Books

Politics in the Marketplace: Work, Gender, and Citizenship in Revolutionary France

Katie Jarvis ’07

The French Revolution was not solely the work of men at the barricades. In a richly detailed account, Jarvis details the pivotal role that a group of Paris market women, the Dames les Halles, played in shaping the ideas of citizenship in the nascent republic. Jarvis, an assistant professor of history at Notre Dame, shows how this group’s social activism (leading a march to Versailles to demand bread) and daily marketplace practices were instrumental in fashioning a new style of economic and political citizenship.

The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty: The Eroding Work Experience in America

David L. Blustein 

The American worker is increasingly beset by anxiety, fear, and hopelessness, argues Blustein, a professor of counseling psychology at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development. Blustein arrives at this conclusion after conducting extensive interviews with workers across the country. He proposes changes in both public policy and corporate behavior to remedy a corrosive workplace unease that he says risks undermining our collective sense of well-being. 

Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer

John Glynn ’08

To escape a cloud of loneliness, the author signs up for a summer share and embarks on a season of beaches, bashes, self-discovery, and first love. O, The Oprah Magazine named Out East one of the “Best L.G.B.T.Q. Books That’ll Change the Literary Landscape in 2019.”

A Russian Immigrant: Three Novellas

Maxim D. Shrayer

The characters in Shrayer’s latest work are a poignant testament to the experience of Russian Jews in America. Shrayer, a professor of Russian, English, and Jewish studies, sets his novellas in Providence, New Haven, and Boston, cities where the protagonists’ lives are shaped by the weight of no longer being at home in Russia, while not quite fitting into the American mainstream.

Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding

Lisa Sowle Cahill

Drawing upon a critical exploration of influential writings—from the Bible and Augustine to Reinhold Niebuhr and recent popes—Cahill challenges the just-war and pacifism arguments of traditional Christian thinking about conflict. Cahill, the J. Donald Monan Professor of Theology, makes a case for proactive, nonviolent peacemaking as an alternative to the ambiguous and ultimately tragic pursuit of a just war. 

We Are Not Okay: Four Girls. Four Voices. All Unheard

Natália Gomes, M.Ed.’10

Described as 13 Reasons Why meets Jennifer Niven and John Green, Gomes’s Young Adult novel tells the intertwined stories of four teenage classmates wrestling with the issues of shaming, bullying, consent, and misogyny. 

Goodness and the Literary Imagination

Edited by David Carrasco, Stephanie Paulsell, and Mara Willard

When Mara Willard learned that Toni Morrison would be speaking at Harvard Divinity School in 2012, she hit the books. In preparation for the talk, Willard, who is now a visiting assistant professor in Boston College’s International Studies Program, and sixty of her colleagues studied Morrison’s work and wrote essays about its intersection with Catholicism. Goodness and the Literary Imagination compiles Morrison’s lecture and those essays. Willard had the opportunity to present her essay to the legendary author prior to that talk in 2012. “I think she really appreciated the work,” Willard said of Morrison, who passed away in August. “I think that she writes for people in communities, and so this is exactly how she wants people to engage.”