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In Print

Michael Johnston ’97
In the Deep Heart’s Core
Grove Press, $22

Right after graduating from Yale in 1997, Colorado resident Michael Johnston traveled to Mississippi to work for two years in Teach for America, a program that helps meet the staffing needs of some of the most underserved public schools in the United States. After a hasty few weeks of training, Johnston began his career at Greenville High, a once-thriving school in the Mississippi Delta, an area known, according to the prevailing folk wisdom, as the “deep heart’s core” of the Deep South.

The English teacher arrived with a few lesson plans and a youthful idealism that “education was the one valuable skill I could bring to Mississippi that she could use. It was the well-intentioned gift I offered for the privilege of room and board and revelation.”

In this powerful memoir of his time at Greenville, a school whose students “had been through more memorials than grade promotions, more funerals than honor roll assemblies,” Johnston receives revelations aplenty. These began with his first morning in the classroom, when “it was farewell to my romantic notion of what teaching might be,” and he encountered a “series of characters and experiences [that] threatened to break my faith in humanity every day.” And they would continue as the teacher had to deal with all the well-known problems that stalk inner-city schools.

But Johnston persevered, and, in part by teaching his charges to play chess, he helped turn around some lives. The effect of chess players rather than drug dealers becoming the hotshots on campus is reminiscent of calculus teacher Jaime Escalante’s triumph in the movie Stand and Deliver. “I discovered that feeling of redeeming exhaustion that comes when you work so hard for something you believe in,” he writes. Johnston also discovered the truth of a phrase written by Yeats: “in the deep heart’s core” lies hope.

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J. D. McClatchy ’74PhD
Hazmat
Alfred A. Knopf, $23

In Hazmat, the latest book of poetry by J.D. McClatchy, the hazardous material in question is not (as a reader may most readily assume) a highly dangerous external substance that people must avoid at all costs in order to lead healthy lives. The “hazmat,” for McClatchy, is much closer to the heart.

In the poet’s view, hazmat is the human body itself, as it becomes its own—or another body’s—worst enemy.

In “Largesse,” he writes about a youth who is already cultivating the body that harms itself: “You don’t know where it’s been, my mother said, / And slapped the sidewalk nickel out / Of my mouth.” Of partaking the harmful, McClatchy writes, “From brimming nipple to crematory flame, / We give ourselves to what will take / The breath away.”

Other human hazards explored in the poems include a suicide bomber who desires death for himself and others (“And who would want to return to life / Except to be killed again?”), and a cancer patient (“The birthday she had over and over prayed / To die before was offered like a present”). In the latter, the body’s death is a double-edged sword. Death is guaranteed to be victorious, but that is not enough of a win. After the patient has suffered enough and an end to life is invoked, death further shows its power by cruelly withholding the final blow.

What appears to be the saving grace in these, our dangerous bodies, is their ability to be kind and to connect with one another. A positive connection comes—but too late—in “Visiting the Dead,” where a son imagines his dead, estranged father to life: “Could I tell him I loved him. / I reached to embrace him and closed my arms on air.” A more successful attempt at reciprocated feelings appears in “Two Men.” Even though a somewhat distant love exists between the title characters, the poem ends with the speaker hoping for “a future that will have come out right, / each of us, both of us, brought at last to light.” The first step towards salvation, here, is at least believing, while still alive, that illuminating love is possible.

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John Leggett ’42
A Daring Young Man: A Biography of William Saroyan
Alfred A. Knopf, $30

“I remember,” John Leggett writes, “when Saroyan was the rage, when plays spilled from his beloved Underwood like bucketfuls from a swollen springtime stream. In the year 1939 three of them were on Broadway, one a Pulitzer and Drama Critics prizewinner [The Time of Your Life] for best play of the year.” There were also popular novels such as The Human Comedy, as well as screenplays, short stories that he could dash off in a couple of hours, and memoirs.

While unable to explain Saroyan’s eclipse since his death in 1981, the biographer offers a convincing portrait of the author as a daring young man with a chip on his shoulder. Based largely on the writer’s exhaustive journals, the biography charts by the day, and sometimes by the hour, the quick rise and long, depressing fall of the boy wonder. The tale brings encounters with celebrities from Charlie and Oona Chaplin to Ernest Hemingway and Marlon Brando.

Saroyan’s writing philosophy, Leggett says, was “to forget rules, to be yourself and write what you pleased, to spurn adjectives . to learn typing for speed, and, above all, to live life to its emotional peaks.”

Through this merciless tide of negative book reviews, gambling losses, and fights with wife, family, the U.S. Army, and nearly everyone else, the reader can never stop hoping that the next book—or the next card or roll of the dice—would bring the tireless brawler the wealth and respect his ego demanded.

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Joan Sullivan ’95
An American Voter: My Love Affair with Presidential Politics
Bloomsbury, $23.95

As someone who has braved the “smoky back rooms” of a political campaign, I know that the experience can disillusion even the most idealistic person.

Following the recent death of her father, Joan Sullivan was looking for a political education and joined the advance team on Senator Bill Bradley’s 2000 campaign for president. But she feared losing her ideals. That fear, it turned out, was not unfounded.

An American Voter, Sullivan’s account of life on the campaign trail, reveals the less glamorous side of a presidential campaign—she encounters long hours, huge egos, a seeming disarray in the campaign’s organization, and the frustration of feeling that her talents are being wasted. Yet she remains on the team.

The reason, it seems, is found in Sullivan’s own idealism. She has known Bradley, a longtime family friend, since she was 16, but becomes enamored with his honesty, his sincerity, and his ideals. She is “nervous with admiration” for Bradley, she writes, and falls into the trap that so many young political idealists do: She comes to truly believe in him, in his candidacy, and in his chances to win the White House.

That sets her up for a severe blow when Bradley ultimately fails to get the Democratic nomination. But it also helps her come to terms with the loss of her father. “I grew up believing, because of my father, that dreams and ideals were something practical, something that could be maintained,”says Sullivan.

And so Bradley becomes a father figure to her, a man “who also believes in dreams and ideals.” Despite the bumps along the way, Sullivan holds on to her idealism.

But what she doesn’t count on is falling in love with politics. Sullivan starts out despising “this awful, crass business” and ends up romanticizing the entire political process, even the aspects that infuriate her. “Maybe I have become a political realist, or maybe I am too in love to see straight,” she writes. But Sullivan finds, as she reflects on her experiences, that she actually did learn something about the political system: that for all of its flaws, its success eventually comes down to the actions of the American voter.

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Brief Reviews

Katherine Lawrence ’90 and Jeff DeGraff
Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen
Jossey-Bass, $24.95

A “one-size-fits-all” approach to fostering creativity in the workplace often yields disappointing results. The authors show how businesses can discover and tailor creative practices to their specific needs and stimulate innovation.

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Harold Morowitz ’47BS, ’51PhD
The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex
Oxford University Press, $28

Biologist Morowitz takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the universe, making stops in places where complexity emerged, from the birth of stars to the birth of cities.

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G.B . Trudeau ’70, ’73MFA
Peace Out, Dawg! Tales from Ground Zero
Andrews McNeel Publishing, $16.95

The crew from Doonesbury, now in its 32nd year, appears in this post-9-11 compilation of comic and poignant adventures in places such as Walden College, corporate boardrooms, and Ground Zero.

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Frank M. Turner ’71PhD, the John Hay Whitney Professor of History
John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion
Yale University Press, $35

Cardinal Newman, an Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism in 1845 and has been mentioned as a candidate for canonization, is portrayed as less than saintly in this magisterial biography.

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Jessica Warner ’91PhD
Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason
Four Walls Eight Windows, $24.95

One of the first wars on drugs began in 1720 when gin emerged as the drink of choice among London’s working poor. Historian Warner provides a lively social history of the impact of “Mother Gin.”

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Allen Weinstein ’67PhD and David Rubel
The Story of America: Freedom and Crisis from Settlement to Superpower
DK Publishing, $35

This beautifully illustrated history provides a novel view of the development of the United States by examining 26 key historical episodes and profiling the leading characters.

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More Books by Yale Authors

Deb Abramson 1991
Shadow Girl: A Memoir of Attachment
University of Iowa Press, $27.95

Jack M. Balkin 1994MAH
The Laws of Change: I Ching and the Philosophy of Life
Schocken Books, $32.50

David Boonin 1986
A Defense of Abortion
Cambridge University Press, $65

Marie Borroff 1956PhD, Sterling Professor Emerita of English
Stars and Other Signs: Poems
Yale University Press, $18.95

Barnaby Conrad 1944 and Monte Schulz, Editors
Snoopy’s Guide to the Writing Life
Writer’s Digest Books, $19.99

Alex Epstein 1985
Crafty Screenwriting: Writing Movies That Get Made
Owl Books, $15

Bruce Feiler 1987
Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths
William Morrow, $23.95

Paul Foos 1997PhD
A Short, Offhand Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict During the Mexican-American War
University of North Carolina Press, $18.95

Lorraine Gorrell 1966MM, 1967MA
Discordant Melody: Alexander Zemlinsky, His Songs, and the Second Viennese School
Greenwood Press, $69.95

Richard Jensen 1966PhD and J. Douglas Smith
World War II on the Web: A Guide to the Very Best Sites
SR Books, $23.95

Richard M. Ketchum 1943
Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York
Henry Holt, $30

Karl Kirchwey 1979
At the Palace of Jove
G.P. Putnam’s Sons/Marion Wood Books, $26

Katherine A. Lawrence 1990 and Jeff DeGraff
Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen
Jossey-Bass/Wiley, $24.95

Elise Lemire 1986
Miscegenation: Making Race in America
University of Pennsylvania Press, $35

Ellen Peel 1982PhD
Politics, Persuasion, and Pragmatism: A Rhetoric of Feminist Utopian Fiction
Ohio State University Press, $49.95

Samantha Power 1992
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide
Basic Books, $30

Stephen G. Ray Jr. 1993MDiv
Do No Harm: Social Sin and Christian Responsibility
Fortress Press, $17

Lori Rotskoff 1999PhD
Love on the Rocks: Men, Women, and Alcohol in Post-World War II America
University of North Carolina Press, $45

Lawrence Schimel 1993, Editor
Found Tribe: Jewish Coming Out Stories
Sherman Asher Publishing, $15.95

Bruce Shenitz 1976, 1994MSL and Andrew Holleran, Editors
The Man I Might Become: Gay Men Write about Their Fathers
Marlowe and Company, $16.95

Harvey B. Simon 1963
The Harvard Medical School Guide to Men’s Health
Free Press, $27

Ray Sipherd 1957
The Devil’s Hawk: A Mystery
Thomas Dunne/St. Martin’s Minotau, $23.95

John F. Stacks 1964
Scotty: James B. Reston and the Rise and Fall of American Journalism
Little, Brown, $29.95

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg 1962JD
Reflections on Higher Education
Oryx Press, $29.95

Khristaan Villela 1990, Logan Wagner, and Ellen Bradbury
Contemporary Mexican Design and Architecture
Gibbs Smith, $50

Loren Wengerd 2001, Laura K. Hurwitz, and Amanda Lumry, Photographers
Holmespun: An Intimate Portrait of an Amish and Mennonite Community
Vista Press, $45

Gary Jay Williams 1974PhD
Our Moonlight Revels: A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Theatre
University of Iowa Press, $24.95

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