Off The Shelf: Words Worth A Second Look
N o n f i c t i o n
I Got the Idear: My Love Affair With Maine Language
By Marion Kingston Stocking ’43 (Maine Folklife Center)
Marion Kingston Stocking began a love affair with the numerous Maine dialects while teaching English at the University of Maine in the 1950s. In this small book, she outlines her personal journey with the Yankee lingo, the problem of class distinction in language, and offers a collection of the peculiar spellings used by her Maine students from “the days before we all sounded the same.”
After a long career as a Romantics scholar, Marion Kingston Stocking is writing memoirs. She also is an editor of the Beloit Poetry Journal.
Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks: The Story of the Lake, the Land, and the People
Annette Jones Lux ’47, contributor (Midwest Book Review)
Travel back to the 1870s with Big Moose Lake in the Adirondacks: The Story of the Lake, the Land, and the People. This well-documented story describes the growth of the lakeside community made famous by the incident that inspired Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. The book includes black-andwhite photographs that paint a revealing picture of humble daily life across the span of a century.
Annette Jones Lux spent nine years working on this book. She lives near Big Moose Lake five months each year.
The Intersection of International Law, Agricultural Biotechnology, and Infectious Disease
By Meredith Mariani ’98 (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Brill)
Mariani examines current global and regional legal frameoff works for infectious disease and genetically modified organisms. She weighs the positive and negative effects of using biotechnology from a public-health perspective and then analyzes the related legal issues.
Meredith Mariani has written articles on stemcell legislation for the University of Notre Dame Journal of Legislation and the International Center for Technology Assessment. She lives in Northern Virginia.
Women, Religion, & Space: Global Perspectives on Gender and Faith
Edited by Karen M. Morin and Jeanne Kay Mountain Guelke ’71 (Syracuse University Press)
Women, Religion, & Space offers various perspectives on women who practice or interact with the gender norms and spaces of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The writers include observations based on fieldwork in Jerusalem, Istanbul, Pakistan, and Los Angeles. In the sixth chapter on missionary women in early America, Guelke references the religious focus of Mount Holyoke in its early years.
Jeanne Kay Guelke recently retired as professor of geography at University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Her articles have been published in The Professional Geographer, the Journal of Historical Geography, and Environmental Ethics.
Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in Global Politics
By Laura Sjoberg and Caron Gentry ’99 (Zed Books)
In a world where the explosive pairing of women and violence seems innately wrong, Mothers, Monsters, Whores reveals the use of gendersubordination to structure tales about violence committed by women. The authors use feminist theory to explain how women are denied agency in their actions, and propose restructuring our methods of storytelling to remedy the subordination of these violent women.
Caron Gentry is assistant professor of political science at Abilene Christian University. She received her PhD from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, in 2003.
Milton’s Paradise Lost: Moral Education
By Margaret Olofson Thickstun ’77 (Palgrave Macmillan)
Want a different way of analyzing Milton’s Paradise Lost? This book looks at this famous poem by narrating the education of each of its main characters. Thickstun tracks the characters’ progress into moral adulthood. Approaching the poem from the perspective of moral development may help undergraduate readers more fully appreciate Milton’s poem.
Margaret Olofson Thickstun is the author of Fictions of the Feminine: Puritan Doctrine and the Representation of Women. She teaches at Hamilton College.
Backroads & Byways of New Mexico: Drives, Day Trips, & Weekend Excursions
By Sally Choate Moore ’58 (The Countryman Press)
Sally Choate Moore invites you to get lost in “the land of enchantment” in her travel guide, Backroads and Byways of New Mexico. The guide takes travelers through ten weekend day trips and getaways. Moore highlights something for everyone, whether you’re a native of the area or passing through for the first time.
In her pursuit of travel stories, Sally Choate Moore has worked with an archaeological crew in Utah and camped on the shores of a crocodile-infested billabong in the Australian outback. She lives in Albuquerque.
Paper Work
Edited By Marianne Doezema (The Pennsylvania State University Press)
This exhibition catalogue focuses on works on paper by Jane Hammond ’72. While Hammond established herself as a painter in the 1990s, she is also known for her work with printed material and her ability to combine techniques and different types of media. The exhibit, which opened at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum in 2006, is traveling to upstate New York, San Francisco, and Detroit through 2009.
Marianne Doezema is the Florence Finch Abbott Director at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum.
A Modern Patronage: de Menil Gifts to American and European Museums
By Marcia Brennan ’88 (Yale University Press)
Published on the twentieth anniversary of the collection’s opening, A Modern Patronage showcases fifty works of art acquired by Houston philanthropists John and Dominique de Menil. The couple began collecting art in the early 1940s and acquired diverse holdings ranging from pre-Columbian art to the work of Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. The collection opened to the public in 1987.
Marcia Gagliardi Brennan is associate professor of art history at Rice University.
The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution
By Deborah E. Harkness ’86 (Yale University Press)
Midwives, barbers, merchants, and gardeners find common ground in Deborah Harkness’s The Jewel House. The book illuminates the somewhat hidden world of Elizabethan London’s science culture. Harkness follows the intellectual journey from medieval philosophy to the empirical, experimental culture that became the hallmark of the Scientific Revolution.
Deborah E. Harkness is a professor of history at the University of Southern California and the author of John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature.
Dinosaur Tracks
By Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld ’76 (Harper Collins)
Students and MHC alumnae don’t have to go far to see where the first dinosaur tracks were discovered—right in South Hadley in 1802. Dinosaur Tracks takes a fun look at how tracks are preserved in mud, what kinds of dinosaurs roamed the earth millions of years ago, and what the different tracks looked like.
Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld has written numerous children’s books on dinosaurs, including Dinosaur Parents, Dinosaur Young. She lives in Berkeley, California.
An Explorer’s Guide: The Berkshire Hills & Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts
By Christina Tree ’65 and William Davis
Considered an undiscovered gem by those who know the area well, the Pioneer Valley and Berkshire hills offer numerous and varied activities in and around riverside towns and historical villages. The Berkshire Hills & Pioneer Valley gives a complete look at what Western Massachusetts has to offer (here’s a hint: lots).
Christina Tree wrote The Five-College Area as an undergraduate and has coauthored guides to Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
P o e t r y
At the Flower’s Lip
Polly Brody ’55 (Antrim House)
Polly Brody’s newest publication consists of poems depicting the pain of divorce and the joy of late-life love. “Wow! I dare readers’ heart rates not to quicken,” said author Susan King in a review. “Brody’s work is marked by fresh, original, highly sensual imagery with a deep spiritual resonance.”
Polly Laszlo Brody is an experienced field ornithologist and biologist. She lives in Southbury, Connecticut.
F i c t i o n
Forgery
By Sabina Murray ’89 (Grove Press)
In her fourth book, Murray tells the story of Rupert Brigg, a recently divorced man grappling with the death of his son. Set in the summer of 1963, Murray tells Brigg’s story as he travels to Greece to collect pieces for his uncle’s art collection. In his efforts to uncover the artwork, he finds himself uncovering his own past while learning about the rebellion and murder that lurk beneath Athens’s surface.
Sabina Murray is the author of The Caprices, which won the 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. She teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Laced
By Carol Higgins Clark ’78
Carol Higgins Clark’s tenth book in her Regan Reilly series takes place in Ireland, where private investigator Reilly and her new husband hope to relax and get away from the crime they deal with daily. But mystery always follows Regan, and soon she is tangled in a plot studded with ghosts and gem thieves gone wild.
Carol Higgins Clark coauthored a best-selling holiday mystery series with her mother, Mary Higgins Clark. She lives in New York City.
C D
Time After Time
By Beth Logan ’80, featuring Harvey Diamond
Beth Logan, a musical performer in many genres, focuses on jazz in Time After Time, her first CD. Combining her love of the jazz greats—including Cole Porter and Duke Ellington—with the smooth sound of the Harvey Diamond Trio, Logan has produced a disk of innovative interpretations of favorite jazz tunes.
Beth Logan Balmuth Raffeld performs frequently in Boston, New York, the Berkshires, and Chicago.
