VISUALIZING DENSITY  by Julie Campoli, MLA '89, and Alex S.MacLean (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy). The low-density suburb of singlefamily homes may be the American ideal, but it is not the best land use for our increasing population, the authors argue. Concentrating growth, rather than converting farmland, deserts, and forests into housing sites, makes more sense in a time of costlier energy. Campoli, a landscape architect and urban designer, and MacLean, an architect and aerial photographer, analyze the differences between poorly planned developments without amenities and livable neighborhoods that strike a balance between housing and population."How we perceive density has everything to do with how it is designed, not the actual ratio of units to acres."

THE GENTLE SUBVERSIVE  by Mark Hamilton Lytle '66 (Oxford University Press). A professor of history and environmental studies at Bard College explores the life of Rachel Carson and the twin passions, biology and literature, that underpinned her writing.He argues that Carson did not simply warn about the dangers of indiscriminate pesticide use, but displayed a reverence for the mysteries of nature. Lytle records the controversy surrounding Silent Spring and how Carson's critics used her gender to discredit her ideas. "Carson understood all too well that the United States in the 1950s was not hospitable to crusades against powerful interests, whether in government or in business."

POP!  by Daniel Gross '89 (CollinsBusiness). Gross, the writer of Slate's "Moneybox" and the New York Times's "Economic View," examines the history of U.S. economic bubbles and makes the case for why, in the long run, they are good for the economy. Citing examples from the history of the telegraph, railroads, the Internet, and the current real estate market, he argues that bubbles often leave behind new infrastructures that other companies can use.

THE PLAYHOUSE NEAR DARK  by Elizabeth Holmes, MFA '87 (Carnegie Mellon University Press). In her second collection of poetry, the publications editor for the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning delves into the experience of pregnancy and motherhood. Whether likening the sound of her baby's heart during a sonogram to "a rolling crackle like cosmonaut voices over the gelled silence of space," seeing her angry child "as if he'd got inside a scary costume and it was alive," or recalling how a deer's hair keeps it warm "by hoarding in each hollow shaft a sip of air,"Holmes discovers extraordinary complexities in the everyday.

COLD WAR AT 30,000 FEET  by Jeffrey A. Engel '95 (Harvard University Press). Although Britain and the United States were the closest of allies during World War II, they often clashed over aviation policies during the Cold War. The United States believed it had the power to stabilize the postwar world; Britain objected to playing a supporting role in the Pax Americana. Engel, an assistant professor of history and public policy at Texas A&M, shows how policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic sought to strike a balance between national security and the growth of the aviation industry.

Recently Published | Poetry

AMERICAN POETRY NOW edited by Ed Ochester '61 (University of Pittsburgh Press). The former director of the creative writing program at the University of Pittsburgh and editor of the Pitt Poetry Series selects work from some of America's best poets, including Billy Collins, Sharon Olds, Ted Kooser, Alicia Suskin Ostriker, and Virgil Suárez.

Recently Published | Fiction

THE FAITH HEALER OF OLIVE AVENUE by Manuel Muñoz, MFA '98 (Algonquin Books). Muñoz explores the secrets of his characters in his second collection, a series of interconnected short stories set in California's Central Valley.

Recently Published | Nonfiction

CHASING COOL by Noah Kerner '99 and Gene Pressman (Simon & Schuster). Kerner, CEO of the marketing agency Noise, and his co-author believe that chasing after cool is a bad idea. They interview artists, designers,musicians, and filmmakers—people who "pursued a vision and, then, somewhere down the road, cool found them."

BEYOND ANNE FRANK by Diane L.Wolf, PhD '86 (University of California Press). A professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, interviews Jews who were hidden as children in Holland during World War II and finds that many of them perceived 1945 not as a time of liberation but rather as the beginning of their problems.

STRANGERS IN A FOREIGN LAND by George E. Schultze '79 (Lexington Books). The field education director and spiritual director at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, examines how the Catholic Church and the labor movement have worked together to benefit Latino immigrants.

WIRED SHUT by Tarleton Gillespie (MIT Press). A Cornell assistant professor of communication explores the controversies behind the film and recording industries' efforts to enforce copyright law via encryption technologies, and says that such commercial constraints may undermine the democratic potential of digital media.

THE MOTHER-DAUGHTER PROJECT by SuEllen Hamkins '82 and Renée Schultz (Hudson Street Press). Two psychotherapists challenge the stereotype of mother-daughter estrangement. They come up with a plan to enable girls to thrive during adolescence and create a community in which close connections between mothers and daughters are the norm.