Sometimes, your perfect summer read is sitting right in front of you.
That’s certainly how we’re feeling, having surveyed some of the recent releases by current faculty, staff and alumni of the College of Letters & Science. Whether it’s the history of astronomy on the UW–Madison campus, a spicy Tejano mystery or a memoir of a Shakespearean scholar’s tragicomic journey, one of these should be a can’t-miss, lakeside page-turning option for you. Here are nine riveting recent releases to consider.
Chasing the Stars: How the Astronomers of Observatory Hill Transformed Our Understanding of the Universe by James Lattis and Kelly Tyrrell
You’ve likely walked by the Washburn Observatory, that classic building with the domed roof, strolling down Observatory Drive toward the west side of campus. But you may be surprised to learn how impactful the telescope inside that building — and the UW astronomers who use it to study the stars — have been in expanding our galactic knowledge. James Lattis (MA ’87, PhD ’89), faculty associate of astronomy and co-founder and director of UW Space Place, and Kelly Tyrrell (MS ’11), UW–Madison’s director of media relations and strategic communications, trace the observatory’s history back to its founding in 1881, creating a fascinating mix of scientific discovery and say-what anecdotes. Did you know that the observatory’s first director, James C. Watson, is credited with discovering 22 asteroids in his lifetime — and that he died unexpectedly before it even opened?
Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Food is a topic that connects us all, and in this collection of short essays, Nezhukumatathil, the 2000-2001 Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow of the English department’s Creative Writing Program, explores the ways that our associations with various food and food traditions inform our identities. If you’ve ever had your breath taken away by a bite of mango or savored a cup of shaved ice, you’re sure to recognize the reactions Nezhukumatathil captures here. Hmmm. Suddenly we’re hungry.
Malas by Marcela Fuentes
The “Good Morning America” Book Club just named Marcela Fuentes’ debut novel its June pick of the month. But even without the national endorsement, we’d be down for this Tejano-tinged tale about two women whose plotlines interweave into a generation-spanning mystery and coming-of-age tale. In the 1950s, a woman finds herself cursed by an older woman who claims she stole her husband. Closer to modern day, that woman’s teenaged granddaughter begins to discover and unravel family secrets as she wrangles with her approaching quinceañera. Fuentes, a Texas native who was the 2016-2017 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow of the English department’s Creative Writing Program, has already racked up several awards for her short fiction.
The End of Everything and Everything That Comes After That by Nick Lantz
One of poetry’s most potent powers is its ability to help us make sense of the overwhelming. In his latest collection of poems, Nick Lantz, the 2007-2008 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow of the English department’s Creative Writing Program, takes on not one, but two soul-crushing themes: The experience of the post-cancer body and the existential strain of the pop cultural landscape. Lantz deploys a stream-of-consciousness style that pulls the reader along like a piece of flotsam in a swirling river, eddying past subjects as diverse as a gun convention, political polling and a space mission to Mars. Taken together, they form a hauntingly resonant picture of middle-class America in the 2020s.
The Color of Asylum: The Racial Politics of Safe Haven in Brazil by Katherine Jensen
The Green Bay Packers are playing the first-ever NFL game in Brazil in a few months, which means it’s a great time to learn more about the country that’s hosting them — or at least a sense of its racial and immigration politics. Katherine Jensen, an assistant professor of sociology and international studies, takes a close look at the ways South America’s largest country handles different types of refugees seeking asylum in this ethnography, which compares the experiences of refugees from Syria and the Congo. The former group, who emigrated en masse in the wake of a brutal war and a surprising open-door policy Brazil implemented in 2013, fares better than the latter group, and Jensen suggests it may have something to do with the color of their skin, as the Brazilian state recognizes Syrian refugees as white. While neither group escapes its share of struggles or discrimination, their differing treatment may make you view U.S. immigration policies in a different light.
Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net by Jessica Calarco
Jessica Calarco, an associate professor of sociology, has captured an important undercurrent of the post-pandemic zeitgeist with her latest book, which looks at the devastating impact our DIY society is having on women. In the absence of the kind of social safety net that exists in other countries in times of crisis, American families are often forced to fend for themselves — and the brunt of the underappreciated care and organizational work in families falls squarely on women. Calarco interviewed thousands of families across the country in the wake of the pandemic, and the conclusions she’s drawn about how we got here — and how we might get out — should be eye-opening for all of us.
Architect by Alison Thumel
Alison Thumel lost her brother at a young age, and coming to terms with the grief that tragedy sparked has fueled multiple poems, including those in her debut work, which combines poems, visual art and lyric essays into a tapestry of sorrow and search for redemption. Thumel, who works on campus as a communicator for University Health Services, earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the Department of English in 2021, and Architect is steeped in Wisconsin touches, specifically the prairie-style buildings of the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
“For years after my brother’s death, I collected news articles on people who died young and tragically in landlocked states,” Thumel writes. “Prairie Style deaths — boys sucked down into grain silos or swept up by tornadoes or fallen through a frozen pond. The boys I didn’t know, but the landscape I did. The dread of it. How many miles you can look ahead. For how long you see what is coming.”
Serving Herself: The Life and Times of Althea Gibson by Ashley Brown
Decades before Serena Williams and the era of endorsement deals and social media influencers, there was Althea Gibson, a Black tennis player who captured the national discourse with her fierce determination, athleticism and personality. Ashley Brown, the Allan H. Selig Chair in the History of Sport and Society and assistant professor of history, draws on oral histories and archives to paint a fascinating portrait of Gibson, the first Black athlete to win titles at Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the French Open. Throughout her extensive career, which saw her pivot into basketball, golf and acting, Gibson steadfastly refused to be seen first as a representative of her race, instead fighting fiercely to be judged on her merits as an individual.
Green World: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love & Shakespeare by Michelle Ephraim
The road to becoming a Shakesperean scholar is paved with heartache and plot twists — at least according to this memoir by Department of English alumna Michelle Ephraim (MA ’93, PhD ’98). Ephraim’s story is not far removed from something the Bard himself might have penned: Child of overprotective parents sets off to seek her fortune in the world, experiences setbacks and finds her joy and purpose from an unexpected encounter — in this case, a Shakespearean recital party. The fact that Ephraim finds comical camaraderie and inspiration in one of Shakespeare’s less-lauded characters — Jessica, the daughter of Shylock, Shakespeare’s problematic Merchant of Venice — is an added bonus for classic literature fans.
Ephraim, now a professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, won the 2023 Juniper Prize for Creative Nonfiction from the University of Massachusetts Press.
