What the Eyes Don’t See by Mona Hanna-Attisha

Mona Hanna-Attisha (B.S. 1998, M.P.H. 2008) took science courses in northern Michigan at LSA’s Biological Station and in Wyoming at LSA’s Camp Davis before becoming the Flint pediatrician who brought acknowledgment and attention to Flint’s lead water crisis. In her new memoir, Hanna-Attisha tells “the story of a government poisoning its own citizens, and then lying about it” and her sleepless but tireless mission to reveal the truth by “speaking science to power.” As a doctor, she continues to work hard to make sure that kids in Flint get what they need to stay healthy, including safe, clean water. As she says in the book, “We don’t just treat children’s bodies—we fiercely protect their potential.”

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of Penguin Random House. Author photo by Mike Naddeo.

 

Good Reasons for Bad Feelings by Randolph Nesse

Following up on his classic Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse, emeritus professor of psychology and a pioneer of evolutionary psychiatry, explores why natural selection has left us with such fragile minds. Examining a range of disorders with insights from his clinical practice and evolutionary biology, Nesse offers insights to help explain our widespread human suffering and explores ways we might relieve and understand it.

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of Penguin Random House. Author photo by Carrie Hendley. 

 

Nimrod: Selected Writings edited by Frieda Ekotto

The Chadian writer Nimrod is a philosopher and leader in African literature, but not much of his work has been translated into English. Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies and Comparative Literature Frieda Ekotto remedies that lack with a substantial volume of Nimrod’s work, including essays, literary analysis, fiction, and poetry.

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of University of Michigan Press. Author image courtesy of the author. 

 

Magnitude: The Scale of the Universe by Kimberly Arcand and Megan Watzke, illustrated by Katie Peek

Did you know: Humans can walk about 70 million times faster than grass can grow. The speed of sound is about 10 times faster than the speed of a cheetah. The amount of pressure needed to create diamonds is about 70 times that of a karate strike. Magnitude: The Scale of the Universe, a book recently co-written by astronomy alumna Megan Watzke (B.S. 1995), specializes in tidbits like these. With its visual-heavy format, full of infographics that deftly illustrate incredibly small and exceedingly large measures of distance, mass, time, energy, density, and more, the book has been designed to help you viscerally get a grip on the kind of magnitude that more often inspires awe than understanding.

(Above) Author and cover images courtesy of Black Dog & Leventhal

 

Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement by Naomi André

Drawing on the experiences of performers and audiences, Naomi André, associate professor of women’s studies, the Residential College, and Afroamerican and African Studies, explores the way American and South African artists and composers have used opera to reclaim black people’s place in history. She also examines the way opera, in turn, can be a cultural and political force for political activism, critical inquiry, and social change.

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of University of Illinois Press. Author photo courtesy of Naomi André.

 

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

Wang (M.F.A. ’10) combines a fiction writer’s descriptive power with a former lab scientist’s drive for accuracy in an effort to illuminate the ideas and experiences of people with schizophrenia, including herself.

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of Graywolf Press. Author photo by Jacquelyn Tierney.

 

What is Real? by Adam Becker

Now that science has owned up to bizarre phenomena, such as wave-particle duality and Schrödinger’s cat, researchers are stuck with the responsibility of trying to reasonably explain how in the world a cat can be both alive and dead in a box at the same time. What does all this mean for what we can measure? Do universes beyond our own exist, and where does known reality butt up against speculation? Physics alumnus Adam Becker (M.S. ‘07, Ph.D. ’12) tackles both physics and philosophy in his new book, which interrogates the nature of reality given the absolute and unbelievable weirdness introduced by quantum physics. While Becker doesn’t have all the answers, his book does uncork many of the questions.

(Above) Book cover courtesy of Basic Books. Author photo by John Castillo.

 

Values at the End of Life by Roi Livne

Healthcare in America is built on the principle that life should be prolonged whenever possible, and this has meant that many patients spend their final days enduring invasive interventions that only extend their lives by a few weeks or a few months. Roi Livne, assistant professor of sociology, explores this end-of-life approach from moral and financial perspectives, the effectiveness of hospice and palliative care, and the difficult idea that a life consumed by suffering may not be worth living.

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of Harvard University Press. Author photo courtesy of University of Michigan.

 

Eva Palmer Sikelianos: A Life in Ruins by Artemis Leontis

Featuring previously unknown archival material, this book by Department of Classical Studies Chair and Director of LSA’s Modern Greek Program Professor Artemis Leontis combines new sources with sharp analysis to paint a compelling portrait of performer, writer, artist, provocateur, and expatriate Eva Palmer Sikelianos, who lived a life of quiet defiance from her youth in nineteenth-century New York to gay turn-of-the-century Paris and Greece and back to the Cold War United States.

(Above) Book cover image courtesy of Princeton University Press. Author photo courtesy of Artemis Leontis.