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A Death in Harlem & Gone Missing in Harlem (Weldon Haynie Thomas series)

Fiction Mystery

In A Death in Harlem, famed scholar Karla FC Holloway weaves a mystery in the bon vivant world of the Harlem Renaissance. Taking as her point of departure the tantalizingly ambiguous “death by misadventure” at the climax of Nella Larsen’s Passing, Holloway accompanies readers to the sunlit boulevards and shaded sidestreets of Jazz Age New York. A murder there will test the mettle, resourcefulness, and intuition of Harlem’s first “colored” policeman, Weldon Haynie Thomas.

In the Gone Missing in Harlem sequel, the Mosby family migrates from the loblolly-scented Carolinas north to the promise of Harlem. After Daddy Iredell dies and son Percy is sent back to the South to keep him out of trouble, DeLilah and daughter Selma meet difficulties with resolve. Selma’s baby, Chloe, is born against the backdrop of the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of the nation’s dashing young aviator, Charles Lindbergh. Then Chloe goes missing—but her disappearance does not draw the same attention. Weldon Haynie Thomas, the city’s first Black policeman, takes the case. 

 

Biography

Karla FC Holloway is James B. Duke Professor Emerita of English, African & African American Studies, Professor of Law and former Dean of the Humanities & Social Sciences. Her research and teaching focused on Black cultural studies, bioethics, and law. She has authored over 50 essays and 8 books including Passed On: African American Mourning Stories and BookMarks: Reading in Black & White. Her eclectic tweets can be found @ProfHolloway. In 2017 she turned her full attention to writing the kind of novels her book club of 30+ years would enjoy. Her mantra is “readers also want to have fun.” Gone Missing in Harlem '21, was awarded a Publisher’s Weekly Starred review and joined her first novel, A Death in Harlem, published on her 70th birthday. This spring she joined the Arrow Rock Writers & Artists Residency at Persimmon Creek, MO to work on a “very-near-to-present-day" novel where concerns about contemporary politics move from fiction to fact in a group of elderly DC book club members.

An Accidental Archaeologist: A Personal Memoir

Nonfiction Memoir

This personal and professional memoir recounts the author's formative years and the family influences that propelled him forward. The experience of anti-Semitism in grammar school and college played a major role. The centrality of music and family were especially influential. His partnership with Carol Meyers allowed him to have a successful career in academic archaeology and in teaching at Duke University. Other endeavors, however, kept him grounded and focused on everyday matters: singing, golf, social activism, teaching, and writing. But it was teaching most of all that imbued his life with special meaning as both student and teacher confronted the riches of the past in a search for a better future.

Biography

Eric M. Meyers is the Bernice and Morton Lerner Emeritus Professor of Religious and Jewish Studies at Duke University. He founded the Center for Jewish Studies at Duke in 1972. His specialties include biblical studies and archaeology. He has directed or co-directed digs in Israel and Italy for over forty years and has authored or co-authored hundreds of articles, reviews, reports and 20 books. Together with his wife, Carol Meyers, he co-authored commentaries on Haggai and Zechariah in the Anchor Bible Series. He served as editor-in-chief of The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East (1997). His most recent excavations at Sepphoris were fully published in 2018 by Penn State University Press under the Eisenbrauns imprint. He also served for three terms as President of ASOR (The American Schools/Society of Overseas Research).

Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race

Nonfiction Religion

Discussions of racial difference always embody a story. The dominant story told in our society about race has many components, but two stand out: (1) racial difference is an essential characteristic, fully determining individual and group identity; and (2) racial difference means that some bodies are less human than others.

The church knows another story, says Luke Powery, if it would remember it. That story says that the diversity of human bodies is one of the gifts of the Spirit. That story’s decisive chapter comes at Pentecost, when the Spirt embraces all bodies, all flesh, all tongues. In that story, different kinds of materiality and embodiment are strengths to be celebrated rather than inconvenient facts to be ignored or feared. In this book, Powery urges the church to live up to the inclusive story of Pentecost in its life of worship and ministry. He reviews ways that a theology and practice of preaching can more fully exemplify the diversity of gifts God gives to the church. He concludes by entering into a conversation with the work of Howard Thurman on doing ministry to and with humanity in the light of the work of the Spirit.

Biography

The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery is the dean of Duke University Chapel and professor of homiletics at Duke Divinity School. He also holds a faculty appointment in Duke’s Department of African and African American Studies. He is the author of “Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race;” “Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching;” “Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death, and Hope;” “Rise Up, Shepherd! Advent Reflections on the Spirituals;” and “Were You There? Lenten Reflections on the Spirituals.”

Bone by Bone: A Memoir of Trauma and Healing

Nonfiction Memoir

On May 12, 2015, Amtrak 188 derailed outside of Philadelphia going 106 miles per hour. Eight passengers were killed and many more severely injured. Geralyn Ritter was thrown from the train with such force that she sustained catastrophic injuries to her chest, her abdomen, and her pelvis. Found unconscious, unable to breathe, and suffering massive blood loss, she was not expected to survive. After enduring weeks in the ICU, dozens of surgeries over the following years, unremitting pain, PTSD, depression, and opioid dependence, Geralyn was faced with a daunting question: beyond mere survival after trauma, where is the path back to joy? Bone by Bone shares her powerful story of resilience. With humor, grace, and no-holds-barred honesty, she describes the journey back to life and offers support and encouragement for others. Bone by Bone addresses the long-lasting impact of sudden trauma and extends hope--from the perspective of someone who has been there. And back.

Biography

"After barely surviving a deadly train derailment in 2015 and enduring a long and agonizing recovery, Geralyn wrote her book entitled Bone by Bone: a memoir of trauma and healing, published in 2022. She is a frequent public speaker and author of multiple articles on trauma recovery, personal and professional resilience, corporate sustainability, women’s health, international trade policy, and other topics. She has pledged to donate the proceeds from her book to non-profit organizations that support trauma survivors and trauma medicine.

Geralyn serves of the Board of Directors of Business for Social Responsibility, a non-profit consulting firm, and Power to Decide, a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing sexual and reproductive well-being. She is also a member of the Board of Visitors of the Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy, where she chairs the Membership Committee. Geralyn also chairs the Patient-Family Advisory Committee of the Penn Presbyterian Medical Center.

Geralyn and her husband Jonathan have been married for 25 years. They have three sons, one of whom is a recent Duke graduate. She is known for her distinctive laugh that fills a room and determined resilience in the face of personal and professional challenges.

A recognized expert in healthcare policy, Geralyn Ritter is currently executive vice-president at Organon & Co., a global company dedicated to women's health. At Organon, Geralyn leads the global public policy and government affairs, global communications, ESG and corporate responsibility functions. Prior to the launch of Organon in 2021, she was a longtime senior vice president of Merck & Co., Inc., one of the largest biopharmaceutical companies in the world. At Merck, her passion was leading the Company's engagement on public policy issues and supporting forward-thinking governance at the highest levels of the company. During her time at the company, she created and led a half billion-dollar initiative, Merck for Mothers, aimed at reducing maternal deaths during childbirth. Prior to joining Merck, Geralyn served as senior vice president for international affairs at PhRMA, as Trade Counsel at the law firm Covington & Burling, and in the U.S. government as associate general counsel for intellectual property in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Geralyn received her undergraduate degree from Duke University, her law degree from Stanford University, and her master’s degree in international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. "

Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity

Nonfiction History

Broadway has body issues.

What is a Broadway Body? Broadway has long preserved the ideology of the "Broadway Body": the hyper-fit, exceptionally able, triple-threat performer who represents how Broadway musicals favor certain kinds of bodies. Casting is always a political act, situated within a power structure that gives preference to the Broadway Body.

In Broadway Bodies , author Ryan Donovan explores how ability, sexuality, and size intersect with gender, race, and ethnicity in casting and performance. To understand these intersectional relationships, he poses a series of Why did A Chorus Line , a show that sought to individuate dancers, inevitably make dancers indistinguishable? How does the use of fat suits in musicals like Dreamgirls and Hairspray stigmatize fatness? What were the political implications of casting two straight actors as the gay couple in La Cage aux Folles in 1983? How did deaf actors change the sound of musicals in Deaf West's Broadway revivals? Whose bodies does Broadway cast and whose does it cast aside?

In answering these questions, Broadway Bodies tells a history of Broadway's inclusion of various forms of embodied difference while revealing its simultaneous ambivalence toward non-conforming bodies.

Biography

Ryan Donovan is Assistant Professor of Theater Studies at Duke University and the author of Broadway Bodies: A Critical History of Conformity (Oxford) and Queer Approaches in Musical Theatre (forthcoming from Bloomsbury/Methuen Drama). He is co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Musical Theatre and a special issue of Studies in Musical Theatre. He danced in musicals across the country before earning his PhD at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. At Duke, he teaches seminars on musical theater history and performance, among others. He has also taught the Duke in New York semester-long program on the arts and culture of New York City.

Brothers: A Novel

Fiction Literary

Biography

Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas teach modern Chinese cultural studies at Duke, in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies. Eileen is the Director of Graduate Studies of Duke’s Master’s Program in East Asian Studies, and Carlos is the founding co-director of the Humanities Research Center at DKU. In addition to translating Yu Hua’s Brothers, their other co-productions include two co-edited volumes (Rethinking Chinese Popular Culture: Cannibalizations of the Canon and The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Cinemas); they are also co-editors of the ongoing Sinotheory book series for Duke University Press; and in 2015, they co-founded Story Lab at Duke. They also share three kids, ages 23, 17, and 12.

Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality

Nonfiction Biography

"With the US Supreme Court confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, “it makes sense to revisit the life and work of another Black woman who profoundly shaped the law: Constance Baker Motley” (CNN). The first major biography of one of our most influential judges—an activist lawyer who became the first Black woman appointed to the federal judiciary—that provides an eye-opening account of the twin struggles for gender equality and civil rights in the 20th Century.

“A must-read for anyone who dares to believe that equal justice under the law is possible and is in search of a model for how to make it a reality.” —Anita Hill

Born to an aspirational blue-collar family during the Great Depression, Constance Baker Motley was expected to find herself a good career as a hair dresser. Instead, she became the first black woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court, the first of ten she would eventually argue. The only black woman member in the legal team at the NAACP’s Inc. Fund at the time, she defended Martin Luther King in Birmingham, helped to argue in Brown vs. The Board of Education, and played a critical role in vanquishing Jim Crow laws throughout the South. She was the first black woman elected to the state Senate in New York, the first woman elected Manhattan Borough President, and the first black woman appointed to the federal judiciary.
    
Civil Rights Queen captures the story of a remarkable American life, a figure who remade law and inspired the imaginations of African Americans across the country. Burnished with an extraordinary wealth of research, award-winning, esteemed Civil Rights and legal historian and dean of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, Tomiko Brown-Nagin brings Motley to life in these pages. Brown-Nagin compels us to ponder some of our most timeless and urgent questions–how do the historically marginalized access the corridors of power? What is the price of the ticket? How does access to power shape individuals committed to social justice? In Civil Rights Queen, she dramatically fills out the picture of some of the most profound judicial and societal change made in twentieth-century America.

"

Biography

"Tomiko Brown-Nagin is dean of Harvard Radcliffe Institute, one of the world’s leading centers for interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, and professions. She is also the Daniel P.S. Paul Professor of Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School and a professor of history at Harvard University. 

An award-winning legal historian and an expert in constitutional law and education law and policy, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Law Institute, and the American Philosophical Society; a fellow of the American Bar Foundation; a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians; and a member of the board of directors of ProPublica. Brown-Nagin has published articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics, including the Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence, civil rights law and history, the Affordable Care Act, and education reform. She is a contributing editor to POLITICO Magazine as well as a frequent lecturer and media commentator.

Brown-Nagin’s latest book, Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality (Pantheon, 2022), explores the life and times of the pathbreaking lawyer, politician, and judge. Her book Courage to Dissent: Atlanta and the Long History of the Civil Rights Movement (Oxford University Press, 2011) won a 2012 Bancroft Prize in American History, among other honors.
 
In 2019, Brown-Nagin was appointed chair of the Presidential Committee on Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery, which is anchored at the Radcliffe Institute.  The Committee issued a landmark report detailing the University’s direct, financial, and intellectual ties to slavery, which resulted in Harvard’s commitment of $100 million to redress harms to descendant communities in the United States and in the Caribbean."

Dark Testament: Blackout Poems

Fiction Poetry

In this extraordinary collection, the award-winning poet Crystal Simone Smith gives voice to the mournful dead, their lives unjustly lost to violence, and to the grieving chorus of protestors in today’s Black Lives Matter movement, in search of resilience and hope.

With poems found within the text of George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo, Crystal Simone Smith embarks on an uncompromising exploration of collective mourning and crafts a masterwork that resonates far beyond the page. These poems are visually stark, a gathering of gripping verses that unmasks a dialogue of tragic truths—the stories of lives taken unjustly and too soon.

Bold and deeply affecting, Dark Testament is a remarkable reckoning with our present moment, a call to action, and a plea for a more just future.

Along with the poems, Dark Testament includes a stirring introduction by the author that speaks to the content of the poetry, a Q&A with George Saunders, and a full-color photo-insert that commemorates victims of unlawful killings with photographs of memorials that have been created in their honor.

Biography

Crystal Simone Smith is a poet, indie-publisher, and educator. She is the author of Dark Testament (Henry Holt, 2023). She also authored three poetry chapbooks and co-authored, One Window’s Light, A Collection of Haiku, edited by Lenard D. Moore (2017), which won the Haiku Society of America’s Merit Book Award for Best Haiku Anthology. Her latest collection of haiku, Ebbing Shore, won the 2022 Haiku Foundation Touchstone Distinguished Book Award. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Prairie Schooner, POETRY Magazine, African American Review, Frogpond, and Modern Haiku. She writes poetry about the human condition and social change. Look for her forthcoming book, Moonlit Map, Spring 2024, Duke Press.

Double Trio

Fiction Poetry

Biography

Nathaniel Mackey was born in Miami, Florida, in 1947, and grew up, from age four, in California. He received a B.A. from Princeton University in 1969 and a Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1975. He is the author of ongoing prose work, eleven chapbooks of poetry, and a three-volume boxed set collection of poetry, Double Trio: Tej Bet, So’s Notice, Nerve Church (New Directions, 2021). He is editor of the literary magazine Hambone, co-editor of the anthology Moment's Notice: Jazz in Poetry and Prose (Coffee House Press, 1993), and co-editor of the anthology Resist Much / Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance (Dispatches Editions/Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2017).
 
His awards and honors include the Bollingen Prize for American Poetry from the Beinecke Library at Yale University in 2015, the William B. Hart Residency in Poetry at the American Academy in Rome in 2016, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Poetry Prize from the Library of Congress in 2017, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, and teaches at Duke University, where he is the Reynolds Price Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing.

Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop

Nonfiction Physics

Force explores how humans interact with the material world in the course of their everyday activities. This book for the general reader also considers the significance of force in shaping societies and cultures.

Celebrated author Henry Petroski delves into the ongoing physical interaction between people and things that enables them to stay put or causes them to move. He explores the range of daily human experience whereby we feel the sensations of push and pull, resistance and assistance. The book is also about metaphorical force, which manifests itself as pressure and relief, achievement and defeat.

Petroski draws from a variety of disciplines to make the case that force—represented especially by our sense of touch—is a unifying principle that pervades our lives. In the wake of a prolonged global pandemic that increasingly cautioned us about contact with the physical world, Petroski offers a new perspective on the importance of the sensation and power of touch.

Biography

Henry Petroski is the Aleksandar S. Vesic Professor of Civil Engineering Emeritus at Duke. He has written broadly on the topics of design, success and failure, and the history of engineering and technology. His books include To Engineer is Human and The Pencil. His most recent book is Force: What It Means to Push and Pull, Slip and Grip, Start and Stop.

Editor's Note: Professor Petroski passed away shortly after contributing to this list. We are grateful to celebrate his legacy with you all. Learn more about his wonderful life and contributions to engineering and history here. 

Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence

Nonfiction Religion, Nonfiction Spirituality

Freeing Jesus is a work of "memoir theology" and explores the many images of Jesus we encounter and embrace through a lifetime—and how we make theology from the text of our lives in conversation with scripture and tradition. Freeing Jesus invites us to liberate Jesus and free ourselves when it comes to the ever-compelling and yet often-elusive figure at the center of Christian faith.

Biography

Diana Butler Bass, Ph.D., is an award-winning author, popular speaker, inspiring preacher, and one of America’s most trusted commentators on religion and contemporary spirituality. She is the author of eleven books, bylines including The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, The Atlantic, USA Today, Huffington Post, Spirituality & Health, Reader's Digest, Christian Century, and Sojourners. She lives in Alexandria, VA. 

Here Be Dragons: A Parent's Guide to Rediscovering Purpose, Adventure, and the Unfathomable Joy of the Journey

Nonfiction Humor, Nonfiction Parenting

Before our three kids, we were decent people. Interesting even. One of us taught Shakespeare to gang members while the other flew reconnaissance missions off North Korea. But our own children proved our biggest challenge. We spent so much time failing to be good parents that we forgot how to be good people.

Something had to change….

In HERE BE DRAGONS, Annmarie Kelly and Ken Harbaugh embark upon a journey to better balance their work and family lives. Filled with poignant moments and plenty of laughs, these adventures will resonate with anyone who’s ever tried to keep a family afloat.

Biography

Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era

Nonfiction History

Made-Up Asians traces the history of yellowface, the theatrical convention of non-Asian actors putting on makeup and costume to look East Asian. Using specific case studies from European and U.S. theater, race science, and early film, Esther Kim Lee traces the development of yellowface in the U.S. context during the Exclusion Era (1862–1940), when Asians faced legal and cultural exclusion from immigration and citizenship. These caricatured, distorted, and misrepresented versions of Asians took the place of excluded Asians on theatrical stages and cinema screens. The book examines a wide-ranging set of primary sources, including makeup guidebooks, play catalogs, advertisements, biographies, and backstage anecdotes, providing new ways of understanding and categorizing yellowface as theatrical practice and historical subject. Made-Up Asians also shows how lingering effects of Asian exclusionary laws can still be seen in yellowface performances, casting practices, and anti-Asian violence into the 21st century.

Biography

Dr. Esther Kim Lee is a Professor in the Department of Theater Studies, the International Comparative Studies, and History at Duke University. She is also the Director of Asian American & Diaspora Studies Program. Dr. Lee teaches and writes about theatre history, Asian American theatre, Korean diaspora theatre, and globalization and theatre. She has authored three monographs: A History of Asian American Theatre (2006), which received the Outstanding Book Award given by the Association for Theatre in Higher Education; The Theatre of David Henry Hwang (2015); and Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era (2022). She edited Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas (2012) and the four-volume collection, Modern and Contemporary World Drama: Critical and Primary Sources (2022), which challenges the prevailing Eurocentric reading of modern drama.

Miss American Pie

Nonfiction Memoir

Biography

Margaret Sartor's eight books include: Where We Find Ourselves: The Photographs of Hugh Mangum 1897–1922 (2019), William Gedney: Only the Lonely, 1955-1984 (2017), What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney (1999), and the New York Times best-selling memoir Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing up in the 1970s (2006). Sartor’s photographs have been exhibited widely and appeared in numerous publications, including: In Their Mother’s Eyes: Women Photographers and Their Children (2001), A New Life: Stories and Photographs from the Suburban South (1996), Aperture, DoubleTake, Esquire, and The New Yorker. Her work is in permanent collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Ogden Museum of Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art. She lives with her husband, Duke Professor Emeritus Alex Harris, in Durham, NC.

No Cure For Being Human (And Other Truths I Need To Hear)

Nonfiction Memoir

It’s hard to give up on the feeling that the life you want is just out of reach. A beach body by summer. A trip to Disneyland around the corner. A promotion on the horizon. Everyone wants to believe that they are headed toward good, better, best. But what happens when the life you hoped for is put on hold indefinitely?

Kate Bowler believed that life was a series of unlimited choices, only to find that she was stuck in a cancerous body at age 35. In her instant New York Times bestselling book, No Cure for Being Human, Kate searches for a way forward as she mines the wisdom (and absurdity) of our modern “best life now” advice industry, which offers us exhausting positivity, trying to convince us that we can out-eat, out-learn and out-perform our humanness. With dry wit and unflinching honesty, she grapples with her cancer diagnosis, her ambition, and her faith and searches for some kind of peace with her limitations in a culture that says that anything is possible.

Biography

Kate Bowler, PhD is a three-time New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host, and an Associate Professor of American Religious History at Duke University. She studies the cultural stories we tell ourselves about success, suffering, and whether (or not) we’re capable of change. She is the author of Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel and The Preacher’s Wife: The Precarious Power of Evangelical Women Celebrities. After being unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV cancer at age 35, she penned the New York Times bestselling memoir, Everything Happens for a Reason (and Other Lies I’ve Loved), No Cure For Being Human (and Other Truths I Need to Hear) and her latest written with her co-producer, Jessica Richie, Good Enough: 40ish devotionals for a Life of Imperfection. Kate hosts the Everything Happens podcast where, in warm, insightful, often funny conversations, she talks with people like Malcolm Gladwell and Anne Lamott about what they’ve learned in difficult times. She lives in Durham, North Carolina with her family and continues to teach do-gooders at Duke Divinity School.

One Breath at a Time: A Skeptic's Guide to Christian Meditation

Nonfiction Memoir, Nonfiction Religion, Nonfiction Spirituality

One Breath at a Time: A Skeptic’s Guide to Christian Meditation offers an accessible 40-day guide to beginning a Christian meditation practice. Trent reframes meditation for those who are skeptical because they doubt their ability to be still or they wonder whether meditation is a valid spiritual practice for Christians. She makes a strong case for Christian meditation from a biblical, historical, theological, and evidence-based perspective.

One Breath at a Time leads you step-by-step through five approaches:
• Breath meditation • Centering meditation
• Lectio divina meditation • Devotional meditation
• Loving-kindness meditation

Ever practical and encouraging, Trent gives you a variety of tools to begin and sustain a Christian meditation practice. Above all, she reminds you to be gentle with yourself, to embrace the beauty of being a beginner, and to keep practicing.

Biography

J. Dana Trent is a graduate of Duke Divinity School and professor of World Religions and Critical Thinking at Wake Tech Community College. An ordained Baptist minister and former hospital chaplain, her work has appeared on Time.com, Religion News Service, Sojourners, Religion Dispatches, and The Christian Century. She is also the award-winning author of One Breath At a Time: A Skeptic’s Guide to Christian Meditation, Dessert First: Preparing for Death While Savoring Life, For Sabbath’s Sake: Embracing Your Need for Rest, Worship, and Community, and Saffron Cross: The Unlikely Story of How a Christian Minister Married a Hindu Monk. 

Policing Gun Violence: Strategic Reforms for Controlling Our Most Pressing Crime Problem

Nonfiction Crime

In many U.S. cities, gun violence is the most urgent crime problem. High rates of deadly violence make a city less livable, dragging down quality of life, economic development, and property values. The police are the primary agency tasked with controlling gun violence, yet advocates for gun violence prevention either ignore the police or only reference them as a part of the problem. But in fact, more effective policing is key to the success of any comprehensive effort to reduce community gun violence.

The stakes are high--gun violence is concentrated in low-income Black communities, and consequently these communities bear the brunt of the associated economic, social, and psychological burdens. Any successful strategy must overcome the current impasse where the residents of high-violence neighborhoods do not trust the police, having experienced both abuse and neglect in their dealings with officers. How can police departments find the right balance between over- and under-policing of high-violence areas? What are the best practices for police to preempt and deter gun violence, while engendering support and cooperation from the public?

Drawing on fifty years of research and practical experience, Policing Gun Violence argues that it is possible for the police to create greater public safety while respecting the rights of individuals and communities. While gun violence can be attributed to various systemic causes that should remain on the public agenda--from widespread gun availability to poverty and racism--Anthony A. Braga and Philip J. Cook make the case that violence is itself a root cause of social disparity and future violence. Effective law enforcement is a vital component of a just society. They review and synthesize the evidence in several key areas: enforcement of gun laws, policing hot spots, controlling high-risk groups through focused deterrence, enhancing investigations to increase the arrest and conviction rate, preventing officer-involved shootings, and disrupting underground gun markets. Policing Gun Violence serves as a guide to how the police can better utilize their considerable resources to make cities safer.

Biography

Philip J. Cook has been a member of the Duke faculty for 50 years, and is currently Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Economics. He was a founding member of the Sanford School faculty, and served as director for a total of 7 years. He is one of the first scholars to undertake research on gun violence prevention. In 2020, his contributions in this area were recognized by the award of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology. Earlier, in 2001, he was elected to membership in the National Academy of Medicine. His research has focused on the costs and consequences of the widespread availability of guns, and what might be done about it. His most recent book, with Anthony A. Braga, is Policing Gun Violence (Oxford University Press 2023). Previous books on gun violence prevention include Gun Violence: The Real Costs (Oxford University Press, 2000, co-authored with Jens Ludwig), and The Gun Debate (Oxford University Press 2014, 2020, co-authored with Kristin A. Goss) which is intended for a general audience seeking an objective assessment of the relevant issues. He is currently the scientific director for a multi-faceted project to improve clearance rates for shooting cases in Chicago.

Race, Gender, and Political Representation: Toward a More Intersectional Approach

Nonfiction Politics

Biography

Kerry L. Haynie is Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, Professor of African and African American Studies, and a former Chair of the Academic Council. On July 1, 2022, he will begin a 3-year term as Dean of the Social Sciences for Duke's Trinity Colleges of Arts and Sciences.

Haynie’s research examines how the underlying theories, structures, and practices of American political institutions affect African Americans’ and women’s efforts to organize and influence the political system. His publications include African American Legislators in the American States; New Race Politics in America: Understanding Minority and Immigrant Voting (co-edited with Jane Junn), The Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics, Volume I: African Americans and Asian Americans; The Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics, Volume II: Hispanic Americans and Native Americans; and Race, Gender, and Legislative Representation: Toward a More Intersectional Approach (with Beth Reingold and Kirsten Widner), winner of the 2021 Richard F. Fenno, Jr. Prize from the American Political Science Association for the best book in legislative studies.

Revival Season

Fiction Literary

Every summer, fifteen-year-old Miriam Horton and her family pack themselves tight in their old minivan and travel through small southern towns for revival season: the time when Miriam’s father—one of the South’s most famous preachers—holds massive healing services for people desperate to be cured of ailments and disease. But, this summer, the revival season doesn’t go as planned, and after one service in which Reverend Horton’s healing powers are tested like never before, Miriam witnesses a shocking act of violence that shakes her belief in her father—and her faith.

When the Hortons return home, Miriam’s confusion only grows as she discovers she might have the power to heal—even though her father and the church have always made it clear that such power is denied to women. Over the course of the following year, Miriam must decide between her faith, her family, and her newfound power that might be able to save others, but if discovered by her father, could destroy Miriam.

Biography

Monica West is the author of Revival Season, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Barnes and Noble Discover selection, and was short listed for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.  She received her B.A. from Duke University, her M.A. from New York University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Rona Jaffe Graduate Fellow. She has received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Kimbilio Fiction, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She teaches in the MFA in Writing program at the University of San Francisco.

Saving Snakes: Snakes and the Evolution of a Field Naturalist

Nonfiction Memoir

Beautiful to behold and extremely sensitive to its environment, the snake is nonetheless stigmatized as a serpent, a creature that almost universally inspires fear. At a time when so many animals are endangered, who will speak up for the snake?

Snake populations are declining precipitously around the globe, but calls for their conservation are muted by fear and prejudice. Saving Snakes offers a new approach to understanding snakes and preserving their populations—an approach built on respect. Nicolette Cagle has traveled the world in search of snakes, from the Midwest and the southeastern United States to Cuba, Nicaragua, and Australia, and spent decades conducting natural science research on the patterns of snakes in regions where urban development encroaches upon the natural world. Her book offers a firsthand account of the strange and secretive lives of snakes, and reveals their devastating losses.

Beautifully and accessibly written, Saving Snakes entwines Cagle’s personal narrative with deep scientific and historical research. Through the author’s exploration of her evolution as a field naturalist, it provides a blueprint for developing a conservation consciousness among young people and paves the way for increased inclusivity in the male-dominated field of herpetology. While fundamentally a book about snakes, this is also the story of one woman's pursuit of her passion as she searches for, studies, and advocates up for these enigmatic creatures.

Biography

Dr. Nicolette Cagle is field naturalist with deep roots in academic ecology and environmental education. As faculty in Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment, she teaches courses in natural history and communication. Dr. Cagle also serves as the Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Nicholas School and was the founding Director of the NSOE Communications Studio. She was a fellow in Duke’s Thompson Writing Program and has conducted research in both ecology and environmental education, using an innovative combination of multivariate statistics, GIS, traditional field observation, and qualitative methods. As a certified environmental educator and NC Environmental Educator of the Year in 2021, Dr. Cagle also teaches and consults for a number of organizations in the Durham area. Dr. Cagle received her Doctorate in Ecology from Duke University in 2008 and a B.S. in Natural Resources and Environmental Science from the University of Illinois - Urbana in 2002.

Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People Without Homes

Nonfiction Social Science

Biography

Susan J Dunlap, Ph.D. is a Consulting Professor of Pastoral Theology at Duke Divinity School. In addition, she is the coordinator of the M.Div./M.S.W. dual degree program that the Divinity School shares with the University of North Carolina. Her teaching has been in the area of care of the sick and care for the bereaved. She also teaches two courses that integrate ministry and social work along with a colleague from UNC School of Social Work. She is an ordained Presbyterian (PCUSA) pastor and has served churches in both the Triangle area and Baltimore, MD. In Baltimore she was the pastor of a small church for four years before returning to school for a Th.M. from Duke and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. She has been on the Strategy Team of a community organizing group, Durham CAN, and serves on the board of the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham, where she also co-leads a grief group for family members of people who have died violently. She also serves as a volunteer chaplain at Urban Ministries of Durham. She is the author of three books, Counseling Depressed Women (1997), Caring Cultures: How Congregations Respond to the Sick (2009), and Shelter Theology: The Religious Lives of People Without Homes (2021). She lives in Durham with her husband, Dr. Prasad Kasibhatla, who teaches in the Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food & Love in Thirteen Courses

Nonfiction Culinary, Nonfiction Memoir



In her coming-of-age adventure, Caminos Oría travels to her family’s homeland of Argentina in search of belonging—to family, to country, to a love, and ultimately, to oneself. Steeped in the lure of Latin culture, she pieces together her mom and abuela’s pasts, along with the nourishing dishes—delectably and spiritually—that formed their kitchen arsenal. But Caminos Oría’s travels from las pampas to the prairie aren't easy or conventional. She grapples with mystical encounters with the spirit world that lead her to discover a part of herself that, like sobremesa, had been lost in translation.

Just as she's ready to give up on love all together, Caminos Oría’s own heart surprises her by surrendering to a forbidden, with the Argentine man of her dreams. To stay together, she must make a difficult choice: return to the safe life she knows in the States or follow her heart and set a new table, one where she can be her full self, unapologetically, in full-fledged Spanglish.

Deliciously soulful and chock full of romance, this otherworldly, multigenerational story of a daughter's love and familial culinary legacy serves up, in 13 courses, a gastronomic meditation on the tables we set for ourselves throughout our lives—knowingly or not. It’s a story that lures us to slow down, to savor meals mindfully and see where the communion of food takes us, beyond the plate. It’s there we find our one true voice, look within, and face the questions we’ve been running from: Is this the table I envisioned for myself before the world told me who I am supposed to be? If not, reset it. Do I belong? Do the people around me lift me up? If not, change tables. Where am I seated? At the head? In the middle? There is no right or wrong answer, but does my chosen seat position me for the role I’m meant to fulfill in this lifetime? If not, change places.

Sobremesa invites us to savor the healing embrace of time-honored food and the wisdom it espouses. It’s a reminder that that home really is anywhere the heart is. And for all looking to find their place, it’s an invitation to claim your seat at sobremesa’s endless table, where everyone is welcome.

Biography

Josephine Caminos Oría was born in the city of La Plata, Argentina, and raised Stateside from infancy on in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Gathering around a table large enough to sit her family of eight, plus two for her abuelos on her mom’s side, food and the sobremesa that accompanied it, was how Josephine learned to make sense of the world. Stories of where she came from, and the people she’d left behind, were served to Josephine during family sobremesas she savored like meals. Those tales nourished Josephine’s imagination and sense of self, setting the table for Josephine’s second act—a family and professional life focused around Argentine food and culture. It was in her early 40s, with five young children in tow, that Josephine took a chance on herself, leaving a C-level career to make dulce de leche. Today, Josephine, along with her Argentine husband, Gastón, is the founder of La Dorita Cooks, an all-natural line of dulce de leche products and Pittsburgh’s first resource-based kitchen incubator for start-up and early stage food makers. In addition, Josephine is the author of the recently published, “Sobremesa: A Memoir of Food & Love in Thirteen Courses (Scribe Publishing, Co., May 2021) and the cookbook, “Dulce de Leche: Recipes, Stories, and Sweet Traditions” (Burgess Lea Press, February 2017). The Orías, along with their five children, Lucas, Mateo, Nico, Nacho and Poupée, golden retriever, Andino, and beagle, Avi (short for Avocado)—are currently living la vida low-country in Charleston, SC.

For more information about Josephine Caminos Oría, please visit www.LaDorita.net. She can be found on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Social Media Wellness: Helping Tweens and Teens Thrive in an Unbalanced Digital World

Nonfiction Education, Nonfiction Parenting, Nonfiction Social Media, Nonfiction Technology

Solutions for navigating an ever-changing social media world

Today’s students face a challenging paradox: the digital tools they need to complete their work are often the source of their biggest distractions. Students can quickly become overwhelmed trying to manage the daily confluence of online interactions with schoolwork, extracurricular activities, and family life. Written by noted author and educator Ana Homayoun, Social Media Wellness is the first book to successfully decode the new language of social media for parents and educators and provide pragmatic solutions to help students:

    Manage distractions
    Focus and prioritize
    Improve time-management
    Become more organized and boost productivity
    Decrease stress and build empathy

With fresh insights and a solutions-oriented perspective, this crucial guide will help parents, educators and students work together to promote healthy socialization, effective self-regulation, and overall safety and wellness. 

Biography

"Ana Homayoun is the founder of Silicon Valley-based Green Ivy Educational Consulting, an educational consulting firm that coaches students and early-career individuals with executive functioning skills, including organization, planning, and prioritization, and overall wellness.

She is the author of three acclaimed books: That Crumpled Paper Was Due Last Week, The Myth of the Perfect Girl, and, most recently, Social Media Wellness. She is also the founder and executive director of Luminaria Learning Solutions, a non-profit developing the Life Navigator School Program, an advisory program that provides students with needed skills for economic mobility, as well as social and emotional well-being. 

Learn more about her work at www.anahomayoun.com"

Stay Woke: A People's Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter

Nonfiction Social Justice, Nonfiction Social Science

Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making All Black Lives Matter is an essential guide to understanding how racism works and how racial inequality shapes American lives, ultimately offering a road-map for resistance for racial justice advocates and antiracists. Despite moments of “racial reckoning,” many of our political, social, and economic institutions are still embedded with racist policies and practices that devalue Black lives. Stay Woke directly addresses these stark injustices and builds on the lessons of racial inequality and intersectionality the contemporary movement for Black lives has challenged its fellow citizens to learn.

In this essential primer, Tehama Lopez Bunyasi and Candis Watts Smith inspire readers to address the pressing issues of racial inequality, and provide a basic toolkit that will equip readers to become knowledgeable participants in public debate, activism, and politics.

This book offers a clear vision of a racially just society, and shows just how far we still need to go to achieve this reality. From activists to students to the average citizen, Stay Woke empowers all readers to work toward a better future for black Americans.

Biography

Candis Watts Smith is Associate Professor of Political Science at Duke University, where she also received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. Professor Smith's expertise highlights the role race, racism, and structural inequality play in shaping the American political landscape. Smith is the author of dozens of articles as well as three books--Black Mosaic: The Politics of Black Pan-Ethnic Identity (2014); Stay Woke: A People’s Guide to Making Black Lives Matter (2019); and Racial Stasis: The Millennial Generation and the Stagnation of Racial Attitudes in American Politics (2020). Smith has translated her research for wider audiences, such as writing for the Washington Post, recording an Audible Original on the History of Politics & Race in American, and presenting a TED talk on three myths about racism that has been viewed over 2 million times. She is the Faculty in Residence in Southgate and the Faculty Director of the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, a program designed to diversify the pipeline in humanities and social sciences graduate programs. 

The Antiracism Handbook: Practical Tools to Shift Your Mindset and Uproot Racism in Your Life and Community

Nonfiction Handbook, Nonfiction Psychology

Racism has reached epidemic levels in our country, and every single day we see acts of racial injustice. From police brutality and the prison industrial complex, to crumbling infrastructure and toxic drinking water in predominantly Black neighborhoods—many people have finally opened their eyes to the harsh realities of inequality and systemic racism in America. But awareness isn’t enough. We need to take action to create real change.

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You’ll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism. You’ll also learn skills to help you navigate race in professional workspaces, and advocate for antiracist politics, policies, and practices in your community, civic, and spiritual life.

By shifting your thought patterns and behaviors to cultivate an antiracist mindset, you can actively change your community—and the world—beginning with yourself. This handbook will help you get started now.

Biography

Dr. Edith G. Arrington is a licensed psychologist whose research, writing, and consulting focus on race, identity, development, and education; equity, diversity, and inclusion; and promoting health and well-being for individuals and communities. She has provided a range of professional services, including evaluation, assessment, and strategic planning to schools, families, community-based organizations, and philanthropic organizations.  Dr. Arrington earned her undergraduate degree in psychology and sociology from Duke University; her master's degree in clinical/community psychology from the University of Virginia; and her doctorate in school, community, and clinical child psychology from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education.

The Antiracism Handbook: Practical Tools to Shift Your Mindset and Uproot Racism in Your Life and Community

Nonfiction Handbook, Nonfiction Psychology

"Racism has reached epidemic levels in our country, and every single day we see acts of racial injustice. From police brutality and the prison industrial complex, to crumbling infrastructure and toxic drinking water in predominantly Black neighborhoods—many people have finally opened their eyes to the harsh realities of inequality and systemic racism in America. But awareness isn’t enough. We need to take action to create real change.

Written by two psychologists and experts in race, identity, equity, and inclusion, The Antiracism Handbook will empower you to make your own personal contribution to creating an antiracist society. You’ll find practical, evidence-based tools grounded in psychology to help you recognize and resist racial stereotypes in day-to-day interactions; and strategies to help you communicate with family, loved ones, and children about race and racism. You’ll also learn skills to help you navigate race in professional workspaces, and advocate for antiracist politics, policies, and practices in your community, civic, and spiritual life.

By shifting your thought patterns and behaviors to cultivate an antiracist mindset, you can actively change your community—and the world—beginning with yourself. This handbook will help you get started now."

Biography

Dr. Thema Bryant is the president-elect of the American Psychological Association, the leading scientific and professional organization.  She is the co-author of the Antiracism Handbook and author of Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self. 

Dr. Thema Bryant completed her doctorate in Clinical Psychology at Duke University and her post-doctoral training at Harvard Medical Center’s Victims of Violence Program. Upon graduating, she became the Coordinator of the Princeton University SHARE Program, which provides intervention and prevention programming to combat sexual assault, sexual harassment, and harassment based on sexual orientation. She is currently a tenured professor of psychology in the Graduate School of Education and Psychology at Pepperdine University, where she directs the Culture and Trauma Research Laboratory. Her clinical and research interests center on interpersonal trauma and the societal trauma of oppression. She is a past president of the Society for the Psychology of Women and a past APA representative to the United Nations. Dr. Thema also served on the APA Committee on International Relations in Psychology and the Committee on Women in Psychology

The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology

Nonfiction Technology

Imagine a world where your brain can be interrogated to learn your political beliefs, your thoughts can be used as evidence of a crime, and your own feelings can be held against you. A world where people who suffer from epilepsy receive alerts moments before a seizure, and the average person can peer into their own mind to eliminate painful memories or cure addictions.

Neuroscience has already made all of this possible today, and neurotechnology will soon become the “universal controller” for all of our interactions with technology. This can benefit humanity immensely, but without safeguards, it can seriously threaten our fundamental human rights to privacy, freedom of thought, and self-determination.

From one of the world’s foremost experts on the ethics of neuroscience, The Battle for Your Brain offers a path forward to navigate the complex legal and ethical dilemmas that will fundamentally impact our freedom to understand, shape, and define ourselves.

Biography

Nita Farahany, is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy and Founding Director of the Duke Initiative for Science & Society. She is a widely published scholar on the ethics of emerging technologies, including the critically acclaimed book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology. She is a frequent commentator for national media and radio and keynote speaker at events including TED, the Aspen Ideas Festival, the World Economic Forum, and judicial conferences worldwide. From 2010-2017, she served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. Farahany holds an AB (Genetics), an ALM (Biology), and is also a Duke alum, where she was awarded a JD, MA, and Ph.D. (Philosophy).

The Beauty of Dusk

Nonfiction Memoir

Biography

Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, the last ten of them as a nationally renowned op-ed columnist who appeared frequently as a television commentator. He was also a White House correspondent for the Times, its Rome bureau chief, and, for five years, its chief restaurant critic. He is the author of three New York Times bestsellers. In July 2021, he became a full professor at Duke University, teaching media-oriented classes in the school of public policy. He continues to write his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and to produce occasional essays as one of the newspaper’s official Contributing Opinion Writers

The Character of Virtue: Letters to a Godson

Nonfiction Memoir

Biography

Stanley Hauerwas has sought to recover the significance of the virtues for understanding the nature of the Christian life. This search has led him to emphasize the importance of the church, as well as narrative for understanding Christian existence. His work cuts across disciplinary lines as he is in conversation with systematic theology, philosophical theology and ethics, political theory, as well as the philosophy of social science and medical ethics. He was named "America’s Best Theologian" by Time magazine in 2001. Dr. Hauerwas, who holds a joint appointment in Duke Law School, delivered the prestigious Gifford Lectureship at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland in 2001.

The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey

Nonfiction Cookbook, Nonfiction Ethnographic, Nonfiction Literary

The Gaza Kitchen is a richly illustrated cookbook that explores the distinctive cuisine of the area known prior to 1948 as the Gaza District—and that of the many refugees who came to Gaza in 1948 and have been forced to stay there ever since. In summer 2010, Laila El-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt traveled throughout the Gaza Strip to collect the recipes and shoot the stunning photographs presented in the book.

The Gaza Kitchen's 130 recipes codify this little-known part of the Middle Eastern culinary canon for the first time ever-- in any language. But this is not just a cookbook. In its pages, women and men from Gaza tell their stories as they relate to cooking, farming, and the food economy: personal stories, family stories, and descriptions of the broader social and economic system in which they live.

Biography

Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian-American journalist, author, and policy consultant. She frequently lectures on and writes about the situation in Gaza and the intersection of food and politics and more broadly on the issue of Palestine.  She is the co-author of the critically acclaimed book The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey, and has has been published extensively.  Through her work as a writer and documentarian she provides much-needed insight into the human experience of the region.  In 2014, she featured in the CNN program Parts Unknown with celebrity chef and gastronome Anthony Bourdain as his guide in the Gaza Strip.   From 2003-2007, El-Haddad was the Gaza correspondent for the Al Jazeera English website and co-directed two documentaries, including the award-winning Tunnel Trade.  A graduate of Duke University and the Harvard Kennedy School, she currently lives in Clarksville, Maryland with her husband, their four children and their 5 chickens.

The Intrigues of Jennie Lee

Fiction History

Biography

Alex has been a member of the Duke philosophy department for over 20 years. The author of hundreds of academic papers and a dozen books about the philosophy of science, he began writing more accessible works for general audiences ten years ago, including "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" and "How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of our Addiction to Stories." More unusually he is the author of 4 historical novels, including the best seller, "The Girl From Krakow" and its sequel, "In the Shadow of Enigma." Like "The Intrigues of Jennie Lee," all of his novels connect the real dots of history into narratives about strong, resourceful, smart women.

The Launch Book: Motivational Stories to Launch Your Idea, Business or Next Career

Nonfiction Self Help

Launches and transitions can be hard.  And any launch is a deviation from the status quo.  Whether we are exploring a new idea, new career, or new business, we encounter self-doubt, fear of failure, and risks, gives you stories and exercises so you can be prepared to launch through uncertainty and succeed. Narrated by Sanyin with her signature authenticity and vulnerability, and incorporating wisdom from corporate, sports, and the startup leaders, this audiobook makes your new project or chapter in your life feel achievable.  

Biography

Sanyin’s mission in life is to enable greatness in others. She is the founding executive director of Duke University’s Fuqua/Coach K Leadership & Ethics Center, a professor with Pratt School of Engineering and a Faculty Fellow with its Divinity School. She was recognized by Thinkers50 (the premier global ranking of management thinkers) in 2019 as the World’s #1 Executive Coach & Mentor. In 2021, Thinkers50 named her as one of the 50 most influential thought-leaders in the world.

An Influencer with more than 1 million LinkedIn followers, she was recognized on LinkedIn’s Top Global Influencer Voices (2017, 2018) Her insights have been featured in New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, HBR, Economic Times of India, Maria Shriver’s The Sunday Paper, and The Wall Street Journal. Sanyin pens The Last Word Column in Dialogue Review, and the Ask Sanyin column for MIT Sloan Management Review. She authored The Launch Book: Motivational Stories for Launching Your Idea, Business, or Next Career which inspires readers through stories of different leaders and gives them an action plan for leveraging change using behavioral science principles Her biweekly substack newsletter - Leadership Playbook: Unleashing Your Superpowers, helps readers discover their innate and instinctive strengths and build super teams.

She helps CEOs, friends, students, mentees and teams discover and use their superpowers to make the biggest difference. She is also a mom of 3 and married to the love of her life, Chad Miller (Duke Medicine ’99).

The Launch Book: Motivational Stories to Launch Your Ideas, Business or Next Career

Nonfiction Business

Biography

Sanyin’s mission in life is to enable greatness in others. She is the founding executive director of Duke University’s Fuqua/Coach K Leadership & Ethics Center, a professor with Pratt School of Engineering and a Faculty Fellow with its Divinity School. She was recognized by Thinkers50 (the premier global ranking of management thinkers) in 2019 as the World’s #1 Executive Coach & Mentor. In 2021, Thinkers50 named her as one of the 50 most influential thought-leaders in the world.

An Influencer with more than 1 million LinkedIn followers, she was recognized on LinkedIn’s Top Global Influencer Voices (2017, 2018) Her insights have been featured in New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, HBR, Economic Times of India, Maria Shriver’s The Sunday Paper, and The Wall Street Journal. Sanyin pens The Last Word Column in Dialogue Review, and the Ask Sanyin column for MIT Sloan Management Review. She authored The Launch Book: Motivational Stories for Launching Your Idea, Business, or Next Career which inspires readers through stories of different leaders and gives them an action plan for leveraging change using behavioral science principles Her biweekly substack newsletter - Leadership Playbook: Unleashing Your Superpowers, helps readers discover their innate and instinctive strengths and build super teams.

She helps CEOs, friends, students, mentees and teams discover and use their superpowers to make the biggest difference. She is also a mom of 3 and married to the love of her life, Chad Miller (Duke Medicine ’99).

The Origins of You: How Childhood Shapes Later Life

Nonfiction Social Science

Biography

Dr. Avshalom Caspi’s appointments include the Edward M. Arnett Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University and Professor of Personality Development, King's College, London. Caspi’s research spans the fields of psychology, epidemiology, and genetics. His work is concerned with three questions. (1) How do childhood experiences shape aging trajectories?, (2) How do mental health problems unfold across and shape the life course?, and (3) What are the best ways to assess and measure accelerated aging? Caspi is a recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association and the Rema Lapouse Award for Significant Contributions to the Scientific Understanding of Epidemiology and Control of Mental Disorders from the American Public Health Association. Dr. Caspi received his PhD in developmental psychology at Cornell University. He served on the faculty at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin before moving to London and then Duke. Just as soon as the world is safe and sane again, he will return to his travels, and for now he’s honing his photography and cooking and learning about farming. Learn more at www.moffittcaspi.com.

Dr. Terrie E. Moffitt’s appointments include the Nanerl O Keohane University Professor of Psychology, Duke University and Professor of Social Development, King's College, London. Moffit’s expertise is in the areas of lifelong aging, mental health, and longitudinal research methods. She is the associate director of the Dunedin Longitudinal Study, which follows a 1972 birth cohort in New Zealand. She also founded the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study (E-Risk), which follows a 1994 birth cohort in Britain. Moffitt is a licensed clinical psychologist, with specialization in neuropsychological assessment. She is an elected fellow of the US National Academy of Medicine, British Academy, and UK Academy of Medical Sciences. Her current service includes chair of the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive and Sensory Sciences at the National Academy of Sciences, chair of the National Institute on Aging’s Data-Monitoring Board, and chair of the jury for the Klaus J. Jacobs Prize (Switzerland). Moffitt is a recipient of the Stockholm Prize, the Klaus Jacobs Prize, the NARSAD Ruane Prize, and the 2022 Grawemeyer Prize for her work on mental health, and the Maltilda White Riley Award from the NIH for her recent work on aging. Dr. Moffitt received her PhD in psychology at the University of Southern California and completed her postdoctoral training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She enjoys working on her poison-ivy farm in North Carolina. Learn more at www.moffittcaspi.com.

The Parted Earth

Fiction Family Saga, Fiction History, Fiction Literary

Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the Partition of India on the lives of three generations of women.

The story begins in August 1947. Unrest plagues the streets of New Delhi leading up to the birth of the Muslim majority nation of Pakistan, and the Hindu majority nation of India. Sixteen-year-old Deepa navigates the changing politics of her home, finding solace in messages of intricate origami from her secret boyfriend Amir. Soon Amir flees with his family to Pakistan and a tragedy forces Deepa to leave the subcontinent forever.

The story also begins sixty years later and half a world away, in Atlanta. While grieving both a pregnancy loss and the implosion of her marriage, Deepa’s granddaughter Shan begins the search for her estranged grandmother, a prickly woman who had little interest in knowing her. As she pieces together her family history shattered by the Partition, Shan discovers how little she actually knows about the women in her family and what they endured.

For readers of Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, The Parted Earth follows Shan on her search for identity after loss uproots her life. Above all, it is a novel about families weathering the lasting violence of separation, and how it can often take a lifetime to find unity and peace.

Biography

Anjali Enjeti is a journalist, organizer, and former attorney. She is the author of Southbound: Essays on Identity, Inheritance, and Activism and The Parted Earth. Her other writing has appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Boston Globe, Oxford American, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA programs at Antioch and Reinhardt Universities and lives with her family near Atlanta. 

The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Nonfiction Politics

The Marvel Cinematic ​Universe (MCU) is the most expansive and widely viewed fictional narrative in the history of cinema. In 2009, Disney purchased Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion, including its subsidiary film production company, Marvel Studios. Since then, the MCU—the collection of multimedia Marvel Studios products that share a single fictional storyline—has grown from two feature films to thirty interconnected movies, nine streaming Disney+ series, a half dozen short films, and more than thirty print titles. By 2022, eight of the twenty-five highest grossing films of all time are MCU movies.

The MCU is a deeply political universe. Intentionally or not, the MCU sends fans scores of messages about a wide range of subjects related to government, public policy, and society. Some are overt, like the contentious debate about government and accountability at the heart of Captain America: Civil War. More often, however, the politics of the MCU are subtle, like the changing role of women from supporting characters (like Black Widow in Iron Man 2) to leading heroes (like Black Widow in Black Widow). The MCU is not only a product of contemporary politics, but many of its stories seem to be direct responses to the problems of the day. Racial injustice, environmental catastrophe, and political misinformation are not just contemporary social ills, they are also key thematic elements of recent MCU blockbusters.

In The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, more than twenty-five leading scholars examine these complex themes. Part one explores how political issues are depicted in the origin stories; part two examines how the MCU depicts classic political themes like government and power; and part three explores questions of diversity and representation in the MCU. The volume’s various chapters examine a wide range of topics: Black Panther and the “racial contract,” Captain America and the political philosophy of James Madison, Dr. Strange and colonial imperialism, S.H.I.E.L.D. and civil-military relations, Spider-Man and environmentalism, and Captain Marvel and second-wave feminism.

The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe is the first book to look expansively at politics in the MCU and ask the question, “What lessons are this entertainment juggernaut teaching audiences about politics, society, power, gender, and inequality?”

Biography

I'm a political scientist in the Sanford School of Public Policy. I grew in Kansas, and I have BA in political science from the University of Tulsa and PhD in Politics and Social Policy from Princeton. I've joined faculty in the Sanford School in 2011, and I teach the core gateway course for the Public Policy major. Most of my research focuses on why so few working-class citizens (people employed in manual labor, service industry, and clerical jobs) go on to become politicians and how their virtual absence from our political institutions affects public policy. Outside of work, I'm a lifelong fan of Marvel comics and movies. In 2019 I got involved in a Twitter conversation with a diverse group of political scientists about how politics and society are represented in Marvel films, and that conversation grew into a mini-conference and eventually an edited volume. I hope this book will serve as an engaging window into the study of politics and political theory.

The Prince: A Devil's Duke Novel

Fiction History, Fiction Romance

Book 4 in the Devil’s Duke Series

Libby Shaw refuses to accept society’s dictates. She’s determined to become a member of Edinburgh’s all-male Royal College of Surgeons. Disguising herself as a man, she attends the surgical theater and fools everyone—except the one man who has never forgotten the shape of her exquisitely sensual lips.

Forced to leave his home as a boy, famed portraitist Ziyaeddin is secretly the exiled prince of a distant realm. When he first met Libby, he memorized every detail of her face and drew her. But her perfect lips gave him trouble—the same lips he now longs to kiss. When Libby asks his help to hide her feminine identity from the world, Ziyaeddin agrees on one condition: she must sit for him to paint—as a woman. But what begins as a daring scheme could send them both hurtling toward danger, and an unparalleled love.

Biography

Katharine Brophy Dubois received a Bachelor of Arts degree with Distinction in History from Duke University in 1989 and a PhD in History from the University of Michigan in 2001.  A former Mellon Scholar, Fulbright Fellow, and Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, she currently teaches courses about history, religion and popular culture part-time at Duke University. Dubois's alter ego, Katharine Ashe, is the bestselling author of more than twenty historical romances that reviewers call “intensely lush” and “sensationally intelligent.”  Her books have received highest praise from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, Library Journal, Amazon, iBooks, and many others, and have been translated into languages throughout the world and recorded as audiobooks. A native of Pennsylvania, Katharine is now a permanent transplant to North Carolina.

Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Flawed, Frightening—and Our Best Hope

Nonfiction Politics

Americans across the political spectrum agree that our democracy is in crisis. We view our political opponents with disdain, if not terror, and an increasing number of us are willing to consider authoritarian alternatives. In Two Cheers for Politics, Jedediah Purdy argues that this heated political culture is a symptom not of too much democracy but too little. Today, the decisions that most affect our lives and our communities are often made outside the political realm entirely, as market ideology, constitutional law, and cultural norms effectively remove broad swaths of collective life from the table of collective decision. The result is a weakened and ineffective political system and an increasingly unequal and polarized society. If we wish to renew that society, we’ll need to claw back the ground that we’ve ceded to anti-politics and entrust one another with the power to shape our common life.

Biography

Jedediah Purdy began teaching at Duke Law School in 2004. He was tenured in 2009. He has also taught at Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, and Columbia, and from 2019-22 was William S. Beinecke Professor at Columbia Law School. His books include two on environmental law and politics (After Nature and This Land Is Our Land), three on American politics in global, historical, and theoretical context (For Common Things, Being America, and A Tolerable Anarchy), and his scholarship has appeared in the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, and many others. He has written for the New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, and many other publications. Born and raised in West Virginia, he attended Harvard College and Yale Law School and clerked for Judge Pierre N. Leval of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He lives with his wife and two children outside Durham at the edge of the Duke Forest.

You Mean It or You Don't: James Baldwin's Radical Challenge

Nonfiction Social Science

Biography

Adam Hollowell teaches ethics and inequality studies at Duke University, where he directs the Global Inequality Research Initiative at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Jamie McGhee is a novelist, playwright, and essayist. For her fiction, she was named a James Baldwin Fellow in Saint-Paul de Vence, France, and a Sacatar Fellow in Itaparica, Brazil. She graduated from Duke University in 2016, where she was a Reginaldo Howard Scholar. She lives in Berlin, Germany.