Hot Type

Roy Tawes ’58 (writing as R. Lawson)
Recall
Amazon Digital Services

Four former high school football teammates ship off for battle and return to encounter new conflicts—against inner demons and a divided society—in this gripping Vietnam War novel. Drawing from declassified CIA intelligence reports, as well as from his own experience as a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon, Tawes deftly weaves historical fact with narrative fiction, providing a raw, honest look at a polarizing war and the cultural—and personal—revolutions it produced.

Muriel Garfunkel Gillick ’72
Old & Sick in America
UNC Press

What role do Big Pharma, device makers, and insurers play in Americans’ health? A geriatrician and palliative care physician, Gillick follows her older patients from the doctor’s office to the hospital to assisted living, examining the outside forces at work in their care—sometimes to their detriment. Five decades after the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, Gillick thinks it’s time for a patient-centered revamp, but wonders how—and whether— the U.S. could embrace a culture change.

Jon Michael Varese ’94
The Spirit Photographer
The Overlook Press

In Varese’s chilling debut novel, a 19th-century photographer makes a name capturing spirits of the departed in his portraits ... or so he claims. But even he’s surprised when the image of the dead daughter of an escaped slave develops in a staged photo, leading him on a quest for answers. “Equal parts Southern Gothic, ghost story, and political drama,” reviewers write, “The Spirit Photographer reveals the past for what it is: loud, unrelenting, and inescapable.”

Marié Abe ’01
Resonances of Chindon-ya
Wesleyan University Press

As a hybrid of street musicians and walking advertisements, chindon-ya performers have added to Japan’s vibrant soundscape for the better part of two centuries. In the first book-length study of these colorful artists, ethnomusicologist Abe challenges Western ways of listening and examines how a traditional means of marketing has regained traction, against a background of economic downturn, growing social precariousness, and urban saturation.