Health Care Half Truths: Too Many Myths, Not Enough Reality
Arthur Garson Jr. (faculty) and Carolyn L. Englehard (Grad ’88, faculty)
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

Our health care system is terminal, according to the authors, but the system shouldn’t be fixed in smoky backrooms or in the boardrooms of insurance conglomerates. Each of us must be inspired to work on it, but first we need a common set of information. To that end, the book enumerates 20 major myths about our current healthcare system, such as the false notion that America’s healthcare is the most expensive in the world or that preventive care saves money.

Race and Medicine in Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century America
Todd L. Savitt (Grad ’70, ’75)
Kent State University Press

During the era of slavery, racism and often faulty medical theories contributed to an atmosphere in which African Americans were seen as chattel, and those attitudes continued into the Reconstruction and Jim Crow eras. These essays examine different aspects of African-American medical history, including medical experimentation, early medical schools and slave life insurance.

Teaching Class Clowns (And What They Can Teach Us)
William Watson Purkey (Educ ’57, ’64)
Corwin Press

A veteran educator explains how to teach these unique but at-risk students, and how to leverage their blend of humor and intelligence to inject joy and enthusiasm into the classroom. The author’s concise guide gives teachers classroom strategies to keep instruction moving and keep the class clowns from acting out.

The Way Life Should Be
Christina Baker Kline (Grad ’90)
William Morrow

A novel about love, food, risk and self-discovery, it centers on Angela Russo, 33 and single, stuck in a life that seems to have just happened. When she impulsively decides to risk it all and move to Maine to pursue a budding romance, things don’t turn out quite as she expected.

The Best of Friends: Two Women, Two Continents, And One Enduring Friendship
Sara James (Col ’83) and Ginger Mauney
William Morrow

In this dual memoir, Dateline news correspondent and veteran anchor Sara James and National Geographic filmmaker Ginger Mauney explore their learning curves in life, as seen through the lens of their 33-year friendship. In alternating chapters, they record their unfolding lives from their mid-20s through their 40s, with James building a career in broadcasting in New York City and Mauney working in rural Africa. With each other’s support, they find ways to balance marriage, motherhood and creative careers.

The Japanese Money Tree: How Investors Can Prosper from Japan’s Economic Rebirth
Andrew H. Shipley (Com ’87)
FT Press

An economist who has worked extensively in Japan, the author provides insights into the current state of Japanese financial markets, which are emerging from a decade of deflation, banking failures and other problems. He gives readers the tools to assess where and how to make money in Japan’s often opaque economy.

The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing
Margaret O. Killinger (Col ’88)
University of Vermont Press

In this biography of the famous homesteader, author and icon of back-to-the-country living, Killinger looks at her spiritual formation as a member of the early- 20th-century Theosophical Society and examines her complex relationship with the socialist Scott Nearing, with whom she left New York City in 1932 to begin a new life as pioneer homesteaders in rural New England.

The Manuscript
Michael Stephen Fuchs (Col ’92)
MacMillan Publishers

In this debut novel, a group of unlikely characters searches for a mysterious manuscript concealed on a hidden Web site on the Internet. The document is rumored to reveal the meaning of life, and vying for its contents are gun-toting urban professionals, hackers, hit men, mercenaries, federal agents and a gang of angry young Taoists.

On Dream Street: Poems
Melanie Almeder (Col ’87)
Tupelo Press

Almeder’s first collection of poetry is also the winner of the Tupelo Press Editor’s Prize. The poet Gregory Orr says: “In these magnificent poems, it’s as if Emily Dickinson’s compression and intelligence were stretched out over a longer, sinuous line that wraps around itself and searches out significance in observations rendered so intense they transform into vision.” She currently teaches creative writing and contemporary literature at Roanoke College.