Output: January/February 2025

Alexander at the End of the World: the Forgotten Final Years of Alexander the Great
Rachel Kousser ’94
(Mariner Books, $35)
In 330 BCE, Alexander, the twentysomething upstart leader of the Greek kingdom of Macedonia, had Darius, the more experienced and better equipped ruler of the vast Persian Empire, on the run. Now in command of a huge swath of territory, Alexander could have stopped, secure in the belief that he was certainly good enough, but he continued on his mission to conquer the entire known world. Historian Kousser argues that what happened in this “dangerous, fascinating, momentous, and at times disastrous seven-year odyssey” was “in fact what made him ‘Great.’” With a novelist’s skill, Kousser draws on new archeological research to show how Alexander “forged his legacy: the integrated and globally interconnected Hellenistic world.”

Real Americans: A Novel
Rachel Khong ’07
(Alfred A. Knopf, $29) 
“What could we change about our lives? Could we nudge inheritance in particular directions?” asked May, a brilliant geneticist who fled China for the United States during the Mao years. She takes to heart this country’s free-wheeling spirit in the most fundamental way. But May’s good-intentioned behind-the-scenes experiment to tweak her daughter Lily’s genes didn’t go quite as planned. In this splendid novel that travels a beautifully drawn world between Beijing, New Haven, and many stops in between, Khong weaves together the lives of a splintered family that may, or may not, overcome the chromosomal clutter and reunite.

The Burning Earth: A History 
Sunil Amrith, the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor of History
(W. W. Norton, $35) 
If the Amazon could sing, writes environmental historian Amrith, “a single, keening note would rise above the symphony of the forest—the sound of the chainsaw” as the region “ends in flames.” In this sweeping examination of our misguided attempt to achieve “true human autonomy” via “a liberation from the binding constraints of nature,” the author explores the “war on Earth”—climate change, deforestation, agriculture, militarism, and other elements of the “densely woven braid between inequality, violence, and environmental harm.” He makes a compelling case that our freedom carries the “seeds of future imprisonment” though he highlights a number of activists, from K-pop artists to mining protesters, trying to achieve a “wiser and less violent human relationship with the rest of nature” that could “restore and expand the breadth of our humanity.”

Tablets Shattered: The End of An American Jewish Century and the Future of Jewish Life
Joshua Leifer ’27PhD
(Dutton/Penguin Random House, $32)
The good fortune that American Jews have enjoyed over the past hundred years or so rests on three pillars: “Americanism, Zionism, and Liberalism,” says journalist Leifer, who grew up in an “outpost of Israel in New Jersey’s northwest Bergen County.” But these “foundations of American Jewish life that were built in the last century have begun to crumble,” and just as Moses broke the tablets he’d brought down from God, the members of this country’s Jewish community, beset by “anxiety and division,” are searching for guidance, divine and secular. Leifer provides a personal and wide-ranging look at the “fracturing of American Jewish life” and possible paths forward.

Red Maple: Music for Bassoon and Strings
Peter Kolkay ’05DMA and Calidore String Quartet
(Bridge Records, $16.99 or available on major music streaming services)
The bassoon playing of Peter Kolkay is softer and more emotive than the instrument is usually given credit for being. This hour-long album of works by contemporary British and American composers Joan Tower (the multi-hued “Red Maple”), Russell Platt (the tender “Quintet for Bassoon and Strings”), Mark-Anthony Turnage (the perky then pensive “Massarosa”), and Judith Weir (the thoughtful, gradual “Wake Your Wild Voice”) could be seen as a showcase for the bassoon, but the greater mission is that these are compositions worth exploring. Calidore String Quartet (featuring cellist Estelle Choi ’12MM, alongside violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan and violist Jeremy Berry) coheres neatly with Kolkay’s solos. This is an excellent album to hear on headphones during a wintry walk.