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New & Noteworthy

Winter 2019

The Gifted School by Bruce Holsinger (faculty)

Four families in a well-off Colorado town are tightly knit till they hear word of an exclusive school for gifted kids—“a lurking virus, its symptoms yet to show.” The parents elbow for prestige, drawing in the kids, old resentments, old secrets. A novel from the author of A Burnable Book and The Invention of Fire.


The Key from Spain: Flory Jagoda and Her Music by Debbie Levy (Col ’78), illustrated by Sonja Wimmer 

This children’s book is a story of diaspora and identity, and the girl who becomes the “keeper of the flame” of Sephardic music. Flory lives in what’s now Croatia. Her ancestors were forced from Spain. When World War II looms, her father ensures that she—and the traditional songs she’s learned—will endure.


Truth to Power: A History of the U.S. National Intelligence Council
Edited by Robert Hutchings (Grad ’79) and Gregory F. Treverton

It’s not as widely known but it’s highly influential: This hub of the U.S. intelligence agencies collates and analyzes strategic, longer-range assessments for the president and other top policymakers. In essays, the eight most recent chairmen discuss their greatest issues, from the early post-Cold War years through terrorism, climate change, China and more.


Turkey & America: East & West—Where the Twain Meet by Henry P. Williams III (Col ’71) 

Williams, a former investment banker in Istanbul, combines experience and research in this conversational comparative study. It’s based on a course he taught at Istanbul’s Koç University, crisscrossing 2,000 years and multiple disciplines to dismantle the false dichotomy of East versus West, to “guide the audience to bridges where others see chasms.”