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Recent Books by UNH Journalism Alumni
NONFICTION by
Todd Balf,
Charlie Bevis,
Michael D'Antonio,
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
 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:
 A
Ball, a Dog, and a Monkey:
1957 -- The Space Race Begins
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:
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).
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.
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
Audio clip of an interview with Jackie on WGBH-TV's Greater Boston.
Scroll down to January 2006.
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
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
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."
MORE on The Prison Angel
An interview with Kevin and Mary
top of page
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
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.
More on Manhattan on the Rocks
Janice Harayda's Web site
top of page
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."
More on Dead Men Tapping
 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.
top of page
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Backcast: Fatherhood,
Fly Fishing 
