Van Gogh and the End of Nature
Michael Lobel ’99PhD
(Yale University Press, $45)
“Every time I hear someone extolling Vincent van Gogh as the quintessential painter of nature, I feel like my head is going to explode,” says Hunter College art history professor Lobel. In response, the scholar offers a witty and beautifully illustrated contrarian view of the artist. By embedding him in the “social, political, and cultural currents of [his] era,” especially the rampant environmental degradation and industrial pollution, Lobel proves a splendid guide to the iconic artist. You’ll never look at Sunflowers or The Starry Night the same way again.
Solving The Price is Right: How Mathematics Can Improve Your Decisions On and Off the Set of America’s Celebrated Game Show
Justin L. Bergner ’98
(Prometheus Books/Rowman and Littlefield, $29.95)
Legions of television viewers have tuned in to this long-running game show in which studio contestants place bids on genuine merchandise, trying to come closest to the actual price without going too high. Success, however, is anything but random, maintains the author, a math whiz, investment analyst, and Price is Right devotee. Bergner binge-watched more than 350 shows from 2018 to 2020 to “reverse engineer” this “strategic and mathematical wonderland.” His book offers a wealth of “strategic, heuristic, and psychological methods” that will help contestants and viewers alike prosper on air and in life.
Rainmaker: Superagent Hughes Norton and the Money-Grab Explosion of Golf from Tiger to LIV and Beyond
Hughes Norton ’69 and George Peper
(Atria Books/Simon and Schuster, $28.99)
For young golfers, it’s hard to believe that the game’s top professionals once played for peanuts. The pro sport’s growth to multibillion- dollar status is owed in no small part to former Yale golfer Norton. He joined a fledgling sports management company not long after graduation and shepherded the careers of superstars like Greg Norman and Tiger Woods, helping to make them, his firm, and himself very, very wealthy. But without warning during a phone call in 1998, Woods dumped his agent, and not long thereafter, so did Norton’s company, the International Management Group. Here’s the inside tale of the drive, the putt, and a long but soul-satisfying walk away from the rough.
The Mighty Moo: The USS Cowpens and Her Epic World War II Journey from Jinx Ship to the Navy’s First Carrier into Tokyo Bay
Nathan Canestaro ’14MA
(Grand Central Publishing/Hachette, $35)
As the country entered the second year of the fight against Japan, the Navy was not on board with President Roosevelt’s plan to transform a number of greyhound-quick cruisers into mini aircraft carriers. But desperate times and heavy losses changed that. The USS Cowpens, named for a small South Carolina town where a critical Revolutionary War victory helped turn the tide against the British, was hastily refitted for battle and launched in early 1943. The author’s grandfather served on the ship, but he “never talked much about the war.” In an attempt to tell his story, Canestaro found a larger tale: that of the ship dubbed “the Mighty Moo” by her men, which started life under a cloud but went on to a remarkably distinguished career in battle in the Pacific.
The Mirror of Simple Souls
Aline Kiner, translated from the French by Susan Emanuel ’71
(Pushkin Press, $16.95)
In the 1300s, an ancient Parisian street, once known as the rue des Beguines, was home to “an institution unique in France: the Great Beguinage.” Therein, wrote Kiner in a richly imagined bestselling novel beautifully translated by Susan Emanuel, “a succession of remarkable women lived” who had “refused both marriage and the nun’s cloister.” Various kings and church leaders once allowed these unlikely communities of independent women devoted to religious contemplation and good works to thrive throughout France. But in 1310, the fear of religious unorthodoxy and the smell of execution pyres are in the air. The novelist and translator tell a compelling story of how the very real book that gives the novel its title—a work the Inquisition dubbed heretical—may have helped to bring down the beguinages and the beguines who prospered there.
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