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| NOV./DEC. 2004 VOLUME 107 NUMBER 3 | Authors |
FINDING ANNIE FARRELL by Beth J. Harpaz '81 (St.Martin's Press). Harpaz, an editor for the Associated Press and author of The Girls in the Van, unearths her mother's secret life in a poignant memoir. The true story begins in rural Maine during the Great Depression when Annie Farrell, one of five daughters from a poor family, moves to New York with dreams of becoming a model. She marries a war hero, and together they raise their own family. But far from her native Maine amid the decay of Manhattan in the Sixties and Seventies, Annie falls into a deep depression. Only summer visits to Maine can revive her spirit. Twenty years after Annie's death, Harpaz begins the search to understand her mother's sorrow and her deep attachment to the Maine woods.
THE
BATTLE OF SALAMIS by Barry
Strauss '74 (Simon & Schuster). One
of the decisive battles of ancient history,
the Greek naval victory at
Salamis stopped the Persian empire
and saved Athenian democracy.
Strauss, a professor of history and
classics at Cornell (and avid rower),
combines erudition and fast-paced
storytelling to portray the Athenian
commander Themistocles (a blend of
charisma and manipulativeness), the
cruel Persian emperor Xerxes, the admiral-queen Artemisia of
Halicarnassus, and the citizen-soldiers who rowed the triremes.
RUNNING
MONEY by Andy Kessler '80
(HarperBusiness). A hedge fund manager
pulls back the curtain on the world of
high finance and shows how the guys who
run big money think, talk, and act. Following
on the success of Wall Street Meat,
Kessler's book on the lives of Wall Street
stock analysts, he recounts his years as a
successful hedge fund manager and what
he learned from some fascinating and
quirky personalities.
REMEMBERING
PINOCHET'S CHILE
by Steve J. Stern '73 (Duke University
Press). In 1998, General Augusto
Pinochet was arrested in London on
charges of crimes against humanity.
After a six-year legal battle, Chile's
Supreme Court stripped Pinochet of his
immunity from prosecution on these
charges. Stern, the chair of the Department
of History at the University of
Wisconsin,Madison, uses the recollections
of individual Chileans to provide
a portrait of a society that has had to confront the legacy of statesponsored
violence.
A
VERY DANGEROUS WOMAN
by Sherry H. Penney and James D.
Livingston '52 (University of Massachusetts
Press). Martha Wright
was a pioneer in the women's rights
and abolitionist movements. In
1848, she and her sister Lucretia
Mott were among the five women
who organized the historic Seneca
Falls Women's Rights Convention.
Penney, professor of leadership at
the University of Massachusetts,
Boston, and Livingston, a materials science teacher at MIT and
a direct descendant of Martha Wright, reveal Wright's life
through her letters.