In his new book Bully Nation: How the American Establishment Creates a Bullying Society (University Press of Kansas, 2016), author Charles Derber, a sociologist at Boston College, argues that bullying is not limited to a personal, psychological issue but is a structural problem of our highly militarized, capitalistic society. Derber and co-author Yale Magrass of the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth say large corporations, the government, and the military all perpetrate vast bullying. They give examples in their book of the corporate bullying of workers, consumers, and animals for slaughter; military bullying of weaker nations, and government and police bullying of immigrants and prisoners. “The bullying strain is very profound due to the institutional realities of our society,” says Derber. “As a country, we have made it pretty clear that we are going to use whatever means necessary to secure our strategic interests.” Read more from BC News.
A Bully Nation
More honors for Bilder, ‘Madison’s Hand’
Founders Professor of Law and Lee Distinguished Scholar Mary Sarah Bilder has been awarded the James Bradford Biography Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic for her book Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention. This is the latest honor for Bilder and Madison’s Hand, which won a Bancroft Prize and was named a finalist for George Washington Prize. More from Boston College Law School Magazine.
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Tagged American history, Boston College Law School, constitution
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Book review of Charles Corm
The summer issue of the Middle East Quarterly has a review of Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese “Young Phoenician” by Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies Franck Salameh. The journal called it “an eloquent and profound biography” of Corm, a Lebanese writer, industrialist, and philanthropist. Salameh also is the senior editor in chief of The Levantine Review. For more about Salameh’s biography see the BC Bookmarks 7/30/15 post.
Machine Feelings
Phil Temples, a Computer Science systems administrator, has published a new short story anthology, Machine Feelings and Other Stories (Big Table Publishing, 2016). The volume features some 50 science fiction/fantasy stories from Temples, representing 15 years of writing. Temples is also the author of the novel The Winship Affair.
Karl Rahner
Fr. Robert Imbelli, associate professor of theology emeritus, offers an appreciation and critique of Jesuit Karl Rahner, one of the most influential Catholic theologians of the 20th century, in an article for First Things. Fr. Imbelli is the author of the book Rekindling the Christic Imagination: Theological Meditations for the New Evangelization.
Whodunit in DC?
BC alumna Colleen J. Shogan, who serves as Deputy Director of National and International Outreach for the Library of Congress, also is the author of the Washington Whodunit mystery book series. The first book, Stabbing in the Senate (Camel Press, 2015) won a 2016 Next Generation Indie Book Award for “Best Mystery.” She has recently released the second book in the series, Homicide in the House, which was named to Roll Call’s Capitol Hill Summer Reading List. The series follows the adventures of Kit Marshall, a congressional staffer whose life often intersects with mystery and murder.Life of Virginia
BC alumna Beverly Mayne Kienzle has penned a biography of her grandmother, Virginia Cary Hudson (1894-1954), whose collection of essays, published after her death, sold more than a million copies and was on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks. Virginia Cary Hudson, the Jigs & Juleps! Girl: Her Life & Writings (iUniverse, 2016) contains never before published photos, poems, drawings, and excerpts from letters, all by Hudson, as well as Hudson’s own accounts of experiences when she accompanied her horseman husband to race tracks from Kentucky to Cuba to Las Vegas. Kienzle is a retired Harvard Divinity School professor who has published a dozen books and some 70 articles in her field. More from Broadway World.
Forming student leaders
The book 5 Steps to Effective Student Leadership: Insights & Examples (New City Press, 2014) combines student affairs best practices with Ignatian spirituality in a resource for the formation of student leaders. Inspired by the lives and experiences of actual student leaders, 5 Steps offers real-world examples of how to engage students in effective practices that both teach the individual and build the community. The authors are BC alumni Dennis Carr and Hannah Trost and Lynch School of Education lecturer Michael James, director of LSOE’s Institute for Administrators in Catholic Higher Education.
The Hopefuls
Best-selling author and Boston College alumna Jennifer Close tells a story about ambition and marriage in her new novel, The Hopefuls (Knopf, 2016). Husband and wife Matt and Beth, newcomers to Washington, D.C., befriend a charismatic White House staffer named Jimmy, and his wife, Ashleigh. Soon the couples’ friendship—and Beth’s relationship with Matt—is threatened by jealousy, competition, and rumors. Close also is the author of Girls in White Dresses and The Smart One. Read an interview with Close in Entertainment Weekly. | Washington Post book review
Tavarelli’s Star Fragments
BC Fine Arts Professor of the Practice Andrew Tavarelli has traveled extensively in Bali and Southeast Asia—always with a journal, a set of watercolors, and a camera. Material from Tavarelli’s travel journal provided the basis for his unpublished novel, False Stars. Now, Tavarelli has taken passages from that book and combined them with watercolors to create a new novel, Star Fragments. The author/artist, who believes in the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words,” writes in the book’s preface that “Just as each [narrator’s] voice adds to the richness of the story, the imagery expands the narrative and makes it tangible.” View or download here.
BC Bookmarks 