Penn State Authors
Penn State produces writers with every graduating class, and their books can be found in many libraries. In Pattee and Paterno Libraries at University Park, readers will find a number of books penned by alumni, some of which have been purchased with endowment funds, demonstrating that a gift to the University Libraries really does touch others and gives indefinitely in ways that can only be imagined.
Here are just a few gems written by Penn State alumni.
Courtesy of Palgrave Macmillan)
This is Amy Wendling’s first book, hot off the press, on a subject of growing interest due to the current economic crisis and a reinvigorated popularity of Karl Marx, as capitalism is reexamined. In today’s economy, Wendling asks if Marx’s “false class consciousness” has become the rule rather than the exception, and she examines Marx’s theory of alienation based upon his observation that, while offering the illusion of freedom, capitalism really causes workers to lose control of their lives, work, and selves.
You can read more about Wendling, assistant professor of philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska at http://puffin.creighton.edu/AmyWendling/
Eyesores: stories by Eric Shade '93 LIB (University of Georgia Press, 2003)
Eric Shade is the winner of the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction. His fast-paced stories portray in remarkable accuracy the lives of people living in the gritty small towns of rust belt central Pennsylvania. There’s a strong sense of place here, evident in the community of reappearing characters and the Altoona dialect. If you enjoy books written in the southern literary style, Eyesores will leave you hungry for more.
http://www.southernscribe.com/zine/authors/Shade_Eric.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Eyesores-Eric-Shade/dp/0820324329
Pacific High: Adventures in the Coast Ranges from Baja to Alaska (Island Press, 2002) and Rivers of America (Abrams, N.Y., 2006) by Tim Palmer ’71 A&A
Take a trip up the Pacific coast from Baja, California, to Kodiak Island, Alaska, with Tim Palmer and his wife Ann. These adventurers travel north on foot, by car, river raft, and small bush plane, visiting local folks along the way. They include some science to support their opinions and commentaries on environmental policy as well as some firsthand thrills as they push on through the Olympic range. Rivers of America, meanwhile, features stunning images of wild U.S. rivers that would grace any coffee table.
http://www.timpalmer.org/
Sons of Mississippi by Paul Hendrickson '68 MA LIB (Knopf, 2004) and Fire in a Canebrake: the Last Mass Lynching in America by Laura Wexler '93 LIB (Scribner, 2003)
These two books document racial injustice and social history of the U.S. South in the nineteen-forties, fifties and sixties. Sons of Mississippi grows from an infamous photo, once published in Life magazine, of seven Mississippi sheriffs admiring a billy club. The author attempts to paint a picture of these men—all now deceased—and their values, from evidence he uncovered about their lives, and from interviews with their descendants. It opens with the Emmett Till murder, covers James Meredith’s integration of Ole Miss, and even includes a recent interview with Meredith.
Fire in a Canebrake is about a mass killing that occurred at the Moore’s Ford Bridge on the Apalachee River in Walton County, Georgia, 1946. This was a time when the lynching of blacks at the hands of whites was not uncommon and was seldom fully prosecuted. Wexler skillfully reveals the people and circumstances as separate threads throughout the book, tying these strands together at the end. By following each individual through this same time period, the reader is exposed to the subtleties of the politics of race in the South at that time. The semantic dance around the interpretation of the law, the manipulation of witnesses, and the role of gossip, rumor, conspiracy, intimidation and corruption in small towns…all worked together as a well-oiled hate machine, resulting in the denial of civil rights to people of color. At this time, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover sought to pull agents from lynching cases in the South because the failure rate of those investigations was embarrassing to the agency. He was overruled and, with Harry Truman, did manage to set changes in motion. The perpetrators of the Moore’s Ford lynching, however, were never brought to justice. This book is a thoughtful, thorough history that is well-researched and unforgettable.
http://www.laurawexler.com/