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JUL./AUG. 2005 VOLUME 108 NUMBER 1 Authors

SPEAKING FREELY by Floyd Abrams '56 (Viking). Abrams, who has argued before the Supreme Court many times, presents behind-thescenes details of eight of his important cases that have shaped First Amendment rights. From his appeal on behalf of the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case to his defense of the Brooklyn Museum's exhibition of a painting that incorporated elephant dung to his challenge of the constitutionality of campaign finance reform in the McCain-Feingold Act, Abrams recounts the legal battles he has fought to preserve freedom of speech in the United States.

WE WHO ARE ABOUT TO… and THE TWO OF THEM by Joanna Russ '57 (Wesleyan University Press). Two of Russ's classic feminist science fiction novels return to print in new editions with forewords by Samuel Delany and Sarah Lefanu. The first is a subversive shipwreck story that turns the Robinson Crusoe plot on its head; the second, a portrait of a future world in which a young woman's creativity is being transformed into madness by the maledominated society in which she lives.


THE FRANK FAMILY THAT SURVIVED by Gordon F. Sander '72 (Hutchinson). Sander, a journalist, historian, and former artist-in-residence at Risley College for the Creative and Performing Arts at Cornell, recounts the story of the "other" Frank family (Sander's mother, aunt, and maternal grandparents). The book portrays their flight from Nazi Germany to Holland, their thousand-day submersion in a small flat in the Hague, and their efforts to avoid detection during raids that searched for Jews. It concludes with an account of the bleak "Hunger Winter" of 1944–45 and the family's eventual escape to the United States.

ELDERESCENCE by Jane Thayer '52 and Peggy Thayer (Hamilton Books). Thirty-five million Americans are living beyond the age of sixty-five, and life expectancies have grown by twenty-five years since 1900. Long life spans have become much more common, raising new issues for the elderly. The authors--a psychotherapist and a painter--argue that this time of life is not just about retirement but about understanding the experience and forging a new sense of meaning.

DOG WORLD AND THE HUMANS WHO LIVE THERE by Alfred Gingold '68 (Broadway Books). In 2001, Gingold succumbed to the endearing behavior of his family's new Norfolk terrier, George, and became a member of what he calls Dog Nation: the 43 million dog owners and their 55 million pets living in America today. While Gingold's dog plays a prominent role in this "chronology of dog ownership," the book reads more like an anthropological study of the bizarre behavior of urban dog people.

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