Authors and Artists

Spring 2022

Books

How High We Go in the Dark

Jeremy “Sequoia” Nagamatsu ’04
William Morrow/HarperCollins and Bloomsbury, January 2022

In 2030, a grieving archeologist arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue the work of his recently deceased daughter at the Batagaika Crater, where researchers are studying long-buried secrets now revealed in melting permafrost, including the perfectly preserved remains of a girl who appears to have died of an ancient virus. Nagamatsu takes readers on a wildly original and compassionate journey, spanning continents, centuries, and even celestial bodies to tell a story about the resilience of the human spirit, our infinite capacity to dream, and the connective threads that tie us together.

Longshot: The inside story of the race for a COVID-19 vaccine

David Heath ’81
Center Street/Hachette Book Group, January 2022

This is the incredible story of the scientists who created a coronavirus vaccine in record time. Investigative journalist David Heath ’81 takes readers inside the small group of scientists whose groundbreaking work was once largely dismissed but whose feat will now eclipse the importance of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine in medical history.

Love or Perish: A Holocaust Survivor’s Vision for Interfaith Peace

Harold Kasimow
iPub Global Connection, October 2021

Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies Harold Kasimow’s latest book leads with the heart-wrenching personal story of how he and his family survived the Holocaust by hiding under a cowshed for more than 19 months. He follows with tributes to his mentor, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and other eminent theologians and philosophers. Kasimow has dedicated his life to spreading hope and goodwill through interreligious dialogue, and Love or Perish discusses how the heart of many of the world’s religions can foster a community of love and respect.

Major Fitz-Gerald and the Matter of War: An Anzac Archive

John Scheckter ’74
Australian Scholarly Publishing, August 2021

In 1915, Maj. Richard Francis Fitz-Gerald was the last Australian to leave an exposed position at Gallipoli, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He went on to serve on the Western Front throughout World War I. Everywhere he was posted, often while in danger, he collected materials that marked his experience. Major Fitz-Gerald and the Matter of War personalizes the difficult position of a front-line officer by closely examining the things he carried, collected, and preserved for the rest of his life.

Medieval Art 250–1450: Matter, Making, and Meaning

Anne F. Harris and Nancy M. Thompson
Oxford University Press, August 2021

Medieval Art 250-1450: Matter, Making, and Meaning, co-authored by Anne Harris, Grinnell president and professor of art history, is an innovative textbook for the undergraduate medieval art course. Using a case-study approach, the textbook engages students in close readings of medieval objects and buildings in their devotional and experiential contexts. It asks students to consider the fascinating trajectories of medieval images and objects, from invention to production and from reception to preservation. Building on the art historical traditions of iconography and social history, Medieval Art 250–1450 uses the critical methodologies of gender, race, class, queer theory, post-colonialism, narrative, embodiment, materiality, and eco-criticism to inform its case studies.

The Genius of Bob’s Burgers

Margaret France ’98
McFarland, December 2021

This book-length critical study of Bob’s Burgers examines the moments in which the animated sitcom exposes the chasms between generations, explores gender and sexual identity, and allows fans to imagine a better world. By tracing the ways that the popular reception of Bob’s Burgers reflects changing cultural attitudes, the essays provoke broader questions about the responsibility of popular entertainment to help audiences conceive of fantasies closer to home: fantasies of loving and accepting parents, of creative, self-assured children, and of menus filled with artisanal puns.

The Last Liberal Republican: An Insider’s Perspective on Nixon’s Surprising Social Policy

John Roy Price ’60
University Press of Kansas, June 2021

This memoir comes from John Roy Price ’60, one of Nixon’s senior domestic policy advisers, a cofounder of the Ripon Society, and an employee on Nelson Rockefeller’s campaigns, who joined Daniel Patrick Moynihan and later John D. Ehrlichman in the Nixon White House to develop domestic policies, especially on welfare, hunger, and health. Based on those policies and the internal White House struggles around them, Price places Nixon firmly in the liberal Republican tradition of President Theodore Roosevelt, New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic

Jill Peterson ’03 and James Densley
Abrams Books, September 2021

The Violence Project examines the phenomenon of mass shootings in America and is an urgent call to implement evidence-based strategies to stop these tragedies. Using data from the writers’ groundbreaking research on mass shooters, including first-person accounts from the perpetrators, The Violence Project charts new pathways to prevention and innovative ways to stop the social contagion of violence.

Fall 2021

Books

African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama

The University of Oklahoma Press released African Maroons in Sixteenth-Century Panama: A History in Documents edited by Robert C. Schwaller ’03 in September. From the 1520s through the 1580s, thousands of African slaves fled captivity in Spanish Panama and formed their own communities in the interior of the isthmus. In this book, Schwaller documents this marronage in the context of five decades of African resistance to slavery.

Grinnell College in the Twentieth Century 1900–1975

by Beatrice Mills Wall ’40 and Joseph Frazier Wall ’41, edited by Terry Bisson ’64

Excerpt from the foreword by Sarah J. Purcell ’92:

Readers of this manuscript can follow the development of themes that were important to the growth and development of Grinnell College from 1900 through approximately 1975: secularization, enrollments and admissions, curriculum changes and development, commitments to social service, political activism, international students and initiatives, town-gown relationships and tensions, athletic competition, tensions over race and gender, student life and social relationships, and the changing physical plant and importance of campus buildings. Two of the most important themes that shape the narrative demonstrate amply that history is never the story of straightforward progress: College finances and the relationships between Grinnell presidents, trustees, faculty, and, to a lesser degree, students and staff. Readers will see how Grinnell College survived at least two eras of financial hardship in the late 1940s/early 1950s and again in the early 1970s, as the financial drama plays out against the story of strong and weak College presidents, struggles over faculty pay and authority, and against a rising tide of student autonomy, protest, and power across the century.