Mark Lance, a former labor reporter who graduated from Boston College in 1971, has published his first book, The Weber House (2022). It’s a young adult mystery that tells the story of Nicole who has moved into a house on Maine’s seacoast that locals say is haunted. She and her new friend “team up to search for a legendary treasure. They apply math and science lessons in centuries-old tunnels and on the Atlantic Ocean. But this is no game. Someone else, armed not with theorems but rather an assassin’s knife, is also searching, and watching their every move. The girls think they are hunters. In fact, they are the prey.” Lance teaches math in a GED program in New York City. He said he wrote The Weber House as gift for his daughter. He is currently working on a historical novel about the year 1877.
A haunted house in Maine
A kid’s guide to the First Amendment
Boston College graduate Clelia Gore, a former literary agent and vice president of a boutique literary agency, has co-authored a children’s book, Your Freedom, Your Power (Running Press Kids/Hachette, 2023). Writing under the name Clelia Castro-Malaspina, she and her co-author Allison Matulli offer middle grade readers a look at the freedoms and rights granted through the First Amendment (freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition the government). The book not only explains fundamental legal concepts, but also shares the stories behind some of the most important legal cases and social movements that have affected kids’ lives and rights.
Rough Sleepers
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tracy Kidder will return to campus September 7 to address BC first-year students, who were asked to read his critically acclaimed new book, Rough Sleepers: Dr. Jim O’Connell’s Urgent Mission to Bring Healing to Homeless People (Random House, 2023), over the summer. Kidder will be accompanied by Dr. Jim O’Connell—the subject of his story of a dedicated doctor who helped to create a medical system for the homeless people of Boston. A master of reporting and nonfiction storytelling, Kidder spent time over five years riding with Dr. O’Connell as he navigated the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, and friendship to some of the city’s endangered residents. Called a “magnificent, deeply researched, and inspiring book,” Rough Sleepers highlights the dignity of each person and the importance of integrating care for the physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual dimensions of a person. “First-year students will benefit greatly from reading this honest, reflective, and authentic account of someone who has significantly impacted the way in which Boston cares for its unhoused population,” said Michael Sacco, executive director of the Center for Student Formation and Office of First Year Experience. “By engaging with both Kidder and Dr. O’Connell, we hope that our students can envision what a life of service to others might mean for them.” Read more in BC News.
Posted in Guest Authors
Tagged Boston, First Year Academic Convocation, homelessness, nonfiction
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Mystery on Cape Cod
Boston College graduate Ted (T.M.) Murphy, writing under the pen name Declan Rush, has published a new novel set on Cape Cod. In the suspense thriller Macabre Trophies (Dark Waters Books, 2023), J.T. O’Rourke’s life has entered another downward spiral, but then he’s offered a job as a reporter for a local bi-weekly paper at The Point on Cape Cod. J.T. welcomes the opportunity not only to escape another stifling summer manning a pub, but also to leave behind a traumatic secret that haunts his dreams. J.T enjoys the postcard scenery of The Point until a summer kid goes missing and everything changes. As the last person to see the teenager alive, J.T. is thrust into the limelight as the disappearance opens old wounds from a cold case involving the brutal murder of a local boy on Christmas Eve, 1972. An author and educator, Murphy has written several books, including The Running Waves, the Belltown Mystery series, and the Totally Weird Activity books.
Philosophical hermeneutics
The Hermeneutics of Person, Belongingness and Diverse Philosophies (an anthology) is a collection of essays written by Boston College Assistant Professor of the Practice of Philosophy Stanley Uche Anozie. Philosophical hermeneutics is central to Anozie’s research and writings. These essays are recent hermeneutical reflections on the person, social responsibility, political belongingness, political rights, rights to self-determination, justice, global development, cultural competence, the question of responsibility, and just war theory. The perspectives range from indigenous African philosophy/African hermeneutic philosophy to Western/European perspectives.
Animals in the Bible
In What Does the Bible Say About Animals? (New City Press, 2022) author Jaime Waters surveys all the different ways that animals appear in the Bible. She highlight animals as a part of creation—as something that’s blessed and cared for by God—but also animals as food and animals as sacrifices. She also explores the possibility of animal afterlife and the ethical responsibility humans have for animals. A Biblical scholar, Waters focused some of her early scholarship on agricultural and ecological issues in the Bible. Waters received her bachelor’s degree from Boston College and is now an associate professor in the BC School of Theology and Ministry.
Welcome to Shiver-by-the-Sea
Boston College grad Erin Dionne, a children’s book author, has created a silly, spooky new chapter book series about friendship, community restoration and involvement, and helping your neighbors . . . even if some of them may be monsters. The series follows the adventures of Bella, who moved from New York City to the Massachusetts beach town of Shiver-by-the-Sea, her new friend Cooper, and Cooper’s dog Casper. The series is illustrated by Jenn Harney. The first two volumes of the Shiver-by-the-Sea series are Bella and the Vampire and The Were-woof. Dionne’s long list of authored books includes Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking, The Total Tragedy of Girl Named Hamlet, Balletball, and Secrets of a Fangirl, among others.
Polemical ethics
Martin Heidegger held Plato responsible for inaugurating the slow slide of the West into nihilism and the apocalyptic crisis of modernity. In his book, Towards a Polemical Ethics: Between Heidegger and Plato (Roman & Littlefield), Boston College Professor of Philosophy Gregory Fried defends Plato against Heidegger’s critiques. From the publisher: “While taking seriously Heidegger’s analysis of human finitude and historicity, Fried argues that Heidegger neglects the transcending ideals that necessarily guide human life as situated in time and place. Thinking both with and against Heidegger, Fried shows how Plato’s skeptical idealism provides an ethics that captures both the situatedness of finite human existence and the need for transcendent ideals. The result is a novel way of understanding politics and ethical life that Fried calls a polemical ethics, which mediates between finitude and transcendence by engaging in constructive confrontation with both traditions and other persons.”
Murder runs in the family
Bestselling author James Patterson and Boston College graduate Mike Lupica, an acclaimed sports journalist and bestselling author, have teamed to write The House of Wolves (Little, Brown and Company, 2023). After her father’s murder, Jenny Wolf is left in charge of a billion-dollar empire—and a family that, according to the publisher, is more ruthless than Succession’s Roys and Yellowstone’s Duttons. Patterson and Lupica previously collaborated on the book The Horsewoman. Another co-authored book, 12 Months to Live, is forthcoming this fall.
Evolution of school desegregation policy
In The Crucible of Desegregation: The Uncertain Search for Educational Equality (University of Chicago Press, 2023), Boston College political scientist R. Shep Melnick examines the evolution of federal school desegregation policy from 1954—when the Supreme Court delivered the landmark decision of Brown v. Board of Education—through the termination of desegregation orders in the first decades of the 21st century. Combining legal analysis with a focus on institutional relations, Melnick argues that years of ambiguous, inconsistent, and meandering Court decisions left lower court judges adrift, forced to apply contradictory Supreme Court precedents in a wide variety of highly charged political and educational contexts. As a result, he contends, desegregation policy has been a patchwork, with lower court judges playing a crucial role and with little opportunity to analyze what worked and what didn’t. The Crucible of Desegregation reveals persistent patterns and disagreements that continue to roil education policy. Melnick is the Thomas P. O’Neill, Jr. Professor of American Politics at Boston College and author of The Transformation of Title IX: Regulating Gender Equality in Education, Between the Lines: Interpreting Welfare Rights, and Regulation and the Courts: The Case of the Clean Air Act.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged education policy, Political Science department, racism, Supreme Court
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