In print

Why Architecture Matters
by Paul Goldberger '72
Yale University Press, $26

"Architecture is what happens when people build with an awareness that they are doing something that reaches at least a little bit beyond the practical," writes Goldberger, an award-winning architecture critic for the New Yorker. The result can be banal, or transcendent. In this eloquent examination of "the making of place and the making of memory," Goldberger doesn't offer a "single theory of architecture." Instead, he writes about how "good intentions become serious ideas … capable of pleasing us, or, better still, moving us."

At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution Is Transforming Privacy
by Jeannie Suk '95
Yale University Press, $55

"In our tradition, the State is not omnipresent in the home," declared Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 2003 case that struck down a Texas sodomy law on the basis of unwarranted government intrusion. Yet feminists have shown that home is not always a refuge, and women in particular sometimes have more to fear from within than without. Harvard law professor Suk explores the unanticipated ways that laws designed to protect against domestic violence have compromised privacy rights inside the home.

The Earwig's Tail
by May Berenbaum '75
Harvard University Press, $23.95

"After 30 years as an entomologist, I have come to realize that the majority of the most bandied-about insect facts familiar to the general public aren't facts at all," writes Berenbaum. In this entertaining invertebrate bestiary, she repudiates 26 modern myths about insects—from the earwig's propensity to inhabit ears to the aphrodisiac abilities of Spanish fly.

Bravura! Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre
by Alex Ewing '53
University Press of Florida, $36

In 1940, Lucia Chase, a wealthy widow who abandoned dance to raise a family, reclaimed her career by cofounding the Ballet Theatre. (It added "American" to its name in 1956.) Chase returned as a dancer and served as artistic director for the next 40 years. Her son Alex Ewing, an arts administrator (for a time, with the ABT's archrival Joffrey Ballet) and professor, presents an intimate biography of a remarkable woman who has been called "the sovereign mother of American ballet."

Flying Pictures
by Daniel Gordon '06MFA
powerHouse Books, $45

For this book, Gordon spent three years in upstate New York and northern California, trying to fly. He would select a landscape, position an assistant with a camera, and then leap into the sky like a diver off a board and try to stay airborne. The camera captured the moment of maximum loft. The result is a collection of strange but arresting photographs that look faked, but aren't. (Not shown: the occasionally painful landings.)

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness
by Harlow Giles Unger '53
Da Capo Press/Perseus, $26

In the famous painting Washington Crossing the Delaware, a young lieutenant is pictured just behind the general, holding an American flag. He was James Monroe, and he would go on to serve as a congressman, senator, ambassador to France and Britain, governor of Virginia, secretary of state, secretary of war, and ultimately president. Unger's biography, written for a popular audience, tells the story of one of the less familiar founding fathers.

More books by Yale authors

Saleem H. Ali 1996MES
Treasures of the Earth: Need, Greed, and a Sustainable Future
Yale University Press, $30

Willis Barnstone 1960PhD
The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels Thomas, Mary, and Judas
W.W. Norton & Company, $49.95

Sarah Blake 1983
The Postmistress
Penguin Group, $25.95

Orville Gilbert Brim 1952PhD
Look at Me! The Fame Motive from Childhood to Death
University of Michigan Press, $25

Steve G. Brown 1971
Sol Y Sombra: Short Stories from the Sonoran Desert
Tiny Island Press, $14.95

Dennis Cusack 1979
Tibet's War of Peace: A Nation's Nonviolent Struggle for Freedom
Brown Door Publishing, $24.95

Joan Dejean 1974PhD
The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual—and the Modern Home Began
Bloomsbury, $28

Thomas J. Espenshade 1966MAT
No Longer Separate, Not yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life
Princeton University Press, $35

Alex C. Ewing 1953
Bravura! Lucia Chase and the American Ballet Theatre
University Press of Florida, $36

Jack Fuller 1973JD
Abbeville: A Novel
Unbridled Books, $12.95

David Gelernter 1976, 1977MA, professor of computer science
Judaism: A Way of Being
Yale University Press, $26

Loren Ghiglione 1966MUrbS, 1966JD
CBS's Don Hollenbeck: An Honest Reporter in the Age of McCarthyism
Columbia University Press, $29.95

David Gibbons 1979
Mastering Cheese: Lessons for Connoisseurship from a Maître Fromager
ClarksonPotter, $40

Glenda E. Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History
Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950
W.W. Norton & Company, $19.95

Chris Glaser 1977MDiv
As My Own Soul: The Blessing of Same-Gender Marriage
Church Publishing, $20

Paul Goldberger 1972
Why Architecture Matters
Yale University Press, $26

Daniel Gordon 2006MFA
Flying Pictures: Photographs
Powerhouse Books, $45

Lori Gottleib 1989
Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough
Dalton Books, $25.95

Nortin M. Hadler 1964
Stabbed in the Back: Confronting Back Pain in an Overtreated Society
University of North Carolina Press, $25

Alan Hirshfeld 1978PhD
Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes
Walker & Company, $26

William Honeychurch, assistant professor of anthropology
Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire
University of Washington Press, $40

Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History
Thucydides: The Reinvention of History
Viking, $26.95

Jonathan A. Knee 1988JD
The Curse of the Mogul: What's Wrong with the World's Leading Media Companies
Portfolio, $26.95

Lawrence Kramer 1972PhD, editor
Musical Meaning and Human Values
Fordham University Press, $24

FredrikB. Logevall 1993PhD
America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity
Belknap Press of Harvard University, $26.95

Michael Mazur 1961MFA, illustrator
I'll Tell What I Saw: Select Translations and Illustrations from the Divine Comedy
Sarabande Books, $16.95

Maria Rosa Menocal, Sterling Professor of the Humanities
The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture
Yale University Press, $24

Nara B. Milanich 2002PhD
Children of Fate: Childhood, Class, and the State in Chile, 1850–1930 
Duke University Press, $24.95

Rebecca Reider 2005MES
Dreaming the Biosphere: The Theater of All Possibilities
University of New Mexico, $39.95

Anthony W. Rogers 1963
Above Ground: An Anthology of Living Fiction
Harvard Square Editions, $14.95

Randolph Roth 1981PhD
American Homicide
Harvard University Press, $45

Joan Shelley Rubin 1974PhD
A History of the Book in America: Volume 5: The Enduring Book: Print Culture in Postwar America
University of North Carolina Press, $60

David Slavitt 1956, translator
Orlando Furioso: A New Verse Translatio 
Harvard University Press, $39.95

Jacob D. Albert 1980MArch, James V. Righter 1970MArch, and John B. Tittmann 1986MArch; foreword by Robert A. M. Stern 1965 MArch, Dean of the School of Architecture
New Classic American Houses: The Architecture of Albert, Righter & Tittmann
Vendome Press, $50

Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet 1990
Tulips, Water, Ash 
University Press of New England, $16.95

Jeannie Suk 1995
At Home in the Law: How the Domestic Violence Revolution is Transforming Privacy
Yale University Press, $55

Trysh Travis 1998PhD
The Language of the Heart: A Cultural History of the Recovery Movement from Alcoholics Anonymous to Oprah Winfrey
University of North Carolina Press, $35

Ivy G. Wilson 2002PhD, editor
At the Dusk of Dawn: Selected Poetry and Prose of Albery Allson Whitman
University Press of New England, $55

Ben Yagoda 1975
Memoir: A History
Riverhead Books, $25.95

David Zweig 1977
Money for Nothing: How the Failure of Corporate Boards is Ruining American Business and Costing Us Trillions
Free Press, $27