Summer reading

Posted on August 8, 2011 by Bookworm
Since 2004, the University’s Office of First Year Experience has sponsored Conversations in the First Year, a program that joins together the freshman class with ritual, ideas, and conversation. A common text is distributed to the incoming freshman class at orientation. Students are asked to read the text in advance of Academic Convocation where a speaker addresses the class, touching upon the themes of the summer reading. The Class of 2015 is reading National Book Award winner Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann. On Sept. 15, they will gather together on Linden Lane and process to Conte Forum for a special audience with the best-selling author.  As the University’s reading guide says, “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.” Curious what books and speakers were part of previous Conversations in the First Year? Check out this list.
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The remarkable life of Clarence Darrow

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Bookworm
Law School Professor Mark Brodin reviews the new biography Clarence Darrow: Attorney for the Damned by John A. Farrell in the Boston Globe. Brodin calls the book “masterfully researched and elegantly written.”
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CPA winner

Posted on July 20, 2011 by Bookworm
Love One Another: Catholic Reflections on How to Sustain Marriages Today, a book co-edited by Boston College Assistant to the Vice President for University Mission & Ministry Tim Muldoon, has received a third place prize from the Catholic Press Association (CPA) in the book category Family Life. Cynthia S. Dobrzynski served as co-editor. Part of BC’s Church in the 21st Century (C21) Book Series, Love One Another contains essays that offer a look at the challenges facing married Catholics today, but also at the resources from Christian tradition that can help couples and families forge a long and satisfying relationship with one another, with children, and with the communities of the church and society. This marks the fifth CPA recognition for the C21 Book Series. More
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Pottermania

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Bookworm
With the premiere of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” just days away, the Boston Globe and GateHouse News Service highlight a new book about the Harry Potter series by Boston College Romance Languages and Literatures Professor Emerita Vera Lee.  On the Trail of Harry Potter, which was featured in BC Bookmarks last month, is a literary analysis of all seven Harry Potter volumes. An author of 13 books, Lee calls the Harry Potter novels “classics.”
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Under Fire

Posted on June 29, 2011 by Bookworm
Margaret McLean, a member of the BC Class of 1988 who teaches in the Carroll School of Management, is the author of the new legal thriller, Under Fire. The novel is about a Senegalese immigrant charged with setting fire to her own store and shooting the Boston firefighter who tries to save her and her teenage son. McLean, who also graduated from BC Law School, is a former assistant district attorney. For more on McLean and her new book, check out these interviews: GateHouse News,  NECN.
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Women of the Passion

Posted on June 27, 2011 by Bookworm
Following a successful career in academia and numerous scholarly publications, Joan Driscoll Lynch, a 1957 graduate of the Lynch School of Education and professor emerita at Villanova University, has directed her pen toward a new form. Her first novel, Women of the Passion, offers readers an experience of the time after the death of Christ from the point of view of his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the other women who walked with him, bringing to life what may have been their thoughts, fears, and activities at that turbulent time. Inspired by Scripture and incorporating historical research, the book has been called a ‘religious thriller’ filled with ‘suspense, intrigue, and fascinating details of conditions in Jerusalem in the first century.’ Lynch and her husband, Thomas, a 1958 alumnus of the College of Arts and Sciences, reside in Pennsylvania.
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Lessons from the F.B.I.

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Bookworm
William A. Gavin, a member of the Boston College Class of 1963, has co-authored a new book that taps into expertise gained from his 28 years of investigative and executive management positions in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Through a host of real-life FBI stories, from the front lines to the back offices, Pick Up Your Own Brass: Leadership the FBI Way reveals the leadership qualities that have enabled the Bureau to successfully navigate through a century of war, espionage, organized crime, terrorism, fraud, and corruption. Gavin and his co-author Kathleen McChesney offer 50 essential leadership lessons based on challenges that they have faced over the course of their careers. Gavin, now retired from the FBI, headed the field offices in Denver, Colorado, Miami, Florida and New York City, where he had overall responsibility for the resolution of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. In addition, he served as the assistant director at FBI Headquarters where he was responsible for all internal affairs matters, the compliance audits of all FBI domestic and foreign offices and for all long range planning for the FBI.
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Visualizing Law

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Bookworm
Visual digital technologies are having a profound impact on the practice and theory of law, according to BC Law alumnus Richard Sherwin, a professor at New York Law School and author of the new book, Visualizing Law in the Age of the Digital Baroque. According to Sherwin: Lawyers, judges, and lay jurors face a vast array of visual evidence and visual argument. From videos documenting crimes and accidents to computer displays of their digital simulation, increasingly, the search for fact-based justice inside the courtroom is becoming an offshoot of visual meaning making. What is real, and what is simulation? Left unchecked, this condition of ontological and ethical uneasiness threatens the legitimacy of law’s claim to power.
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Numbers 1,2,3,4

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Bookworm
A prose poem by Boston College English Professor Elizabeth Graver – written about a photograph of an Arctic weather station  – was selected to appear along with the photo in the current issue of Hayden’s Ferry Review.
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Banish fear of public speaking

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Bookworm
Boston  College Associate Vice President for Alumni Relations John Feudo shares advice based upon a lifetime of speaking in public in his new book, I’d Rather Eat Live Spiders: A Definitive Guide to Becoming a Successful Speaker. In the book, Feudo discusses the importance of fine-tuning one’s communication skills in any field; how to overcome fear; and tips on using voice, eye contact, and hand gestures to develop a strong presentation. The key, Feudo tells the Boston Globe (last item), is treating all public speaking situations in the same manner: as a one-sided conversation in which you’re answering an unasked question.
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