BOOK S H E L F
Recent Releases Going Big: FDR’s Legacy, Biden’s New Deal, and the Struggle to Save Democracy Robert Kuttner ’65 THE NEW PRESS
Kuttner lays out what’s at stake for the United States at this particular juncture with a sobering opening line: “Joe Biden’s presidency will be either a historic pivot back to New Deal economics and forward to energized democracy, or a heartbreaking interregnum between two bouts of deepening American fascism.” Kuttner, cofounder and coeditor of The American Prospect and professor at Brandeis University’s Heller School, is an unabashed progressive, and his explanation of how we got here is at least as unsparing in its criticism of Democratic Presidents and policies as it is of anything on the right. But Kuttner still holds qualified hope for Biden, and the book’s final chapter is a blueprint outlining a range of remedies he hopes Biden will pursue moving forward, including executive orders, increased oversight of financial practices, and legislative initiatives.
City of Incurable Women Laura Larson ’87 SAINT LUCY BOOKS
In the late 1870s, the director of Paris’ Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital established a photography studio to document its treatment of women with hysteria and published three volumes of its photographs as a medical reference book. Larson juxtaposes photography from those books and other archival material with her own images and words as a sort of dialogue between her and the women depicted in the book, whom she imagines as a collective. Among other things, the book is a mesmerizing and complex meditation on the autonomy of women’s bodies.
OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2022 SUMMER
The Depth of Change: Selected Writings and Remarks on Social Change Greg Coleridge ’81 48 HOUR BOOKS
Coleridge’s lifetime dedicated to social change activism began with the anti-Apartheid movement at Oberlin and is currently centered around Move to Amend, an organization working to pass a constitutional amendment abolishing the doctrine of “corporate personhood.” His approach to politics extends to the marketing of this anthology of Coleridge’s articles, columns, editorials, sermons, and poems: It’s available only at Cleveland Heights, Ohio, bookstore Mac’s Backs, not Amazon (they ship—www.macsbacks.com).
Binge Times: Inside Hollywood’s Furious Billion-Dollar Battle to Take Down Netflix Dade Hayes ’93 and Dawn Chmielewki HARPER COLLINS
Hayes, a veteran entertainment industry reporter, explores with his cowriter the attempts to undermine the oncegrowing streaming service. “In their writing, in their perceptive analyses, and in their vivid portrayal of a large cast of characters, Hayes and Chmielewski’s book easily rivals such business-book staples as Barbarians at the Gate, The Informant, and Too Big to Fail,” says Booklist. “The authors…take a complex subject and make it not only understandable but riveting.”
This Time Tomorrow Emma Straub ’02 RIVERHEAD BOOKS
The fifth novel from New York Times-bestselling author Straub is a time-travel fantasy that asks the big question— what would you do differently if you could go back in time?— but narrows it to something intimate: the relationship between the main character and her father. “The pages brim with tenderness and an appreciation for what we had and who we were,” says novelist Ann Patchett. “I could not have loved it more.”
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