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Alumni and faculty members who would like to have their books considered for this listing should contact Stacey Himmelberger, editor of Hamilton magazine. This list, which dates back to 2018, is updated periodically with books appearing alphabetically on the date of entry.

  • (Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2024).

    According to the publisher, “Imperial Rome privileged the elite male citizen as one of sound mind and body, superior in all ways to women, noncitizens, and nonhumans. One of the markers of his superiority was the power of his voice, both literal (in terms of oratory and the legal capacity to represent himself and others) and metaphoric, as in the political power of having a “voice” in the public sphere. Muteness in ancient Roman society has thus long been understood as a deficiency, both physically and socially. In this volume, Koenig deftly confronts the trope of muteness in imperial Roman literature, arguing that this understanding of silence is incomplete. By unpacking the motif of voicelessness across a wide range of written sources, she shows that the Roman perception of silence was more complicated than a simple binary and that elite male authors used muted or voiceless characters to interrogate the concept of voicelessness in ways that would be taboo in other contexts.”

     

    As one reviewer noted: “Koenig brings a fresh perspective to the understanding of silence in the culture of the Roman empire, showing that loss of voice can unlock new possibilities of expression that allow the mute person to signify facts and feelings otherwise difficult or dangerous to communicate.” 

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  • (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2023).

    The author, Carleton College’s William H. Laird Professor of German and the Liberal Arts, Emeritus, shares this three-volume catalog of a major collection of books he assembled over the past four decades. According to the publisher: “This catalog of an unparalleled private collection of Rubaiyat-related books and materials describes more than 7,000 items and includes color illustrations of over 2,000 book covers. Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam — first published anonymously in 1859 — was by the early 20th century the most popular literary work in the English language. Only the Bible was printed more frequently. The Rubaiyat became such an integral part of the very fabric of English-speaking culture that by 1900 people were speaking generally of a veritable Omar cult.

     

    “Over the years more than 400 publishers on both sides of the Atlantic have issued thousands of editions/printings of the Rubaiyat. During the heyday of interest in the early decades of the 20th century, some publishers issued more than 20 different printings in a variety of editions in a single year. Many of these books were finely printed as limited editions and were often illustrated by leading artists of the time, such as Elihu Vedder, Edmund Dulac, and Willy Pogany. In addition to printings of FitzGerald’s work, translations, parodies, and scholarly studies appeared, as well as a wide range of fascinating Omariana (novels, calendars, postcards, cartoons, musical works, cigarettes, jewelry, etc.). Included in the collection are many unique items, and only a very small number of the books described are presently held in public institutions.”

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  • (Baker Academic, Ada, Mich. 2023).

    “One reason the Bible has endured for millennia is its ability to reach our common humanness and give uplifting insights about struggle, resilience, and hope,” notes the book jacket. Inside, readers find candid, personal insights from the author, an Old Testament scholar, that “help readers engage biblical texts with both mind and heart — to learn the Bible’s stories, explore theological ideas, question common assumptions, develop interpretive skills, and grow in their own faith.” According to Publishers Weekly, this book “Tackles scripture from a broad-thinking, feminist perspective. ... Smart and impressive.”

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  • (self-published, 2023).

    This is the fourth in an anatomical series of books focusing on human endeavors. Like in the three previous, the author demonstrates methods of how various world cultures have handled some of life’s most common and difficult challenges. This book explores the funeral rituals that most of the societies around the world had to handle. The book discusses the needs and methods in looking for a path to the afterlife. In addition, a section on funerals of the rich and famous is included. Other works, also published in 2023, include The Anatomy of Religions of the World: Seeking God’s Grace, Anatomy of Marriages from Ancient to Modern Times, and Anatomy of Parenting Throughout the Ages: Cultural Differences of Raising Children from Ancient to Modern Times. The author, who enjoyed a long and distinguished career as a pediatrician/pediatric allergist, is the author of several other books.

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  • (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 2021).

    As part of the Oxford International Law Library, this text focuses on investment treaties, which grant special international protection to foreign investors and give them a means to enforce those rights against States in which they have invested. “This book systematically examines the law of international investment treaties, particularly with respect to its origins, structure, content, and effects. Although the precise provisions of investment treaties are not uniform, virtually all investment treaties address the same issues. This book examines those issues in detail, including the scope of application, conditions for the entry of foreign investment, and general standards of treatment of foreign investments,” the publisher notes.

    In this the third edition of the book, last updated in 2015, the author addresses the rapidly and dramatically changing landscape of investment treaty law. For example, the field has seen considerable growth in the number and scope of investment treaties, now estimated at 3,300, and investor-state arbitrations cases, which reached over 1,000 in 2020.

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  • (self-published, 2024)

    Forced into quarantine during the COVID pandemic, many people experienced a range of emotions, not the least of which were frustration and anxiety. To address her own feelings and seeking to do more for her friends, family, and local community, Collier began posting ideas to cope with staying indoors (#IncredibleIndoorIdeas). Many of those revelations led her to write this book. She not only figured out ways to stay safe and sane indoors, but also made new culinary discoveries, remembered some old favorites, and used the lessons of resilience to cope with the new normal. “Part recipes, part cocktails, and part call to action, this book takes you on a sensory journey during a time that humbled, hurt, and surprised so many,” she notes.

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  • (Seattle: Wave Books, 2023).

    In this, the author’s fifth book of poetry, his work illustrates how “writing is a physical act where writing and lived experience support one another in bodies — animal, plant, mineral, and word bodies — that are injured and heal, that die and continue in new forms, playing new roles.” Sylee Gore, in a review on the Poetry Foundation website, writes: “The five long poems in Richard Meier’s A Duration follow a similar form: a prose stanza breaks off midsentence, leaving a charged empty space. That broken sentence is syntactically ‘completed’ in the next stanza, but though the grammar jives, the reader is sometimes jerked into a world subtly or radically altered, with the poem’s subject, setting, or other details changed. ... The effect is momentary confusion — and delight. Repeated across a book, this device kindles a sense of dream logic, or of daydreaming while ambling with a friend." Meier is professor of English and writer-in-residence at Carthage College.

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  • (Seattle: Marrowstone Press, 2023).

    In these his most recent — and perhaps final — books of poetry, the author offers works in two parts. According to the publisher, “… both books are about trekking into what Keats called ‘the old oak Forest’ while recalling earlier and similar journeys, real and imaginary, the poet has made before. In both books, Peter Weltner continues to explore how images from the past, of place, and of passion, recurrently rhyme with the present.”

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  • (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2023).

    In the second half of the 20th century, Reiki went from an obscure therapy known to a few thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans to a global phenomenon. Practitioners channel a cosmic energy - known as Reiki - to heal body, mind, and spirit. Credited with spearheading the international rise and development of Reiki is Hawayo Takata (1900–80), a Hawai‘i-born Japanese American woman who adapted it for thousands of students in Hawai‘i and North America. According to the publisher, this book “analyzes how, from her training in Japan in the mid-1930s to her death in Iowa in 1980, Takata built a vast trans-Pacific network that connected Japanese American laborers on plantations in Hawai‘i to social elites in Tokyo, Hollywood, and New York; middle-class housewives in American suburbs; and off-the-grid tree planters in the mountains of British Columbia. Using recently uncovered archival materials and original oral histories, Justin B. Stein examines how these relationships between healer and patient, master and disciple, became deeply infused with values of their time and place and how they interplayed with Reiki’s circulation, performance, and meanings along with broader cultural shifts in the 20th-century North Pacific.” The author is chair of Asian studies at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia.

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  • (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023).

    The authors, both Wall Street Journal reporters, tell how an amateur gun designer pursuing a hobby in his garage would invent a rifle that has become what they call the “fulcrum of America’s great gun divide.” In the 1950s, Eugene Stoner aimed to devise a lightweight, easy-to-use weapon for American soldiers and their allies during the Cold War. The Marine veteran achieved his goal with the AR-15 rifle. But how did the same gun, which under the name M16 would become standard equipment in Vietnam, evolve into the weapon of choice for troubled individuals intent on killing fellow American schoolchildren, concertgoers, and grocery shoppers? “[Written] in calm, precise language that allows the authors’ exhaustive research to shine through, ... you can feel the tension building one cold, catastrophic fact at a time,” notes The New York Times Book Review. “Among the authors’ feats of reportage was getting gun company executives and entrepreneurs to speak candidly on the record, a virtually unprecedented achievement.” In what is both a biography of the inventor and his invention, American Gun takes a deep dive into the U.S. gun culture, revealing the appeal of the AR-15, the havoc it wreaks, and the politics of reducing its toll.

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