Nonfiction

The Aviator and the Showman by Laurie Shapiro ’81

This intensively researched book puts to rest some of the myths surrounding Amelia Earhart and, by virtue of going into every detail of extant data, shows us that this story is of two intertwined lives. Amelia Earhart is a household name, but many of us know little about George Putnam, her husband. He was the showman, the wizard manipulating the legend from behind the curtain. Though many of his contemporaries found him unpleasant, he knew how to play the game of getting publicity for Amelia, and for making her the central woman in the history of aviation.

Amelia was an early feminist. Terribly ambitious, she worked to make a name for herself and to break new records. She wanted to be the female Lindy and indeed was the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. Her last trip, of course, is…

A Steinway on the Beach, Wounds and Other Blessings by Roger Rosenblatt ‘58

A Steinway on the Beach is a series of meditations, whimsical musings, free associations, and questions, both answered and unanswered, on the theme expressed in the subtitle, that misfortunes may be fortunate. At the center is the author’s mind as it meanders, fueled by events (such as the piano, which astoundingly washed up on the beach) and remembrances both of lived events and of all the lore – literary, biblical and historical—that this mind (and heart) has absorbed.  Although the form feels free and somewhat random, a closer look confirms that the topic of how the hurtful and the helpful, both always present, are emmeshed in each other.

One insight came from Lewis Thomas, the renowned father of another Friends writer, Abigail Thomas ’59. He called our very existence a “wonderful mistake.” It is a tenet of…

The Inner Coast by Donovan Holn ff.    Donovan proves that it is not the subject matter that counts in the creation of a great essay. Rather it is a mind pitted against a puzzle. In the tradition fathered by 16thcentury Montaigne, the essays in this book invite you to examen with the author from every angle you could possibly dream up some topic – tools, rust, water, mammoths that are really mastodons, Thoreau, family, America -- and find new connections and new hidden truths.  French students will remember (I hope) that an essay is an attempt, and in the case of the essay as a genre, it is an attempt to get at the essence of something.

The essay “Waterworks” is devoted to just this kind of approach to water – water in history, water in literature, water in nature, water in science, water unregulated and harmful, and water…

Winning Fixes Everything by Evan Drellich ‘04

This book is about baseball, but don’t expect a romance about the boys of summer or the field of dreams.  Baseball, it turns out, is a business and a rather cut-throat one at that. The front office, where every trick imaginable is dreamed up to bring a team to the World Series, is not motivated by the love of the sport.  In some cases the powers in the office don’t know anything about the sport. 

Evan, along with Ken Rosenthal, broke the story about cheating going on at the Houston Astros. This story acquainted the public of the shenanigans designed to skew the results of the game.  First the team deciphered the signals catchers on opposing teams used to communicate with pitchers, and then they alerted batters by banging on garbage cans.  Apparently, knowing what sort of pitch was coming his way was…