russian Romanov family.

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