University of Massachusetts Press Spring 2025 Catalogue
massachusetts
When Ronald Reagan chose C. Everett Koop to be Surgeon General of the United States in 1981, many opposed the nomination because of his conservative social views and strong anti-abortion beliefs. By the time he left office, the same people who had vilified him were singing his praises and many conservative politicians and activists were criticizing him as a traitor. How had Koop remade himself and this government office?
As Nigel M. de S. Cameron shows in this first full biography, Koop was, above all, guided in his decisions by his unwavering physician’s commitment to saving lives. Even in the face of political pressures and what many expected to be his personal beliefs, he focused on science and public health. On smoking, abortion, and AIDS he openly defied Republican politicians and alienated New Right conservatives because his reading of the science did not support their ideologies. Koop remains a sterling example—to both left and right—of how public officials should conduct themselves.
NIGEL M. DE S. CAMERON has written about history, bioethics, theology, the values of the medical profession, and corporate social responsibility. He has served as a hospital consulting ethicist, was founding editor of the journal Ethics and Medicine, and a board member of 2020health.org and BioCentre.
April 2025 • 460 pp. • $34.95 paper, 978-1- 62534- 853-1
In 2022, the United Nations and others started reporting the true severity of the climate crisis as the Earth passed a point of no return. All across the globe it was the worst year on record for climate-related disasters. Like so many, John Hanson Mitchell felt overwhelmed. He looked to the story of Voltaire’s Candide, and settled on the famous aphorism from that book: “We must cultivate our garden.”
The Garden at the End of Time features Mitchell’s trademark blend of science, literature, and anecdote as he processes both the information he is reading from various sources and what it prompts him to do in his own small corner of the world. The story that unfolds is one of Mitchell diversifying his plantings; fighting what he sees as unnecessary local development; and meditating on other moments, real and imagined, when people sought refuge even as they did their part to improve a personally and collectively stressful situation. With gravitas, kindness, and wit, Mitchell offers a model for maintaining a connection to nature even as it reels from manmade threats.
JOHN HANSON MITCHELL is the founder and was the longtime editor of Massachusetts Audubon Society’s award-winning journal Sanctuary. He has published numerous books, including, most recently, Legends of a Common Stream
May 2025 • 186 pp. • $24.95 paper, 978-1- 62534- 870-8, Bright Leaf
Reuben Ruby and Nathaniel Gordon II were born eleven months apart in 1798 and 1799 and spent much of their boyhoods roaming the noisy, bustling waterfront of Portland, Maine. They lived just blocks from one another, attended school together, and went to the same church with their families. But they were worlds apart, separated by family, culture, and race. Reuben Ruby was Black and Nathaniel Gordon was white. The Rubys became prominent antislavery activists, equal rights advocates, and operatives on the Underground Railroad. Their neighbors, the Gordons, became well-to-do ship masters, owners, and merchants.
In The Divided North, a compelling narrative history and intimate dual-family biography, Carol Gardner traces the Rubys and Gordons as they navigate the turbulent 1800s. They demonstrate that the North was a critical proving ground for American notions of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South. Their experiences help reveal what it meant to live in a free state during the age of slavery, with all the promise, disappointment, irony, and hope that the notion entailed.
CAROL GARDNER is author of The Involuntary America: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World. She has written pieces for The Washington Post, Portland Press Herald, Time-Life Books, and The Women’s Review of Books, among others.
April 2025 • 256 pp. • $34.95 paper, 978-1- 62534- 874-6
JUNIPER PRIZES
Gichigami is an eerie coming-ofage novel, weaving between 13-year-old Marta and the person desperately trying to keep her and her long-absent mother apart. With rich prose and vivid imagery, Lindsey Steffes spins a tale of loss, longing, and betrayal set against the backdrop of the harsh yet beautiful landscape of Lake Superior.
LINDSEY STEFFES’s work has been recognized by Glimmer Train and featured in Atticus Review, Black Heart Magazine, and Sad Girl Diaries.
March 2025
190
978-1-
April 2025
80 pp., $18.95 paper 978-1- 62534- 864-7
“I’ll tell you everything I know. Though there might not be much to tell,” confesses the speaker in Strange Hymn by Carlene Kucharczyk, in a meticulously crafted lyrical journey exploring morality and humanity. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, “After I’m gone, don’t bury my body— / Burn it, and turn it into song.”
CARLENE KUCHARCZYK’s writing has appeared in Poetry Northwest, among others.
On March 16th, 2015, Tracy Youngblom’s youngest son, Elias, was struck nearly head on by a drunk driver going 70 miles per hour. In this riveting memoir, Youngblom traverses her family’s lives before and after the accident, capturing the complications of grief, recovery, and the strength it takes to move forward—because we must.
TRACY YOUNGBLOM is the author of two poetry collections, Boy and Growing Big, as well as two chapbooks
In this debut collection, tangled bonds of love and family collide with a natural world both fragile and ferocious. Set across the Midwest and rural Appalachia, the stories in Joyriders offer a resonant vision of rural and small-town life: lonely, half-haunted landscapes are pierced with moments of light, and even the most taciturn faces conceal inner worlds both rich and strange. Comfort and heartache abound— entangled, inseparable.
GREG SCHUTZ’s stories have appeared in Best American Short Stories and Best American Mystery Stories
April 2025
80 pp., $18.95 paper
978-1- 62534- 865-4
“We breathe, and then / vanish,” proclaims a speaker in Once When Green, a new collection by accomplished poet Mark Irwin. While deeply personal, the book engages the earth, “gulls, / gray, quarreling air, their ha-ha-ha-ing at our trace / of garbage and carbon,” and addresses mortality as well as the consequences of global warming.
MARK IRWIN is the author of twelve collections of poetry, including Joyful Orphan, Shimmer, and A Passion According to Green
March 2025
pp., $22.95 paper
62534- 855-5
Hill Farms: Surviving Modern Times in Early Twentieth-Century Vermont
Dona Brown
$34.95 pb, 987-1-62534-872-2
July 2025
Emerson’s Daughters: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and Their Family Legacy
Kate Culkin
$34.95 pb, 987-1-62534-876-0
July 2025
German Memorials, Motifs, and Meanings: A Cultural History in Bronze, Wood, and Stone
Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich
$34.95 pb, 987-1-62534-882-1
June 2025
Out Doing Science: LGBTQ STEM Professionals and Inclusion in Neoliberal Times
Tom Waidzunas, Ethan Czuy Levine, and Brandon Fairchild
$29.95 pb 987-1-62534-880-7
May 2025
Transcendent Woman: Margaret Fuller’s Art and Achievement
David M. Robinson
$30.95 pb, 987-1-62534-878-4
July 2025
Boston and the Making of a Global City
James C. O’Connell
$32.95 pb, 987-1-62534-862-3
July 2025
The Making of a Black Communist: The Selected Writings of Eugene Gordon
EDITED BY
Louis J. Parascandola
$36.95 pb, 987-1-62534-868-5
June 2025
Seeing to See: The Non-Teleological Poetics of Dickinson and Thoreau
Daniel A. Nelson
$32.95 pb, 987-1-62534-856-2
August 2025
Critical Perspectives on Latino Education in Massachusetts
EDITED BY
Lorna Rivera and Melissa Colón
$34.95 pb, 987-1-62534-866-1
August 2025
Reading the Renaissance: Black Women’s Literary Reception and Taste in Chicago, 1932–1953
Mary I. Unger
$34.95 pb, 987-1-62534-858-6
June 2025
What We Know, What We Wish: Maine Statehood, Historical Commemoration, and the Urgency of Public History
EDITED BY
Liam Riordan and Richard W. Judd
$34.95 pb, 987-1-62534-860-9
June 2025
Interpretations of American History: 9th Edition
Francis G. Couvares
$43.95 pb, 987-1-62534-884-5
August 2025
BUZZWORTHY BACKLIST
MALCOLM BEFORE X
Patrick Parr
$29.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-816-6
African American Intellectual History
SAILING TO FREEDOM Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad
EDITED BY Timothy D. Walker
$27.95, paper, 978-1-62534-592-9
CONIFERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND–ACADIAN FOREST
A Cultural History
Steve Keating
$24.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-787-9
Bright Leaf
THE INNERMOST HOUSE
A Memoir
Cynthia Blakeley
$22.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-814-2 Bright Leaf
TESTING EDUCATION
A Teacher’s Memoir
Kathy Greeley
$24.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-783-1
TRAIL RUNNING SOUTHERN VERMONT
Ben Kimball
$22.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-789-3 Bright Leaf
OUR SCIENCE, OURSELVES
How Gender, Race, and Social Movements
Shaped the Study of Science
Christa Kuljian
$29.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-818-0
Activist Studies of Science & Technology
FOOD MARGINS
Lessons from an Unlikely Grocer
Cathy Stanton
$26.95, td paper, 978-1-62534-805-0
CLIMATE JUSTICE AND PUBLIC HEALTH Realities, Responses, and Reimaginings for a Better Future
EDITED BY Rajini Srikanth and Linda Thompson
$32.95, paper, 978-1-62534-803-6
MISSION STATEMENT
ABOUT THE PRESS
University of Massachusetts Press publishes scholarly and creative books, in both print and digital formats, that reflect the high quality and diversity of contemporary intellectual life on our campuses, in our region, and around the country and the world. We serve interconnected communities— scholars, students, and citizens—and with our publishing program we seek to reflect and enhance the values and strengths of the university and the commonwealth.
CONTACT INFORMATION
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS PRESS
East Experiment Station 671 N. Pleasant Street Amherst, MA 01003
Boston office: 617-287-5610
Website: www.umasspress.com
Staff directory, seasonal catalogs, and author guidelines are available on our website.
www.facebook.com/umasspress
UMass Press staff are proud members and supporters of the Professional Staff Association and University Staff Association.
linkedin.com/company/umasspress @umasspress
ORDERING INFORMATION
University of Massachusetts Press books are distributed in the United States by Chicago Distribution Center, in Canada by University of British Columbia Press, and in the UK, Europe, Africa, Asia, Hawaii, Australia, Oceania, and the Middle East by Mare Nostrum Group.
To place an order to be shipped from the United States, please contact the Chicago Distribution Center: 800-621-2736 (U.S. customers) 773-702-7000 (all other customers) orders@press.uchicago.edu
Customer service representatives are available Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. central time.
To place an order to be shipped from Canada, please contact University of British Columbia Press: 800-565-9523 utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca
To place an order to be shipped from the UK, please contact: Mare Nostrum Group 39 East Parade Harrogate North Yorkshire HG1 5LQ United Kingdom
Trade Orders & Enquiries
Email: trade@wiley.com Tel: +44 (0)1243 843291
Individual Orders & Enquiries:
Orders should be placed through your local bookstore, an online retailer, or via email: mng.csd@wiley.com
