Girls in White Dresses
Girls in White Dresses — a new book by Boston College alumna Jennifer Close — tells the story of a group of twentysomething friends navigating life, careers and relationships, all while attending a slew of weddings and bridal showers. Close has been interviewed about her book by Washington Life Magazine and Canada’s National Post.
Finding home
In his forthcoming memoir, A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home, alumnus Steve Pemberton (Class of 1989) writes about growing up in a foster home with no knowledge of his biological family. Against all odds, he graduates from BC and becomes a successful corporate executive, marries and has a family. Throughout it, he digs through records and files to find his history, his birth family. Some family members embrace him, but others — in the ultimate disappointment — reject him. It’s a powerful story. Read an excerpt.
Aftermath
Author T.M. Murphy, a member of the BC Class 0f 1993 best known for his Belltown Mysteries children’s series, has teamed with his brother Seton for the adult novel The Running Waves. According to the authors, The Running Waves touches upon the themes of unresolved grief, baseball, brotherly relationships and redemption in the story of 19-year-old Colin Brennan who is haunted by the memory of a tragic accident that took the lives of his two best friends. The Murphy brothers released the book on Kindle this month in the hopes it can reach and help young people who may be dealing with the death of a loved one.
Alan Wolfe faces his critics
The new book Political Evil: What It Is and How to Combat It by acclaimed Boston College political scientist Alan Wolfe is a provocative challenge to widely held beliefs about genocide, intervention and the use of force to combat evil in the world. Wolfe argues that in an age of partisan blame-assigning, therapeutic excuse-making, and theological question-dodging, we need to get serious about the problem of evil once again. He will face critic response from Martha Minow, dean of Harvard Law School and author of two important books on justice, genocide and international justice, and James Traub of New York Times in a panel discussion on Sept. 21 at 6 p.m. in Higgins Hall, room 300. Sponsor: Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life
Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci
Ronnie Hsia will deliver a lecture on the famous Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, SJ, on Sept. 21 at 5:30 p.m. in the Yawkey Center’s Murray Function Room. Hsia, the Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of History at Penn State, is the author of the book, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci, 1552-1610. This lecture is being held in conjunction with the “Binding Friendship: Ricci, China and Jesuit Cultural Learnings” exhibition in the Burns Library. Sponsors: Institute for the Liberal Arts, Jesuit Institute, History Department, and Asian Studies.
The poetry of Meg Kearney
Award-winning poet Meg Kearney will read from her works on Sept. 20 at 5 p.m. in the Hovey House Library. Kearney’s collection of poems, Home By Now, was winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award; it was also a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year. The Secret of Me, her novel in verse for teens, was published in 2005, and its sequel, The Girl in the Mirror, will be published next year. Her first picture book, Trouper the Three-Legged Dog, is forthcoming from Scholastic in 2013.
Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann, author of National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin, will address the Class of 2015 and other members of the BC Community tomorrow as part of the Office of First Year Experience’s Conversations in the First Year, a program that joins together the freshman class with ritual, ideas and conversation. BC freshmen were all given copies of McCann’s book to read in advance of his visit. According to the University’s reading guide: “The gritty world that McCann depicts within this novel is filled with cynicism, dejection, addiction, self-absorption, cruelty, and loss; however, amid this seemingly more powerful world of despair, Let the Great World Spin provides a wellspring of hope that emerges through individual acts of compassion and redemption. It is within these individual acts of generosity that the themes of forgiveness, empathy, faith, and hope emerge.”
On the Constitution
Jack Rakove, one of the nation’s most respected scholars of the American Constitution, will discuss “Beyond Belief: The Radical Significance of the Free Exercise of Religion” on Sept. 15 at 4:30 p.m. in McGuinn Hall, room 121. Rakove, a professor of history, American studies and political science at Stanford University,
has written extensively on the origins of the American Revolution and of the Constitution, and the political ideas and career of James Madison. His publications include James Madison and the Creation of the American Republic, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, which won the 1997 Pulitzer Prize in History, and, most recently, Revolutionaries: A New History of the Invention of America. Co-sponsors: Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy, BC Legal History Roundtable, and the History and Political Science departments.
Do we really have free choice?
In his new book The Myth of Choice: Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits (Yale University Press, October 2011), Boston College Law Professor Kent Greenfield shows that the so-called “choices” that confront us daily are often not choices at all. Greenfield takes a provocative and culturally savvy look at how many of our decisions are constrained, manipulated, and forced upon us by a gauntlet of biological, economical, and cultural influences. Greenfield is an expert in the areas of constitutional law, business law and legal theory. The latest Boston College Law School Magazine features a cover story on Greenfield, as well as an excerpt from his book. Listen to Greenfield talk about The Myth of Choice.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged free will, Law School, personal responsibility
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