Alum Authors 2020

The 2020 Alumnae/i Authors was held virtually May 30. Books by participating authors that are available through your BMC Bookshop are featured below.

In addition to titles listed below, these BMC alum also participated in the celebration:

Olya Samilenko ’75 - Snow Goose Chronicles
Aida Waserstein '70 - My Name is Aida (English and bilingual editions)

 

Eleanor's Wars

Eleanor's Wars
$18.95

by Ames Sheldon BMC '70

2016 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award for Best New Voice: Fiction It's 1942 and the globe is aflame. Eleanor Sutton, matriarch of a prosperous New Jersey family, struggles to fight the war on the home front. But then long-buried memories rooted in Eleanor's service in the Great War come to light. These decades-old secrets threaten her marriage to George--and bring his own carefully guarded secrets to the surface. As the relative peace of the Sutton household is upended, son Edward leaves for the front lines. Younger brother Nat wrestles with shocking revelations while trying to find his way at boarding school. Putting her own future aside to oversee the family Victory farm, daughter Harriet faces the secrets that challenge all her assumptions about family and love. Set against the historical backdrop of World War II, ''Eleanor's Wars' chronicles the personal battles of one heroic woman in a rapidly changing world.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781592988617
Publication Date: 
November 16, 2015
Author: 
Publisher: 

Hamilton Versus Wall Street

Hamilton Versus Wall Street
$13.99

by Nancy Spannaus BMC ’65

Hamilton versus Wall Street delves into the life and mind of Alexander Hamilton, focusing on his impact on the economic history of the United States. The author challenges the conventional portrayal of Hamilton as merely a financier, unveiling him as a statesman whose economic policy laid the foundation for the nation's prosperity and resilience against global imperialism. The book portrays Hamilton not as a follower of the British System but as the architect of the "American System of Economics," a doctrine adopted by influential presidents like Lincoln and Roosevelt to drive the nation toward prosperity. It answers questions such as, "What were Alexander Hamilton's beliefs on economic growth?" and, "What was Hamilton's economic plan?" This book about Alexander Hamilton allows readers to appreciate the power of political economy in shaping the nation's history. Hamilton's revolutionary economic principles, ensuring America's true independence, are presented as vital elements of the American Revolution, inviting readers to reassess their understanding of economic theories. Praised as a "thoughtful, well-written argument for Alexander Hamilton's financial system as a guard against tyranny." --- Kirkus Reviews Richard Sylla, author of Alexander Hamilton: The Illustrated Biography, "In our time of crumbling infrastructure, anemic economic growth, and dysfunctional government, Spannaus points to a better path, the American System of economic policy initiated by Alexander Hamilton more than two centuries ago. ... His policies made America great, and a return to them can make America great again." "An excellent book that for me brought clarity to several threads that made up the fabric of Hamilton's vision of a political economy for the post-war United States, a national country and not a collection of states...." --Douglas S. Hamilton, fifth great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton "Spannaus meticulously traces the origins and describes Hamilton's system (in contrast to the Jeffersonian/British system) and shows how it resulted in the economic growth that defines American enterprise. ... This book is a definite must-read." --David J. Kent, author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius; President, Lincoln Group of D.C. Inspired by Hamilton's genius and humanity, the author illuminates Hamilton's revolutionary economic ideas, compellingly exploring how Hamilton's ideas have shaped the nation and continue to resonate in today's economic landscape.
ISBN/SKU: 
9781532067549
Publication Date: 
February 16, 2019
Publisher: 

Languages and Silence in the German-Polish Borderland

Languages and Silence in the German-Polish Borderland
$19.95

by Elizabeth R Vann BMC '85

Languages and Silence is an ethnography that focuses on a region of Silesia near Opole where the inhabitants speak three languages: Polish, German, and Silesian. The author spent several different extended periods of time living in a town that she calls Dobra, and she attempts to analyze the different ways that the inhabitants use the three languages and the situational, associational, political, and historical reasons they choose to speak whatever language they are speaking at any given moment.

Elizabeth R. Vann describes interpersonal situations in which a speaker uses specific words in one language or another for a particular purpose. Among the study's conclusions are that Silesian is associated with social familiarity and playfulness, while Polish is an expository register that makes a relatively intense, unidirectional claim on addressees' attention, and German is used as "a language of conflict."Additional dimensions of contrast have to do with speakers' "evaluations of cultural and temporal distance," with Silesian indicating cultural closeness (identity as well as indigeneity or archaism), Polish greater cultural distance (and fanciness), and German a farther extreme of otherness.

The author also argues that the analysis of this linguistic complexity can tell us a lot both about how individuals construct their ethnic and national identities, and how that construction is interwoven with psychology, politics, and history.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780940962743
Publication Date: 
March 15, 2017
Author: 
Publisher: 

Irish Bride

Irish Bride
$15.99

by Sarah Woodbury BMC '90

August 1148. The wedding of Godfrid and Cait promises to be the event of the year, and even Gwen has made the journey across the Irish Sea to celebrate. Weddings can be moments around which tensions and resentments pivot, however, so when a monk turns up dead within moments of Gareth and Gwen's arrival in Ireland, the pair put on their sleuthing hats and get to work, racing to solve the mystery before it ruins Godfrid's big day.

Join Gareth & Gwen and their friends and companions for murder and mayhem in medieval Dublin in The Irish Bride, the 12th Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mystery.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781949589283
Publication Date: 
July 21, 2019

Unbroken in Time

Unbroken in Time
$14.99

by Sarah Woodbury BMC '90

In 1282, David and his sister Anna crashed through time to save the life of their father, the last Prince of Wales. Thirteen years later, David is a grown man--husband, father, and High King of Britain. He is also the Duke of Aquitaine, a fact which King Philip of France appears to resent.

So when Philip summons David to Paris to bend the knee for the right to remain Aquitaine's duke, David is the first to suspect treachery. And when he learns Philip is taking advice from Guillaume de Nogaret, mastermind behind the annihilation of the Templars, the expulsion of the Jewish community from France, and the assassination of the pope, he's sure of it.

With not only Aquitaine on the line but all of Europe as well, David must call upon eight hundred years of history only he knows to ensure Avalon's past doesn't become Earth Two's future ...

Unbroken in Time will be followed by Outcasts in Time.

Complete Series reading order: Daughter of Time, Footsteps in Time, Winds of Time, Prince of Time, Crossroads in Time, Children of Time, Exiles in Time, Castaways in Time, Ashes of Time, Warden of Time, Guardians of Time, Masters of Time, Outpost in Time, Shades of Time, Champions of Time, Refuge in Time, Unbroken in Time, Outcasts in Time. Also, This Small Corner of Time: The After Cilmeri Series Companion.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781949589313
Publication Date: 
March 28, 2020