Resolve to read more this coming year

Spark your knowledge and imagination with books by SMU faculty, alumni, libraries and museums.

books

 
  A Bean, a Stalk, and a Boy Named Jack and The Numberlys The Spanish Gesture: Drawings from Murillo to Goya in the Hamburger Kunsthalle The Threat From Within: Defeated Hard Trials, Great Tribulations: A Black Preacher’s Pilgrimage from Poverty and Segregation to the 21st Century Wholehearted Living: Five-Minute Reflections for Modern Wine Snobs are Boring The Numberlys  
America in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror Belonging: The Social Dynamics of Fitting In as Experienced by Hmong Refugees in Germany and Texas Cover of William Wells Brown: An African American Life by Ezra Greenspan Dollbaby: A Novel Freestyle: Reflections on Faith, Family, Justice, and Pop Culture Mexicans in the Making of America Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines No Small Dreams: J. Erik Jonsson – Texas Visionary Oilfield Revolutionary: The Career of Everette Lee DeGolyer
Anthropological Conversations: Talking Culture across Disciplines A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels Crepuscule W/Nellie Five Days Left Jewish Festival and Folk Songs, Book Four A Perhaps Line: Poetry of the Material and Immaterial Worlds Portable Roots: Transplanting the Bicultural Child Georgia O’Keeffe

 		 Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France

Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Jimmy Carter the Disciple and Ronald Reagan the Alchemist King Saul, a Novel In Savvy Girl: A Guide to Etiquette The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings Defined by Light: Photography’s First 75 Years  

Compiled by Cherri Gann
SMU News

DALLAS (SMU) – Books published in 2014 by SMU’s faculty, alumni, libraries and museums range from historical to fiction to inspirational. Some selections are available at the SMU bookstore, but all are available via online booksellers unless otherwise noted. Authors are listed alphabetically.

Books by Faculty:
  Anthropological Conversations: Talking Culture across Disciplines Cultural anthropologists can be an intellectually adventurous crowd, eager to cross disciplines to gain greater understanding of human behavior and experience. In Anthropological Conversations: Talking Culture across Disciplines (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2014) Caroline B. Brettell, Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor and director of SMU’s Interdisciplinary Institute, highlights conversations of anthropologists among scholars of history, geography, literature, biology, psychology and demography. Brettell shows how these scholarship exchanges deepen understanding of culture by anthropologists.
     
  Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines Migration as an issue has risen in global prominence in the last decade, causing controversy among host countries around the world. The third edition of Migration Theory: Talking across Disciplines (Routledge 2014), co-edited by Caroline B. Brettell and James F. Hollifield, political science professor and director of the Tower Center for Political Studies at SMU, is an updated collection of essays by scholars of anthropology, demography, economics, geography, history, law, political science and sociology, each addressing the concepts and theoretical issues of international migration.
     
  America in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror Throughout our nation’s history Americans have grappled with such issues as how the U.S. should wield power beyond its borders, whether it should adhere to grand principles or act on narrow self-interest and whether it should partner with other nations or avoid entangling alliances. These questions have come to the fore especially since the emergence of the U.S. as a major world power in the late 19th century. America in the World: A History in Documents from the War with Spain to the War on Terror (Princeton University Press 2014) illuminates this history by capturing the diverse voices and viewpoints of some of the most colorful and eloquent people who participated in these momentous debates. Jeffrey A. Engel, director of SMU’s Center for Presidential History, with fellow historians Andrew Preston and Mark Atwood Lawrence, collect more than 200 documents, including presidential addresses, diplomatic cables, political cartoons and song lyrics. The perspectives presented run the gamut from elite policymakers, newspaper columnists and clergymen, to songwriters, poets and novelists
     
  Mexicans in the Making of America The U.S. Census predicts that by 2050 nearly one in three U.S. residents will be Latino, with the overwhelming majority of these being of Mexican descent. Such a dramatic demographic shift reshapes politics, culture, and even fundamental ideas about American identity. In Mexicans in the Making of America (Harvard University Press 2014) Neil Foley, the Robert H. and Nancy Dedman Chair in History and a leading scholar of Mexican-American history, offers a sweeping view of the evolution of Mexican America, from a colonial outpost on Mexico’s northern frontier to a 21st-century people integral to the nation they helped to build. This book demonstrates how America was never a purely white Anglo-Protestant nation, but instead a composite of racially blended peoples.
     
  Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France Portraiture and Politics in Revolutionary France (Penn State University Press 2014), by Amy Freund, assistant professor and the Kleinheinz Family Endowment for the Arts and Education Endowed Chair in Art History, challenges common assumptions about portraiture as an artistic genre, as well as the political and cultural role of images in France at the beginning of the 19th century. After 1789 portraiture began to dominate French visual culture because it addressed the central challenge of the Revolution: turning subjects into citizens. Revolutionary portraits let sitters and artists control both the aesthetic and political representation, thus communicating new forms of individuality and citizenship. Revolutionary portraiture also marked a turning point in the history of art, when even serious artists went beyond depicting historical narratives to depicting individuals – a major shift for the future of modern art.
     
  William Wells Brown: An African American Life In William Wells Brown: An African American Life (W. W. Norton & Company 2014), Ezra Greenspan, the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Chair in Humanities, has written a groundbreaking biography of the most pioneering and accomplished African-American writer of the 19th century. Born to slavery in Kentucky, raised on the Western frontier, and rented out in adolescence to a succession of steamboat captains on the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, the young man known as Sandy reinvented himself as William Wells Brown after escaping to freedom. Brown lifted himself out of illiteracy. He became an admired and popular speaker on both American and British antislavery circuits, and a writer of the earliest African-American works including a travelogue, a novel, a printed play and historical accounts. In this masterful work, Greenspan expertly frames Brown’s life in the context of his times, creating a fascinating portrait of an extraordinary figure who challenged the racial orthodoxies and complexities of 19th century America. Brown also practiced medicine, ran for office and campaigned for black elevation, temperance and civil rights.
     
  William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings (The Library of America 2014) by Ezra Greenspan the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Chair in Humanities, brings together for the first time all Brown’s groundbreaking works, including the memoirs “Narrative of William W. Brown” and “My Southern Home,” recounting his childhood as a slave, his flight to freedom, and his experience of the contradictions of Reconstruction; “Clotel or, the President’s Daughter,” a controversial novel depicting the fate of Thomas Jefferson’s black daughters and granddaughters; “The American Fugitive in Europe,” Brown’s pioneering travelogue about his years abroad; and “The Escape, or A Leap for Freedom and The Black Man, His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements,” the first published play and first work of history, by an African American. The volume also includes 18 speeches and public letters from Brown’s career as an antislavery activist, a detailed chronology of Brown’s life, and helpful notes.
     
  Georgia O’Keeffe In Georgia O’Keeffe (Phaidon Press 2014) Randall Griffin, art history professor and award–winning author, offers a fresh and insightful account of one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists. The Phaidon Focus series presents engaging, current introductions to art’s modern masters featuring a complete chronological survey of an artist’s life and career, interspersed with brief essays examining specific bodies of work. O’Keeffe fused nature with abstraction, the intimate with the monumental, and the corporeal with the cosmic to create a highly personal version of modernism. Her work remains a key component of American art and her influence as a pioneering female artist cannot be understated.
     
  King Saul, a Novel King Saul, a Novel (Wipf and Stock 2014) by John C. Holbert, Lois Craddock Perkins professor emeritus of homiletics, is a fresh retelling of the biblical story of the first king of Israel. This novel offers a new look at Saul, Samuel and David, and the events that brought them together as the nation of Israel was founded 3,000 years ago. Holbert’s retelling reveals the surprisingly modern elements in this story, highlighting the power politics, personal rivalries and religious use and abuse in the life of early Israel.
     
  Jewish Festival and Folk Songs, Book Four Jewish Festival and Folk Songs, Book Four, concludes this popular series compiled and arranged by David Karp, professor of music and co-chair of keyboard studies at SMU, and Renee Karp. It contains a wealth of songs for seasonal holidays, liturgical services and folk songs, and a lyrics and pronunciation guide. Among the song titles: Chanukah Candle Blessings, Dayeinu, Chag Purim, Jerusalem of Gold and Ose Shalom. Available at www.fjhmusic.com/piano/jffs.htm.
     
  Belonging: The Social Dynamics of Fitting In as Experienced by Hmong Refugees in Germany and Texas In Belonging: The Social Dynamics of Fitting In as Experienced by Hmong Refugees in Germany and Texas (Carolina Academic Press 2014), Assistant Professor of Anthropology Faith Nibbs presents a case study of two little-known Hmong communities that originated from the same Lao-Hmong refugee group, but resettled separately in Dallas, Texas and the small town of Gammertingen, Germany. Nibbs, who directs SMU’s Forced Migration Innovation Project, explores the concepts of belonging and fitting in by studying how each of these Hmong communities experienced their respective resettlement processes in a big city in the United States, versus a small town in Germany.
     
  Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Jimmy Carter the Disciple and Ronald Reagan the Alchemist The connection between U.S. presidents’ religious beliefs to their foreign policy has been a curious topic of contemplation throughout the Cold War. Little study has been applied to the theory, however, perhaps due to methodological concerns or the presumed separation of church and state. The 9/11 attacks on the U.S. prompted Western inquiries into Islam, and the religious rhetoric of George W. Bush made religion central to foreign affairs. Presidential Faith and Foreign Policy: Jimmy Carter the Disciple and Ronald Reagan the Alchemist (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), by William Steding, senior fellow at SMU’s Center for Presidential History, shows that religion has been fully ensconced in the political sphere since the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Both Carter and successor Ronald Reagan, self-professed born-again Christians, applied their religious interpretations to U.S. leadership and its international affairs. Steding’s study reveals the significance of religion’s impact on U.S. foreign policy.
     
  Portable Roots: Transplanting the Bicultural Child Individuals who grow up in more than one culture, such as immigrants, refugees or missionaries, often grapple with feelings of rootlessness, cultural identity and the notion of what constitutes home. Portable Roots: Transplanting the Bicultural Child (Cambridge Scholars 2014) by Jeanne Stevenson-Moessner, professor of pastoral care, discusses her findings after a 30-year study of three sample groups that focused on children and adolescents raised in boarding schools, mission schools and international schools.
     
  A Perhaps Line: Poetry of the Material and Immaterial Worlds A Perhaps Line: Poetry of the Material and Immaterial Worlds (Wipf and Stock 2014) by Gary Swaim, faculty advisor for the creative writing concentration in SMU’s Master of Liberal Studies program and executive editor for its publication Pony Express(ions), is a full-length collection of poems that “dives into both the material and the eternal,” writes Karla K. Morton, 2010 Texas Poet Laureate in the foreword. Some of the poems are based on Swaim’s hallucinations during a six-month hospital stay in 2006, during which he was comatose for 54 days. Swaim questions whether a true line exists between the world of the material and the world of the spiritual, moving single words, stanzas, images and entire verses between both worlds, uncertain where they belong. Available at http://wipfandstock.com/a-perhaps-line.html.
     
  The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text Genocide represents one of the deadliest scourges of the human experience, and meaningful communication is the key to preventing and even ending this great evil. The Rhetoric of Genocide: Death as a Text, by Ben Voth, associate professor of communications and director of speech and debate at SMU, presents a readable treatment of the global problem of genocide based on his work in Washington, D.C. with 33 holocaust survivors. The book also explains the pivotal role that a Texan named James Farmer Jr. played in destroying segregation in the U. S., and by extension, an inspiring academic lesson in how, with the power of argument, debate and public speaking, all people can positively contribute to the end of genocide in the 21st century.

DeGolyer Library publications:
  No Small Dreams: J. Erik Jonsson – Texas Visionary No Small Dreams: J. Erik Jonsson – Texas Visionary (DeGolyer Library 2014) chronicles the life and achievements of one of Dallas’ most forceful and imaginative leaders. Author Darwin Payne ’68, professor emeritus of communications and SMU centennial historian, traces Jonsson’s Horatio Alger story, from his birth in Brooklyn, N.Y., to hard-working Swedish immigrants to his rise as co-founder and president of Texas Instruments to his service as mayor following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Payne paints a multidimensional portrait of Jonsson, exploring both his talents and foibles, revealing a determined man who always dreamed big for Dallas, then made those dreams come true. Available from DeGolyer Library, email degolyer@smu.edu or call 214-768-3637.
     
  Oilfield Revolutionary: The Career of Everette Lee DeGolyer Everette Lee DeGolyer left his stamp on oil exploration and his name on DeGolyer Library at SMU and a number of philanthropic institutions. In Oilfield Revolutionary: The Career of Everette Lee DeGolyer (Texas A&M University Press 2014), author Houston Faust Mount II delves into the life of the geologist and businessman who helped shape national energy policy and left an indelible mark on the energy industry in the 20th century. Mount, who earned a Ph.D. in history from SMU in 2008, paints a fascinating portrait of an oil patch pioneer whose intelligence, ingenuity and independence made him a legend. In addition to online booksellers, this book is also available from the SMU Barnes & Noble Bookstore at 3060 Mockingbird Lane in Dallas, 214-768-2435 and Texas A&M Press University Press, 1-800-826-8911.
     
  Defined by Light: Photography’s First 75 Years

In Defined by Light: Photography’s First 75 Years (DeGolyer Library 2014), authors Jack and Beverly Wilgus capture decisive moments in the early years of photography through almost 300 images selected from their extensive collection, considered one of the finest in private or institutional hands. Photographers, educators and historians, the Wilguses started collecting photographs, equipment and related objects more than four decades ago to use as teaching tools. They describe their book not as a history but as “a conversation” about their collection. History and photography enthusiasts will enjoy listening in. Available from DeGolyer Library, email degolyer@smu.edu or call 214-768-3637.

From the Meadows Museum:
   The Spanish Gesture: Drawings from Murillo to Goya in the Hamburger Kunsthalle

The Spanish Gesture: Drawings from Murillo to Goya in the Hamburger Kunsthalle presents the entire collection of Spanish drawings at the art museum in Hamburg, Germany. These drawings are barely known outside the community of scholars specializing in the genre. Almost all the works in this collection are from the Academy founded in Seville in 1660 under the aegis of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo and Francisco de Herrera the Younger, and they bear priceless witness to that period’s artistic teachings. The collection also contains works by many of Spain’s most outstanding 17th-century artists, including Alonso Cano, Antonio del Castillo, Francisco de Herrera the Elder and Juan de Valdés Leal. The Hamburg Collection also contains the drawings of Francisco de Goya created after original paintings by Diego Velázquez, now at the Museo del Prado. Goya reproduced these as prints both to polish his engraving skills and to launch a practice for which there was no prior tradition in Spain: the reproductive print used to spread knowledge of the treasures in the Royal Collection.

This catalog, and selections from previous exhibits, are available for purchase in the Meadows Museum gift shop. Send an e-mail to museumshop@smu.edu, or call 214.768.1695. Learn more at http://www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org/shop.htm. 

Books by Alumni:
  Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels The Bible is full of not-so-precious moments, from murder and mayhem, to sex and slavery. Disquiet Time: Rants and Reflections on the Good Book by the Skeptical, the Faithful, and a Few Scoundrels (Jericho Books 2014,) edited by Jennifer Grant ’91 with Cathleen Falsani, is an engaging and hilarious collection of encouraging essays for readers grappling with passages of the Bible that challenge our comfort zone.
     
  Wholehearted Living: Five-Minute Reflections for Modern Wholehearted Living: Five-Minute Reflections for Modern Moms (Loyola Press 2014) by Jennifer Grant ’91 presents a smart, accessible, and inspiring book for moms short on time, but still long for the deep connections with themselves, their loved ones and with God. The book offers daily moments of peace and reflection for the authentic concerns, fears and joys experienced by women striving against the have-it-all mentality.
     
  A Bean, a Stalk, and a Boy Named Jack and The Numberlys

The Numberlys		 William Joyce ’81, Academy Award-winning filmmaker and bestselling author, has released two new books: A Bean, a Stalk, and a Boy Named Jack and The Numberlys (both from Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2014.) A Bean, A Stalk and A Boy Named Jack, is another of Joyce’s funny, fractured fairy tales, this one chronicling what happens  when a king’s pinky grows stinky, and a smallish boy and a smallish pea must come up with a giant plan to save the kingdom. The Numberlys is an alphabet tale extraordinaire about a time when there was no alphabet, only numbers and life was fine, if orderly, but dull as gray paint. Knowing there had to be more, five jaunty heroes took up welders, hammers and glue guns to make some letters of the numbers until there were twenty-six. When the letters entered the world, they brought pizza, jelly beans, color, books and more.
     
  The Threat From Within: Defeated The Threat From Within: Defeated (XLIBRIS 2014) by Charles Lee ’82 concludes the story in his first novel, The Threat From Within, published in 2013. In the adventure thrillers seven high school students must stop an Eastern European research institute from using cell phone towers to destroy the mental capacity of teens.
     
  Hard Trials, Great Tribulations: A Black Preacher’s Pilgrimage from Poverty and Segregation to the 21st Century James Lyles ’55, among the first five African-American students admitted to SMU’s Perkins School of Theology in 1952, has written an absorbing memoir of his life in Hard Trials, Great Tribulations: A Black Preacher’s Pilgrimage from Poverty and Segregation to the 21st Century (XLIBRIS 2014). Lyles writes in detail about his experience during the racial integration at Perkins School. This memoir also recounts his boyhood on an Arkansas cotton farm during the Great Depression, and spans his memories and experiences of the most important era of African American advancement in the post-slavery period. Lyles went on to become a U.S. Air Force chaplain and travelled the world. His career as an ordained clergyman also includes service as Methodist pastor of churches in five states, and held executive posts at Methodist agencies.
     
  Dollbaby: A Novel Southern charm, eccentricity, secrets and unrest come to life in Dollbaby: A Novel (Pamela Dorman Books 2014.) In her first novel Laura Lane McNeal ’80 has the protagonist, 11-year-old Ibby Bell, learning to understand race for the first time when her father dies unexpectedly in the summer of 1964. Ibby, who has been raised in Washington, is sent to New Orleans to live with Fannie, the peculiar grandmother whom she has never met. Ibby does not know what to make of Fannie, who tends to end up in the local asylum, or the antique ornate mansion where she lives. Queenie – Fannie’s black cook – along with Queenie’s smart-mouthed daughter, Dollbaby, take the liberty of teaching Ibby about the South’s grand traditions and darkest secrets.
     
  Crepuscule W/Nellie

Joe Milazzo's ‘94 debut novel Crepuscule W/Nellie (Jaded Ibis Press 2014) takes the liberty of imagining and reimagining the lives and relationships between jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, his wife Nellie, and his patron and confidante, the Baroness Pannonica De Koenigswarter. This work of speculative historical fiction does not attempt historical accuracy. It’s simply a new exploration of an untold story.
     
  A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir In A Change of Heart: A Personal and Theological Memoir (IVP Academic 2014) Thomas Oden ’56 recalls his personal journey from liberal Protestantism to classical theology. Oden writes that his social beliefs, rather than faith, largely influenced his early career as a professor of theology and ethics at Drew University. He began a transformation, however, when his friend and mentor Jewish scholar Will Herberg pressed him to study the early Christian writers. Oden also had opportunities to meet and talk with great 20th-century scholars of Christianity including Rudolf Bultmann, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Wolfhart Pannenberg. Working his way through the texts of classic Christianity, “I re-emerged out of a maze to once again delight in the holy mysteries of the faith and the perennial dilemmas of fallen human existence,” professor emeritus Oden said in an article in The Okahoman. “It was no longer me interpreting the texts, but the texts interpreting me.”
     
  Five Days Left Five Days Left (Putnam Adult 2014), by Julie Lawson Timmer ’95, tells the parallel stories of Mara Nichols, a successful lawyer, devoted wife and adoptive mother who has received a life-shattering diagnosis, and Scott Coffman, a middle school teacher and foster father of an eight-year-old boy whose mother serves a jail sentence. In five days, both Scott and Mara must say good-bye to those they love the most. Timmer explores through these narratives the individual limits of human endurance and the power of relationships. Timmer’s heart-wrenching novel debut is about two people who must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice for love.
     
  In Savvy Girl: A Guide to Etiquette In Savvy Girl: A Guide to Etiquette (Savvy Girl 2014), Bren Underwood, with co-author Brittany Deal, goes a step past the politeness of saying please and thank you, and chewing with your mouth closed. This book helps readers with more modern mannerly situations such as what to say when a friend loses a loved one, how to take a compliment, whether it’s OK to text a thank-you note and how to have the class to get invited back.
     
  Wine Snobs are Boring Wine Snobs are Boring (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2014) by Dale Thomas Vaugh ’06 offers a fun, simple and empowering way to learn about wine. Readers will learn what questions to ask, how to discover the unique profile of a wine palate and how to get the most out of a tasting experience.
     
  Freestyle: Reflections on Faith, Family, Justice, and Pop Culture Freestyle: Reflections on Faith, Family, Justice, and Pop Culture (Fresh Air Books, 2014) is a collection of essays by the Rev. Dr. Michael Waters ’02 based on his blogs from The Huffington Post. Waters, who identifies as a member of the hip-hop generation living in an urban context, writes to inspire hope in the promise of a new day, in the assurance of victory over defeat, and in the fulfillment of God s promises within the created order. This book boldly confronts issues within the urban community, such as addiction, education, incarceration, family issues and absentee fathers, with an edgy, truthful perspective.