Alumni Bookshelf

Dino A. Brugioni, BA ’47, MA ’48, published “The Effects of Aerial Satellite Imagery on the 1973 Yom Kippur War” in the fall 2004 issue of Air Power History. It was the first article on how the SR-71, U-2 and satellite imagery was used during that national and international crisis. “For us it was additionally difficult since [former Vice President Spiro] Agnew had resigned and impeachment proceedings were started on President Nixon during this period. I was surprised the agency approved it since much of the imagery is still classified,” Brugioni says. The author is a resident of Hartwood, Va.

The author of 10 books, Mary Wakefield Buxton, MA ’86, published Love Stories, People and Places of Middlesex County (Rappahannock Press, 2004), a collection of stories gathered from Buxton’s weekly columns spanning more than 20 years writing for the Southside Sentinel in Urbanna, Va. Local residents, sights, and traditions are celebrated in the work, which also is filled with photo-graphs of area landmarks.

Beloved for his thoughtful prayers and inspiring poetry, Richard B. Carleton was known as “the Poet Preacher.” His son, Jon R. Carleton, EdD ’99, collected many of his papers and sermons and wrote The Tie that Binds: The Poems of the Poet Preacher (iUniverse, 2004) and This is the Way I Pray: The Prayers and Meditations of the Poet Preacher (iUniverse, 2004). The latter was selected as an “editor’s choice” by the publisher.

Ben Clevenger, who completed his residency in pathology at GW Hospital in 1971, published The Far Side of the Sea (Jesuit Fathers of Southern Arizona, 2004), a novel on the life of Padre Eusebio Kino, a missionary from Europe who lived among the Pima and Papago Indians of northern Sonora and southern Arizona in the late 17th century. Kino was named by the Arizona Republic as one of the 10 most influential people in the state’s history. In addition to recounting Kino’s life and works, the novel describes the work of the archaeologists who discovered his burial site in Sonora in 1966. Clevenger is retired from his service as a medical officer in the U.S. Air Force and lives with his wife near Phoenix.

A collection of 172 letters written by John W. Chase during his service with the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War, Yours for the Union (Fordham University Press, 2004), co-edited by Bonnie B. Collier, MFA ’71, is part of The North’s Civil War series published by Fordham University. The letters detail how Chase, a widower with four children, struggled to provide for his family, maintain his finances, and obtain food and clothing to supplement his sparse rations during the tumultuous days of the war. She resides in Boyds, Md.

The Eighties: America in the Age of Reagan (Yale University Press, 2004) by John Ehrman, PhD ’93, recounts how the country changed in myriad ways—from technological advancements to revisions of the tax code—during the fast-paced decade. Ehrman tracks the transformation in the context of the late president’s policies and convictions and examines the broader trends that enabled Reagan to achieve so much of his agenda. The author is a foreign affairs analyst for the federal government and previ-ously was a history lecturer at GW.

Brian Forst, PhD ’93, is the author of Errors in Justice: Nature, Sources and Remedies (Cambridge University Press, 2004), part of the Cambridge Studies in Criminology Series. The work applies approaches for managing errors in domains such as production quality control and statistical inference to the reduction of wrongful conviction and wrongful nonconvictions attributable to the police, prosecutors, and courts.

Writing under her pen name, Rebecca York, Ruth Glick, BA ’64, published her 100th book, Crimson Moon (Berkley Sensation, 2005), the fourth book in her popular werewolf series. The novel’s hero, Sam Morgan, delights in robbing rich men whose companies wreck the environment. He meets his match in a woman who hires him to pull off a spectacular robbery—she turns out to be the daughter of his sworn enemy. Glick, who often uses her native Washington as the setting of her books, set Crimson Moon in her husband’s home state of California. Glick and her husband reside in Columbia, Md.

In Sarah’s Long Walk (Beacon Press, 2004), Paul Kendrick, BA ’05, and his father, Stephen Kendrick, tell the story of Sarah Roberts, whose father sued the city of Boston in 1849 to gain her access to white schools, setting in motion a direct legal line that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education. Rather than force her to walk past five other schools to Abiel School on Beacon Hill, at that time underfunded and overcrowded, Benjamin Roberts hired Robert Morris, the first African American attorney to win a jury case in the United States, and Charles Sumner to present the case. In 1850, Chief Judge Lemuel Shaw ruled against them, writing a decision that set the basis for the “separate but equal” standard in Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1855, a liberal reformer used the arguments from the Roberts case to lead to the desegregation of Massachusetts public schools. Paul Kendrick previously was an intern for Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), and is the Washington chapter president of the NAACP.

Julie Guyton Landsman, BA ’66, is the author of A White Teacher Talks About Race, (Scarecrow Press, 2001), which was chosen by Barnes & Noble as part of its Closing the Book on Hate series. She currently tours nationally and internationally, discussing the work and speaking on issues of racism, social activism, and teaching. “After 28 years in the classroom, most in city schools, this has been a marvelous gift,” Landsman reports. She resides in Minneapolis.

An educational psychologist who coaches adults and adolescents to enhance their performance at work, home, or school, Geraldine Markel, EdS ’68, is the co-author of Peterson’s Parent’s Guide to the SAT and ACT (Peterson’s 2004). Other books she has co-written include Performance Breakthroughs for Adolescents with Learning Disabilities and ADD and Helping Adolescents with ADHD and Learning Disabilities. Markel resides in Ann Arbor, Mich.

As a parent of a severely food-allergic child, Nicole (Shields) Smith, BBA ’83, says she knows “the struggles to keep your child safe and yet also keep them a part of a group of friends.” She is the author of Cody the Allergic Cow: A Children’s Story of Milk Allergies (Jungle Communications, 2004).

Col. Robert D. Taplett, MA ’74, is retired from the U.S. Marine Corps and published Dark Horse Six (Phillips Publications, 2003), a memoir of his experiences in the Korean War from August 1950 to February 1951. As the commanding officer of the 3rd battalion, 5th Marines, Taplett says, “my heart told me to record their outstanding story of daily combat and self-sacrifice and lasting camaraderie.”

War Games: Inside the World of 20th-Century War Reenactors (Smithsonian Institution Press, 2004) by Jenny Thompson, MA ’93, takes readers into the heart of an American subculture whose thousands of members dress the part and debate the meanings of more recent American wars. While Civil War reenactments are well known to the public, Thompson says reenactments of more recent wars, including World War II and Vietnam, are far less familiar to the public. The book is based on interviews with participants, survey data, and seven years of fieldwork—Thompson herself donned uniforms and joined with several units to find out what reenactment was all about.

Daniel Weiss, BA ’79, the James B. Knapp Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University, published his fourth book, France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), with co-author Lisa Mahoney. Weiss is a resident of Baltimore.