Spartan Bookshelf
Photo by David Schmitz
Regina Arnold’s Half a Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella (University of Iowa Press)
Music, Music, Music
Department of English Lecturer Regina Arnold’s Half a Million Strong: Crowds and Power from Woodstock to Coachella (University of Iowa Press) probes the history and cultural impact of large American music festivals in a book Lou Reed’s biographer Anthony DeCurtis recommends as “compulsively readable … a great, welcome pleasure.” A former rock journalist, Arnold is also coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock.
Joel Franks’ Asians and Pacific Islanders in American Football (Lexington Books).
Football as Community
Department of Sociology Lecturer Joel Franks sheds light on an underreported area of sports history in Asians and Pacific Islanders in American Football (Lexington Books), revealing how Asians and Pacific Islanders used football to create community in the face of social prejudice and economic injustice. A “well-researched narrative” that “provides an insightful analysis of ethnic identity and racism in the United States as it traces the history of American football,” praises Washington State University Professor Richard King.
Matthew “Levee” Chavez’s Art in Action: Make a Statement, Change Your World (Bloomsbury).
Art as Social Practice
In his second book for children, Art in Action: Make a Statement, Change Your World (Bloomsbury), Matthew “Levee” Chavez, ’13 Creative Arts, offers up ideas for art projects that engage in social practice and community involvement, delivering a “change in perspective about what art can be,” according to Kirkus Reviews. Chavez is the creator of Subway Therapy, an ongoing public project at Manhattan’s Union Square subway station.
Steinbeck Fellow R.O. Kwon’s The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books).
Love, Loss and Religion
Described by the New York Times Book Review as a “dark, absorbing story of how first love can be as intoxicating and dangerous as religious fundamentalism,” 2014-2015 Steinbeck Fellow R.O. Kwon’s debut novel, The Incendiaries (Riverhead Books), has collected rave reviews from (among others) the Washington Post, The Guardian and Chicago Review of Books. A native of South Korea and recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Kwon’s fiction and nonfiction have also appeared in Playboy, Buzzfeed and the Wall Street Journal.
Theodorea Regina Berry’s States of Grace: Counterstories of a Black Woman in the Academy (Peter Lang).
Grace in Many Guises
African American Studies Chair Theodorea Regina Berry’s States of Grace: Counterstories of a Black Woman in the Academy (Peter Lang) combines scholarship and memoir in an “important book” that “forces us to reckon with the interconnectedness of race and gender,” praises Portland State University College of Education Dean Marvin Lynn. A “robust, accessible book, equally at home in an undergraduate teacher education course or an advanced graduate theory class,” adds Kent State University Associate Professor Walter Gershon.
