Barnes & Noble has announced its first national Book Club selection for 2019: The Only Woman in the Room (Sourcebooks, 2019) by Boston College alumna Marie Benedict. A historical novel, The Only Woman in the Room tells the story of Hedy Lamarr, a glamorous Hollywood film star who was also an inventor. She co-developed and co-patented a revolutionary frequency-hopping radio signal that was eventually used by the U.S. Navy. The invention laid the groundwork for today’s wireless communication technology. Benedict graduated from BC in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in history. She is also the author of The Other Einstein, about Mileva Maric, a mathematician and first wife of Albert Einstein. Read more about Benedict and her books in the New York Times Book Review and Newsweek.
The Only Woman in the Room
Landrigans’ book honored
Children and Environmental Toxins: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press), co-authored by BC alumni Philip J. Landrigan and Mary M. Landrigan, was named a 2018 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year. For nearly 50 years, the AJN Book of the Year Awards have recognized exceptional publications that help faculty and clinicians advance health care quality. Children and Environmental Toxins, an accessible book for parents and policymakers about the risks chemicals pose to children, was awarded first place in the Environmental Health category. A pediatrician, epidemiologist, and an internationally recognized leader in the public health field, Dr. Philip Landrigan is the founding director of Boston College’s Global Public Health initiative.
Posted in Alumni Authors, Awards/Honors, Boston College Authors
Tagged children, global public health
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Salameh on Charles Corm
Francophone Lebanese novelist Alexandre Najjar recently interviewed Boston College Professor Franck Salameh about his biography of writer and businessman Charles Corm, an influential figure in the nationalism movement that led to Lebanon’s independence. The interview was published in the Middle East’s leading francophone literary journal, L’Orient Littéraire, and explores the driving force behind Salameh’s interest in the works and life of Corm. Salameh is an associate professor of Near Eastern Studies in BC’s Department of Slavic and Eastern Languages and Literatures and the Senior Editor in Chief of The Levantine Review. For more about Salameh’s book Charles Corm: An Intellectual Biography of a Twentieth-Century Lebanese “Young Phoenician,” see this BC Bookmarks post from 2015.
Posted in Boston College Authors
Tagged biography, Slavic and Eastern Languages Dept
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The Politics of Petulance
In his latest book, Boston College Professor Emeritus of Political Science Alan Wolfe states that the nation is in an age of political immaturity. He calls on public intellectuals to step up today to challenge the president and demagoguery, similar to the way political thinkers like Richard Hofstadter, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Lionel Trilling took on McCarthyism. Wolfe, the founding director of BC’s Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, is the author of more than 20 books on politics, religion, moral freedom, and democracy. Read a book review of The Politics of Petulance: America in an Age of Immaturity (The University of Chicago Press, 2018) in the New York Times.
A special teacher
In a new novel by Boston College graduate Bradley Smith, readers are introduced to a special education teacher whose anxiety threatens to overwhelm him. The teacher’s students and his relationship with them play an essential role in his ability to effectively manage his anxiety. A Special Education in Anxiety is a semi-autobiographical work, according to Smith, who teaches students with special needs in Washington state and received his master’s degree from BC’s Lynch School in 2010. He talked about his book and his vocation as a teacher with his hometown newspaper, The Columbian.
Snowbound
A young student is scheduled to present his project on Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica when a snowstorm traps him at home. He’s inspired to log his snowbound adventure in the spirit of Shackleton. That’s the story behind Captain’s Log: Snowbound (Charlesbridge, 2018), a new picture book written by Boston College alumna Erin Dionne and illustrated by . The Kirkus starred review calls Snowbound “entertaining, informative—utterly delightful.” Dionne is the author of several books, including Lights, Camera, Disaster; Ollie and the Science of Treasure Hunting; Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking, and Notes from an Accidental Band Geek.
Best of 2018
A number of books written by Boston College graduates have been named to various “best books of the year” lists. A Mighty Girl, a multimedia platform that promotes books, toys, movies, and music for parents, teachers, and others dedicated to raising smart, confident, and courageous girls named three BC alumni books to its 2018 Best Books of the Year list: Just Being Jackie by Margaret Cardillo; Rescue and Jessica: A Life-Changing Friendship by BC alumnus Patrick Downes and Jessica Kensky, and No More Mean Girls: The Secret to Raising Strong, Confident, and Compassionate Girls by Katie Hurley. Writer’s Bone, a Boston-based multimedia platform featuring author interviews, named My Old Faithful by Yang Huang to its 50 Best Books of 2018 list. Longreads, which is dedicated to sharing the world’s best storytelling, included The Heart is a Shifting Sea: Love and Marriage in Mumbai by Elizabeth Flock in its 2018 Holiday Gift Book Guide. Are there any other “best of the year” alumni-authored books BC Bookmarks overlooked? Please comment below.
Posted in Alumni Authors, Awards/Honors
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Medellín at 50
The Second CELAM (Latin American Bishops Council) Conference held in Medellín, Colombia in 1968 was a significant moment for the Catholic Church. It was foundational for the reception of Vatican II, the evolution of liberation theologies, and the emergence of diverse ecclesial movements committed to peace, justice, and the integrity of creation. In the new volume The Grace of Medellín: History, Theology and Legacy (Convivium Press, 2018), 20 theologians, social ethicists, and historians offer reflections on aspects of Medellín that warrant remembrance, recognition, and reinvention, particularly within the context of the United States. The editors of The Grace of Medellín are all faculty members from the School of Theology and Ministry: Margaret Eletta Guider, O.S.F., associate professor of missiology; Félix Palazzi, associate professor of the practice; and O. Ernesto Valiente, associate professor of systematic theology.
Learning to code, swiftly
All innovators have vision, but some lack the technical skills to build their vision. Learn to Program Using Swift for iOS Development (Flatworld, 2018), a textbook by BC Associate Professor of Information Systems John Gallaugher, presents a different way to learn coding fundamentals. Through video-centered learning and a flipped classroom model, students learn coding by developing apps. According to Gallaugher, there may be no better introduction to programming than Swift for iOS app development–a fast and powerful programming language designed to be less error-prone and highly readable. Once students learn Swift and iOS, they find it easier to acquire new programming languages and development skills for other platforms. Gallaugher is an award-winning professor and founder of Boston College TechTrek, through which students spend several weeks visiting with technology executives, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Seattle, Boston, New York, and Ghana. During his time on the leadership team of the Boston College Venture Competition, entrepreneurs affiliated with the program have built thriving businesses, gained admittance to elite startup accelerators, launched multiple products, and raised over $100 million in capital. He talks about his book in this video from BC Libraries.
A matter of trust
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the internal migration of a growing population transformed Britain into a “society of strangers.” The coming and going of so many people wreaked havoc on the institutions through which Britons had previously addressed questions of collective responsibility. In her new book, Trust Among Strangers: Friendly Societies in Modern Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2018), Cooney Family Assistant Professor of History Penelope Ismay re-centers problems of trust in the making of modern Britain. In this groundbreaking account, she examines the ways in which upper-class reformers and working-class laborers fashioned and refashioned the concept and practice of friendly society to make promises of collective responsibility effective – even among strangers. Read an essay drawn and adapted from Trust Among Strangers in the fall issue of Boston College Magazine.
BC Bookmarks 