Notable books and media produced by faculty, staff and alumni

Belly
By Lisa Selin Davis,
Little, Brown

Four years is a long time, long enough for William “Belly” O’Leary’s world to change. Returning to his beloved Saratoga Springs, New York, after doing time for a gambling charge, the former bar owner finds his old stomping grounds paved over with Wal-Marts and designer coffee shops. His mistress, who walked off with his money, is nowhere to be found and his three surviving daughters, once afraid of his shadow, defy him at every turn.

The ample praise already ladled upon “Belly,” Davis’ (’03 M.F.A) first novel, is well earned. Her characterizations and dialog are dead-on, and the hopelessness she smears over Belly’s two-bit life is palpable.

A Patriot’s History of the United States
by Larry Schweikart and Michael Patrick Allen, Sentinel.

Schweikart ’72 B.A., ‘79 M.A., a professor of history at the University of Dayton, and his co-author set out in this lengthy (800 pages) volume to correct what the pair saw as a disturbing trend in the teaching of American history: a tendency to dwell on America’s mistakes and darkest moments.

The result is a well-written, if controversial, survey of American history from the arrival of Columbus in 1492 to the aftermath of the 2000 Presidential election.

Writing and Being: Embracing Your Life through Creative Journaling
by G. Lynn Nelson, Inner Ocean Publishing.

G. Lynn Nelson, who is a professor of English at the Tempe campus, writes in the introduction to his book that it is intended as “a book about people writing…It is a book about writing as a tool for intellectual, psychological and spiritual growth.”

Each semester, Nelson teaches a course on creative journaling, and “Writing and Being” attempts to recreate the supportive, creative environment he fosters in his classroom.

The book touches upon writing about love, loss, finding a sense of self and connecting with one’s community through sharing journal entries that have grown into poems, essays and letters.

Murder Unpunished
by Thorton W. Price III,
University of Arizona Press.

A murder committed in broad daylight in front of 60 witnesses should be easy to solve, right? Not when it is committed at the Arizona State Prison in Florence, and not when the key players in the case, which started on November 30, 1977, are a jailhouse snitch (Waymond Small) and the strongman for a racially based gang (Terry Lee Farmer).

Farmer’s gang, the Arayan Brotherhood, murdered Small the day before he was to testify about the roiling violence between rival gangs inside Arizona’s penal system.

Price (’73 B.A., ’76 J.D.) brought a flair for bringing police/legal procedure descriptions to life in this true-crime book, which reads like a thriller.

Staying on Top and Keeping the Sand Out of Your Pants:
A Surfer’s Guide to the Good Life
by Scott Miller, Mark A. Hubble and Seth Houdeshell, Health Communications, Inc..

This slim volume, peppered with cartoons by U.K. illustrator John Byrne, concisely describes ways to manage change in a way that is both easy to digest and grounded in something more solid than just feel-good platitudes. Readers are counseled on ways to see breaking opportunities, position themselves for success, deal with setbacks and obstacles, and maximize their experience of the “good life.”

Hubble ’80 Ph.D. and his co-authors are all recreational surfers and helping professionals and their guide to positive change is written from the perspective of enthusiastic, skilled guides teaching the basics to catching — and riding — the big waves of success.

Harry Potter and Philosophy: If Aristotle Ran Hogwarts
edited by David Baggett and Shawn E. Klein, Open Court.

Editors Baggett and Klein (who is a philosophy instructor and undergraduate advisor at ASU) take on truth, justice and the wizardly way in this delightful entry in Open Court’s “Popular Culture and Philosophy” series. Various philosophy professors untangle the life lessons about friendship, the value of ambition, reality, discrimination, feminism and many other topics to be learned from J. K. Rowling’s novels.

The book’s essays speak to the reader, even those who aren’t candidates for the next class at Hogwarts, in plain terms, demystifying philosophy and making it seem attainable to ordinary Muggles.

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