In the Land of Believers
Gina Welch (Grad ’04)
Metropolitan Books
Gina Welch, a young secular Jew from Berkeley, joined Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church. Undercover for nearly two years, she immersed herself in the life of the devout: She learned to interpret the world like an evangelical, weathered the death of Falwell and embarked on a mission trip to Alaska. In the Land of Believers is an account of the author’s transformation, as Welch realized that, despite her initial skepticism, the congregation met needs and answered questions she didn’t even know she had.
Frank E. Schoonover Catalogue Raisonné
John Schoonover (Col ’67), Louise Schoonover Smith and LeeAnne Dean
Oak Knoll Press
Illustrator Frank E. Schoonover’s (1877-1972) prolific work spanned more than 40 years and included more than 2,200 illustrations. His iconic images of Hopalong Cassidy, Blackbeard, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Joan of Arc appeared in magazines like Harper’s and the Saturday Evening Post as well as books of children’s classics and contemporary fiction. This two-volume Frank E. Schoonover Catalogue Raisonné embodies Schoonover’s entire oeuvre, from his earliest sketches to his last easel paintings.
The Victory Album: Reflections on the Good Life after the Good War
Philip D. Beidler (Grad ’67, ’74)
The University of Alabama Press
A pervasive feeling at the end of World War II was that Americans had “inherited the earth” and could look forward to a kind of golden age, the “good life after the good war.” But this good life—for all its genuine possibilities—was only accessible to some. Beidler addresses the national blindness toward the Holocaust and a rising China, the canker of McCarthyism, an ascendant culture of hard smoking and heavy drinking, the worship of cars and film idols, and the looming fear of an always possible nuclear apocalypse.
The Outer Banks House
Diann Ducharme (Col ’93)
Crown Publishing
During the summer of 1868 in the post-war, Reconstruction South, Abigail Sinclair, the daughter of a plantation owner, falls in love with a penniless fisherman, Ben Whimble, whom she tutors in reading and writing. When Ben becomes entangled in Abby’s father’s Ku Klux Klan dirty work, a tragedy on a hot summer night on the Outer Banks threatens to tear them apart.
The Off Broadway Musical, 1910–2007
Dan Dietz (Grad ’68)
McFarland & Company, Inc.
Off-Broadway musicals often have the reputation of being less popular or less refined than their bona fide Broadway counterparts. Dan Dietz proves otherwise with a compendium of more than 1,800 off-Broadway musicals. A number of shows originally staged off Broadway have gone on to successful Broadway runs, from the ever popular A Chorus Line and Avenue Q, to others—such as Stomp, Blue Man Group and Altar Boyz—that have enjoyed critical and popular success without debuting on Broadway.
Denial of Sunlight
Robert Troy (Grad ’95)
Outskirts Press
After her electronics firm is sold to a Chinese company, Katherine Murkowitz finds herself in the middle of a conflict between the U.S. and China to control an innovative solar-electric cell that would free the world from dependence on fossil fuels. Faced with international intrigue, natural disasters and deceitful governments, Murkowitz struggles to preserve a world-saving technology and her own integrity.
