"Salted: A Manifesto on the World’s Most Essential Mineral, with Recipes” by Mark Bitterman ’96
Nonfiction / Ten Speed, 2010
This book profiles over 150 salts and includes 50 recipes that highlight this fundamental flavoring. Salted was nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award and two International Association of Culinary Professionals awards.
"Animal Journeys” by Maggie Murphy ’08 (a.k.a. Thessaly Catt)
Children’s / Rosen, 2011
This series explores the migrations of various animals, from wildebeests to caribou to monarch butterflies. The arctic tern, for example, migrates over 40,000 miles in the course of a year.
"Steady My Gaze” by Marie-Elizabeth Mali MFA ’09
Poetry / Tebot Bach, 2011
Mali’s poetry reflects her movement between the cultures of America, Venezuela, and Sweden, exploring “this beautiful, terrible world where
we are opened and crushed.”
“Lost Voyage: Selected Poems of Giovanni Pascoli” by Susan Thomas ’68 MFA '80 (co-translator)
Poetry/Red Hen, 2010
This is the first English translation of the poems of Giovanni Pascoli, a 19th-century Italian poet.
"State of Wonder” by Ann Patchett ’85
Novel / Harper, 2011
Pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Marina Singh sets off into the Amazon jungle to find the remains and effects of a colleague who died under mysterious circumstances. But first she must locate Dr. Anneck Swenson, a renowned gynecologist who has spent years looking at the reproductive habits of a local tribe where women can conceive well into middle age and beyond.
"Seven Studies for a Self Portrait” by Jee Leong Koh MFA ’05
Poetry / Bench, 2011
In this book of self-portraits, the self appears first as a suite of seven ekphrastic poems, then as free verse profiles, riddles, sonnet sequences, and finally a divan of 49 ghazals.
"Defending Corporations and Individuals in Government Investigations” by Mark Goodman ’83 (co-author)
Nonfiction - Instructional / West, 2011
A resource for white-collar lawyers, this book is a comprehensive review of how to effectively defend corporations and individuals in government investigations.
"The Quiet Room” by Wendy Ranan ’73
Poetry / Deerbrook, 2011
The four sections of this book move through retrospection on relationships, psychology, and reflections on a “dangerous contemporary world.”
"Bright Before Us” by Katie Arnold-Ratliff MFA ’08
Novel / Tin House, 2011
Francis is a teacher, living in the poverty of young adulthood. During a coastal field trip, his students discover a mutilated body washed up onshore. Seeing the body triggers a reaction in Francis that Arnold-Ratliff chronicles in alternating stories from the present and the past.
"The City with Horns” by Tamar Yoseloff Lindesay ’87
Poetry / Salt, 2011
Jackson Pollock’s life and vision provide the storyline for the main sequence of poems in this book, in which Yoseloff plays ventriloquist to the voices of Pollock; his wife, the painter Lee Krasner; and his mistress, Ruth Kligman (who survived the car crash that killed him).
"A World on Fire: An Epic History of Two Nations Divided” by Amanda Foreman ’91
Nonfiction - History / Allen Lane, 2010
This book tells the story of the struggle between the North and South in the American Civil War, and the ways both sides demanded Britain’s support.
“Conquistadora” by Esmeralda Santiago MFA ’92
Novel / Knopf, 2011
As a young girl growing up in Spain, Ana Larragoity Cubillas is powerfully drawn to Puerto Rico by the diaries of an ancestor who traveled there with Ponce de León. And in handsome twin brothers Ramón and Inocente—both in love with Ana—she finds a way to get there.