Books

Our prolific classmate, Richard Selzer, has done It again – by publishing his newest book, One Family.  This one is very different from his other books, many of which have been profiled in these pages.  This is not a novel; it’s an exploration, a meditation on the nature of human connectedness.

The book starts with a mind-blowing thought experiment (and proof) that, if you have European ancestry, it’s likely that you are related to every other person with European ancestry on Earth today.  We are indeed … ONE FAMILY. 

His argument is so concise and beautifully laid out that, with the author’s permission, I am including a 650-word excerpt below.

Calhoun roommates in ’68-’69, Scott Howard and Bob Brush have a lot in common:  They sang together in the 1966-68 Baker’s Dozen and were founding members of the Roll and Pin Society (along with Bob Wheeler, James Hallet, Wayne Henderson, Charlie Peck, Brad Davenport and Bo Riehle).

Recently, they decided to collaborate in the creation of a first novel, with Bob as the author and Scott as the illustrator. 

Bob is an Emmy-award winning writer and executive producer of The Wonder Years and recipient of other awards. Scott is a retired banker now deep into painting, non-profit work, and family. “Read More” to see more about the novel, The Piazza: Stories from Piazza Santa Caterina

Ted Snow announced his new book, published just after our reunion, with customary humor: “There are a few benefits of having a stroke, which I did several years ago – like good parking spaces and getting special treatment at the airport – but I don’t recommend it. However, a few good things came out of it: Time to copy and organize of a lifetime’s worth of photos, and writing a book, The Sixth Element: How Carbon Shapes Our World.“

The following Amazon blurb summarizes the contents and offers a preview of the book. Ted’s other personal update is included below that.

As Amazon explains:  “Our math genius, Bernie Weber, is a high school student in Milwaukee who has the ability to deduce the prime factors of any large number. (FYI: modern cryptology is based on using large prime numbers, which computers cannot extract when they are used in encoded messages).

When Bernie performs as “Pryme Knumber” in a math circus at a Milwaukee college, an intelligence officer in the audience realizes the value of his innate ability and informs the CIA of this potential human resource. They test Bernie to see if his ability is authentic and decide to give him a thumb drive with an encoded message to crack. By mistake, they give him a top-secret message they have intercepted but have not been able to decipher….

Dr. Daniel Duke, a professor emeritus at UVa, released a new novel, Pursuit of Happiness, in late June.  It joins two earlier novels — Man Camp (2022) and River of Dreams (2023).  His author profile explains that “his novels address important issues, ranging from what it means to be a man in the 21st century to whether pursuing happiness is worth the effort.” The Amazon “blurb” for The Pursuit of Happiness gives a peek into…

Either Richard had these books queued up or he’s so prolific that he’s putting ChatGPT and its cousins to shame!   Richard has released two books in just over one month — a novel and a collection of shorter stories.

Let the Women Have Their Say: a Trojan Novel was released April 30th, with this summary:

“Now, in Rainmaker, Norton draws back the curtain on his meteoric rise and abrupt fall. With never-before-told stories and exclusive insights, he discusses what it was like being Tiger Wood’s first agent, his time representing the narcissistic Greg Norman, and shining a bright light on his sudden—and controversial—ouster as the head of IMG’s Golf Division—a juggernaut he helped build. This is an engaging and unforgettable memoir that explores golf as never before.”

The Coun­cil of the Amer­i­can Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal So­ci­ety (AMS) has voted to award Eu­gene Lin­den The Louis J. Bat­tan Au­thor’s Award for his 11th book, Fire and Flood: A Peo­ple’s His­tory of Cli­mate Change, from 1979 to the Pre­sent. A pre­vi­ous work on cli­mate change, Winds of Change: Cli­mate, Weather, and the De­struc­tion of Civl­liza­tions, won the Grantham Prize’s Award of Spe­cial Merit.

A for­mer se­nior writer for TIME Mag­a­zine, where he wrote about na­ture, sci­ence, and …

Matt Flynn’s newest book differs from his series on Bernie Weber, math genius.  His new thriller is set closer to home, namely, Matt’s experience as a court clerk on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.  He hastens to add that the scenes in the book about cheating with an attractive Asian co-clerk are pure fiction. 😉
Plot Summary:  In The Court of Last Resort, Federal Judge Adam Willow, a former Marine commando, demands perfect justice. Some defendants …