Recent Books 

NONFICTION by Todd Balf, Charlie Bevis, Michael D'Antonio, Meg Heckman, Dana Jennings, Michael Kelly, Jackie MacMullan, Kevin Sullivan, Tim Thornton, Lou Ureneck, Kate Morse Yeomans

FICTION by Priscilla Cummings, Brendan DuBois, Janice Harayda, Randall Peffer

CROSSWORD PUZZLES by Brendan Emmett Quigley

Sing Me Back Home:
Love, Death and Country Music

By Dana Jennings '80
Faber & Faber, 2008

"If you truly want to understand the whole United States of America in the twentieth century, you need to understand country music and the working people who lived their lives by it." So writes Jennings, an editor at The New York Times, in a book that’s part music history, part memoir of growing up poor in rural New Hampshire. The St. Petersburg Times called Sing Me Back Home "one of the best things written about American music in the past two decades." Jennings takes themes of specific songs from what he considers country’s golden age, 1950-1970, and connects them with the characters and events in his own family.

Publisher's site with links to reviews

Major: A Black Athlete, a White Era, and the Fight
to Be the World's Fastest Human Being

By Todd Balf '83
Crown, 2008

This story of race and racing centers on Marshall “Major” Taylor, one of the nation’s first black superstars. An athlete, poet and celebrity, Taylor lived a century ago, when the scars of the Civil War were still fresh and when cycling briefly replaced horse racing as the nation’s favorite sport Much of the book centers on Taylor's his rivalry with a white man, Floyd McFarland, to be the fastest bicyclist in the world. Reviewers have called the book "literary sportswriting at its finest" and "perhaps the greatest American underdog story every told."

Boston Globe review of Major

Todd's previous books:

The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-La
The Story of Manny Being Manny A children's book about Manny Ramirez, illustrated by Todd's father, artist Oliver Balf.
Hear an interview with Todd
Read an interview with Todd

A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey:
1957 -- The Space Race Begins

By Michael D'Antonio '81
Simon & Schuster, 2007

When the Soviet Union launched the first orbital satellite, Sputnik I, in 1957, Americans panicked, then went space-crazy. A Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey tells the story of this country's early efforts to succeed in space: a time of exploding rockets, Florida boomtowns, competitive craziness and a wealth of UFO sightings. Booklist says, "Besides narrating countdowns, missile failures, and nuclear explosions, D'Antonio evokes the boomtown atmosphere of Cape Canaveral through two young reporters, Jay Barbree and Wickham Stivers, who cut their teeth on the space-age story. An entertaining writer, D'Antonio delivers the technological heroics on which spaceflight fans are keen."

Some of Michael's previous books:

Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Dreams
The State Boys Rebellion (2005)
Audio interview with Michael
More

We Went to War: New Hampshire Remembers 

By Meg Heckman '01 and Mike Pride
Monitor Publishing Company, 2008

In We Went to War, men and women from New Hampshire remember how World War II transformed—and often threatened—their lives. More than six decades later, they tell their own stories in words that are often poignant, sometimes tragic, and always human. In 2007, Meg Heckman '01 and Mike Pride of the Concord Monitor set out to find members of the World War II generation still living in New Hampshire sixty-two years after the war ended. We Went to War compiles the stories the two writers collected and adds several chapters. Although some of the women and men interviewed for We Went to War recall the gung-ho spirit of the time, they do not candy-coat their experiences. The war was about death and mutilation. This generation’s “job,” as its members saw it, was to do their part and come safely home. And one other thing: to remember, no matter how much they wanted to forget.

The New England League:
A Baseball History 1885 - 1949

By Charlie Bevis ’75
McFarland & Co., 2007

Author Charlie Bevis, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research, delves into the history of the New England League during the pivotal early years of minor league baseball. Chapters explore baseball’s ties to the regional economy and the textile industry, as well as the groundbreaking first examples of playoffs, night baseball and integration. Charlie has written for numerous baseball publications and is the author of two previous books, Sunday Baseball (2003) and Mickey Cochrane (1998).

Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly Fishing
and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska

By Lou Ureneck ’72
St. Martin’s Press, 2007

When Lou Ureneck was 49 and his son Adam was 18, they took off together for a 110-mile Alaskan river trip. “My life was in a ditch,” writes Ureneck, who directs the journalism program at Boston University. “I was broke from lawyers, therapists and alimony payments and fearful that my son’s anger was hardening into life-long permanence. I wanted to pull him back into my life.” From the mountains to the Bering Sea, the two confronted bears, nasty weather, violent currents and their own differences. The memoir has been praised by a host of prominent writers, including Bill McKibben, who calls it “one of the finest meditations on fathers and sons that I've ever read.” The book won a 2007 National Outdoor Book Award.

Backcast Web site
Audio Slideshow

Twilight 

By Brendan Dubois ’82
St. Martin’s Minotaur, 2007

Publisher’s Weekly calls Twilight, the 11th mystery by DuBois, a “quietly devastating cautionary tale” about the future of the war on terror. Young Canadian journalist Samuel Simpson joins a team of UN war-crimes investigators working in upstate New York after a major terrorist attack against the United States. Danger surrounds them. Worse, Samuel begins to suspect there is a traitor on his team, someone who is working not only to conceal important evidence but to betray and kill them all.

Brendan’s Web site

Not by a Long Shot:
A Season at a Hard-Luck Horse Track

By T.D. Thornton '90
Public Affairs/Perseus Book Group, 2007

The publisher calls this book "a gritty, passionate behind-the-scenes portrait of a year in the life of thoroughbred racing's working class, by a racetrack insider." The track is Suffolk Downs in Massachusetts, a.k.a. Sufferin' Downs, "where grizzled thoroughbreds come to end their careers, hopeful young jockeys aspire against daunting odds to begin them, and diehard fans cheer, curse and gamble on the entire fascinating spectacle." The insider is Tim Thornton, who has both covered the track as a reporter and worked there as media director. Publisher's Weekly says Tim "possesses a deep sympathy for and understanding of the dynamics and contradictions that sustain this threatened world." Tim says he aimed for a “caustically honest” chronicle showing how minimum-wage stablehands and hard-luck horses do the work that allows the upper echelon to bask in the spotlight.

Geno: In Pursuit of Perfection 

By Geno Auriemma with Jackie MacMullan '82
Warner Books, 2006

Jackie, a Boston Globe sports columnist, ghostwrites the life story of the famously ferocious UConn women's basketball coach whose teams won five national championships and broke records with a 70-game winning streak.

From the New York Times review of Geno: "Most people would take pride in such accomplishments, but not Auriemma. He remains fearful, haunted. His only certainty is that it will all come crashing down around him. It's little wonder his players feel so protective toward him. Clearly, his outsider's insecurities -- as an immigrant, a poor kid, a man in a woman's game -- go a long way toward explaining his success. They also explain much of the charm of this book."

Read an excerpt of Geno

Provincetown Follies, Bangkok Blues 

By Randall Peffer '73
Bleak House Books, 2006

From the Publishers Weekly review: "Peffer explores sexual ambiguity in this offbeat legal procedural/whodunit. Callow public defender Michael DeCastro undergoes a baptism of fire with his first murder case: the defendant, Tuki Aparecio, is a Provincetown drag queen from Thailand (via Vietnam) accused of killing her lover, Alby Costelano, before setting a fire to cover her traces. Despite himself -- and his imminent wedding to an increasingly annoyed fiancée -- DeCastro finds his feelings toward his client evolving into romantic ones, which lands him in some compromising positions. The narrative alternates between Michael's sexually confused point-of-view and Tuki's flashbacks to her dark past in Bangkok and to the events leading up to the crime."

More on Provincetown Follies
Randall Peffer's Web site

Santa Claws, The Christmas Crab 

By Priscilla Cummings '73
Tidewater Publishers, 2006

Beneath Chesapeake Bay, Spud, a feisty young blue crab, hates to nap. Waking his underwater friends, Spud launches a rollicking Christmas Eve party that is interrupted by an unexpected traveler in need of Spud’s help. This is the latest of a dozen children's picture books by Priscilla Cummings, who has also written five young adult novels.

More on all the books on Priscilla's Web site

The Prison Angel:
Mother Antonia's Journey from Beverly Hills to a Life of Service in a Mexican Jail

By Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan '81
Penguin Press, 2005

After a wealthy childhood in Beverly Hills, two failed marriages and much spiritual searching, Mary Clarke put on a homemade habit and headed to the most notorious prison in Tijuana, Mexico, where she has lived and worked since 1977. From Publishers Weekly: "Jordan and Sullivan, who report from Mexico for the Washington Post, paint a portrait of this remarkable woman with a light touch, rarely digressing into lyricism or political backstories."

An interview with Kevin and Mary

Things Worth Fighting For 

By Michael Kelly ’79
Introduction by Ted Koppel
Penguin. Paperback, 2005; hardcover, 2004

Publisher’s synopsis: Until 2003, when he died at age 46 while covering the war in Iraq, Michael Kelly was widely regarded as one of the pre-eminent journalists of his generation. This collection of his most memorable stories and columns — drawn from the Washington Post, New York Times, New Republic, and other publications — puts on full display the dazzling panoply of his gifts: for physical description and scene setting; for telling detail, brilliant simile, and satirical insight; for prose that is at once mathematically precise and lyrical. From his searing portraits of political figures to his stunning wartime dispatches from the front lines, Things Worth Fighting For represents the work of a journalist who time and again demonstrated a talent for penetrating to the heart of the matter — for getting the story other writers missed and telling it with a verve few writers could match.

Mike’s previous book Martyrs’ Day: Chronicle of a Small War

More about Michael Kelly and UNH’s Michael Kelly scholarship

Manhattan on the Rocks 

By Janice Harayda '70
Sourcebooks Landmark, 2004

From Booklist: Laura Smart, 25, can't wait to start her exciting new job in New York at the magazine Cassandra, run by sleek, sophisticated talk-show host Cassandra Lovelace. Laura can't get out of Cleveland fast enough. Harayda, a former senior editor at Glamour, provides an inside look at life at a New York magazine through an appealing heroine's eyes.

Janice Harayda's Web site

Dead Men Tapping:
The End of the Heather Lynne II

By Kate Morse Yeomans '95
International Marine/Ragged Mountain Press, 2003

A collision, a damaged boat, four trapped fishermen, and a rescue gone wrong. From The Boston Globe: "Kate Yeomans... recounts the collision and the ensuing federal trial with a sure sense of drama... Her powerful account will remind readers of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm."

The New York Times Crossword All-Stars:
50 Puzzles from One of Will Shortz's Favorite Constructors, Brendan Emmett Quigley

By Brendan Quigley ’96
St. Martin’s Griffin, 2003

Here’s what the publisher says: Puzzle fans, take note. In this book you'll find puzzles like none other the Times has published: hip, fun, and full of surprising, adventurous answers and clues. All this has made Brendan Emmett Quigley, a rock guitarist who was just 23 when the Times published the first puzzle he ever created, one of Will Shortz's favorite puzzlemakers. For the book, Shortz wrote an introduction and edited ten puzzles of Brendan’s that had never been published before.

UNHers, take note: Brendan sold that first puzzle in the spring of his senior year in Durham. Here’s a profile from the UNH magazine by journalism prof Jane Harrigan and a 2007 profile from the Boston Globe Sunday magazine.

Dana Jennings '80 recently published a book entitled Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death and Country Music. Learn more.

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