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The Power of Print
March
2001 -- Special Tercentennial Edition
Since
the first volumes were gathered to form the nucleus of the Yale
College library, alumni have continued to produce the written word
with rare breadth and influence. Some of the works that have made
a difference:
Stephen
Vincent Benet '19, '20MA
John
Brown's Body
Penguin Books, 1928
Called "honest, courageous, and unflinching.always spellbinding,"
this book-length retelling of the American Civil War won a Pulitzer
Prize and is widely considered a masterpiece of epic poetry.
Hiram
Bingham III Class of 1898
The
Lost City of the Incas
Triune Books, 1948
In a gripping adventure story, Yale's original "Indiana Jones" recounts
his harrowing rediscovery of Machu Pichu in 1911 and offers his
theories about the origins and use of the mysterious stone city
of the ancient Incas.
Harold
Bloom, Sterling Professor of
the Humanities, '56PhD
Shakespeare:
The Invention of the Human
Riverhead Books, 1998
In a feast of arguments and insights, written with engaging frankness,
the premier (and arguably best read) literary critic of modern times
takes on the Bard.
Daniel
Boorstin '40JSD
The
Discoverers
Random House, 1983
Historian and Librarian of Congress Emeritus describes the "grand
discoveries" and personalities in the history of science that have
been instrumental in shaping our view of how the world works.
Cleanth
Brooks, Professor of English
The
Well-Wrought Urn
Harcourt Brace, 1956
Detailed commentaries on ten British poets from Elizabethan times
to the 20th century, including Donne, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope,
Wordsworth, Keats, and Yeats, helped establish the primacy of a
controversial form of close reading called the "New Criticism" that
was championed at Yale by Brooks and his colleagues in the English
department.
William
F. Buckley Jr. '50
God
and Man at Yale
Regnery, 1951
A half century ago, the founder of The National Review graduated
and wrote a stinging castigation of his alma mater that set the educational agenda for the modern conservative movement in this
country.
James
Fenimore Cooper, Class of 1806
The
Last of the Mohicans
Bantam, 1826
The prototype of the American adventure story is set in 1757 during
the French and Indian war and features a classic hero: a man with
the moral courage to sever all relations with a society he no longer
can agree with.
Jonathan
Edwards, Class of 1720, 1724MA
A
Jonathan Edwards Reader, edited by John Edwin Smith, Harry
S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema
Yale University Press, 1995
The editors of the authoritative Yale University Press series The
Works of Jonathan Edwards include a selection of fiery sermons,
treatises, and autobiographical work by early America's greatest
theologian and philosopher.
Henry
Louis Gates Jr. '73
Colored
People: A Memoir
Alfred A. Knopf, 1994
One of the country's leading black scholars offers a memoir of his
youth in a West Virginia paper mill town in the 1950s and 1960s,
as well as a portrait of his family and its placement in a black
society whose strength and self-confidence enabled it to thrive
despite segregation.
John
Hersey '36
Hiroshima
Random House, 1946
Pulitzer prize-winning writer John Hersey recorded the stories of
Hiroshima residents right after the atomic bomb devastated the city.
The resulting book gave the world first-hand accounts from people
who had survived the most horrific attack in human history.
Owen
Johnson, Class of 1900
Stover
at Yale
Yale Bookstore, 1912
The all-time classic coming-of-age-at-college tale is a meditation
on the qualities that ought to be valued at a place like Yale, and
a book that helped define the Yale man.
John
Knowles '49
A
Separate Peace
Simon and Schuster, 1960
This best-selling novel that recounts the story of two friends at
boarding school during World War II has been described as one of
"the most starkly moving parables ever written about the dark forces
that brood over the tortured world of adolescence."
Aldo
Leopold '09MF
A
Sand County Almanac
Ballantine Books, 1949
This classic of nature writing -- one of the most influential of
its genre -- mixes essay, polemic, and memoir as it sketches Leopold's
concept of a land ethic: that successful conservation entails extending
to nature "the ethical sense of responsibility that humans extend
to each other."
Sinclair
Lewis '07
Main
Street
Signet Classics, 1937
In a book that shatters sentimental myths, Lewis, who received the
Nobel Prize for literature in 1930, examines what happens when a
big-city girl marries a physician, settles in a small town in the
Midwest, and attempts to import a measure of culture.
Archibald
MacLeish '15
Collected
Poems, 1917-1982
Houghton Mifflin, 1985
This is a definitive collection of writing culled from the long
career of a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who was also the Librarian
of Congress and U.S. Poet Laureate, as well as a playwright, a federal
administrator, and, as a Bonesman, a football star.
Othniel
Marsh, Class of 1860, 1863MA
The Dinosaurs of North America
Government Printing Office, 1896
In the 19th century two "bone men" -- Edward Drinker Cope and Yale's
O.C. Marsh -- were rivals for supremacy in fossil hunting. Paleontologist
Marsh tells the story of his work and explains the meaning of his
discoveries.
Peter
Matthiessen '50
The
Snow Leopard
Viking Penguin, 1978
In an account of a "true pilgrimage, a journey of the heart," novelist
and nature writer Matthiessen joins zoologist George Schaller on
a hike into "the last enclave of pure Tibetan culture on earth"
in the Himalayas to search for one of the world's most elusive big
cats, the mythical snow leopard.
David
McCullough '55
Truman
Simon and Schuster,
1993
This warm, Pulitzer Prize-winning biography presented with zest
and imagination is both a historical evaluation of the Truman presidency
and a paean to the man's rock-solid American values.
Paul
Monette '67
Becoming
a Man: Half a Life Story
Harper/San Francisco, 1992
Monette's National Book Award-winning autobiography, an exploration
of coming of age and coming out during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, provides an intense chronicle of the author's struggle
with his homosexuality and HIV infection, and his salvation.
Gloria
Naylor '83MA
The
Women of Brewster Place
Viking Penguin, 1982
This bittersweet novel chronicles the communal strength of seven
diverse black women -- "hard-edged, soft-centered, brutally demanding,
and easily pleased" -- who live in decaying rented houses on a walled-off
street of an urban neighborhood.
Sherwin
Nuland '55MD
How
We Die
Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage Books, 1994
A National Book Award-winning look at death by a physician who wants
it known that "we rarely go gentle into that good night" examines
both the characteristics of the most common deadly diseases and
what the end of life means to doctor, patient, nurse, and family.
Camille
Paglia '74PhD
Sexual
Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
Yale University Press, 1990
In a scholarly work that challenges the cultural assumptions of
both conservatives and liberals, Paglia, an intellectual provocateuse, explores the connections between art and pagan ritual, as well as
between such odd couples as Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade,
and Lord Byron and Elvis Presley.
Richard
Rhodes '59
The
Making of the Atomic Bomb
Simon and Schuster, 1986
The definitive story of humanity's most awesome discovery and invention
provides a gripping, authoritative account of the men, women, science,
drama, and intrigue behind the single most important event of the
century: the discovery of nuclear energy and construction of the
atomic bomb.
Vincent
Scully '40, '49PhD
The
Shingle Style and the Stick Style: Architectural Theory and Design
from Downing to the Origins of Wright
Yale University Press, 1971
In this influential study of the underappreciated residential architecture
of the late 19th century, Scully planted the seeds of the architectural
movement that became known as postmodernism.
Jonathan
Spence '65PhD
The
Search for Modern China
W.W. Norton, 1990
The definitive introduction to the history of the world's most populous
nation explores the past four centuries to tell a story of vast
struggle, exhilarating dreams, and crushed lives, and the capacity
of the human spirit to endure.
Benjamin
Spock '25
Baby
and Child Care
Pocket Books, 1946
Since it first appeared more than half a century ago, "Dr. Spock"
-- now in its seventh edition -- has remained a virtual bible for
parents seeking trustworthy information on every aspect of child
care.
Garry
Trudeau '70, '73BFA
Flashbacks:
Twenty-five years of Doonesbury
Andrews McNeel Publishing, 1996
What started out in the late 1960s as a Yale Daily News comic
strip called "Bull Tales" that parodied life on campus has gone
on to become an internationally syndicated feature in more than
1,400 daily newspapers. This collection shows how "Doonesbury,"
now more than 30 years old, evolved and revolutionized the "funny
pages."
Calvin
Trillin '57
Remembering
Denny
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993
In a meditation on one life's aborted promise and a memoir about
how America has changed in the past 30 years, Trillin charts the
course of classmate Denny Hansen '57, a Rhodes scholar and "golden
boy" who was featured in Life magazine and later committed
suicide.
Robert
Penn Warren, Professor of English
All
the King's Men
Harcourt, 1946
In the classic novel about American politics, Warren examines good
and evil in a Pulitzer Prize-winning book whose lead character,
Governor Willie Stark, was based on the life of Huey Long and has
been called "one of the greatest of American literary creations."
Wendy
Wasserstein '76MFA
The
Heidi Chronicles
Dramatists Play Service, 1988
This Tony- and Pulitzer Prize- winning play presents the story of
smart, overachieving, and unhappy Heidi Holland -- " the girl we
all want to grow up and be or for our daughters to grow up and be"
-- as she recounts her floundering feminist march through 30 years
of America.
Noah
Webster, Class of 1778
Webster's
Dictionary
Merriam-Webster, 1830
The first dictionary of American English, which is now in
its 10th edition, continues to be a classic: a trusted, influential,
and authoritative source of information about the language.
Thorton
Wilder '20
Our
Town
HarperCollins, 1938
An American stage perennial, Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning drama
of the small, New Hampshire village of Grover's Corners transformed
the simple events of human life into a universal reverie.
Garry
Wills '61PhD
Lincoln
at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America
Simon & Schuster, 1992
In a 272-word speech that took a mere three minutes to deliver,
Lincoln gave the nation "a new birth of freedom," says
historian Wills. His Pulitzer Prize-winning analysis presents the
Gettysburg Address as "a calculated political statement with
roots in the Declaration of Independence, the Greek Revival, and
Transcendentalism."
Naomi
Wolf '84
The
Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
Anchor Books, 1992
The average women in this country stands five-foot four and weighs
140 pounds, and yet the images that saturate the airwaves and the
pages of clothing catalogs and magazine advertisements feature females
who are far outside the norm. In a book that laid down a feminist
gauntlet, Wolf argues for the acceptance of a more natural beauty.
Tom
Wolfe '57PhD
The
Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968
The account of the epic cross-country tour the author made in the
1960s with Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters helped define a literary
style called the "new journalism," as well as a generation
of rebellious American youth.
C.
Vann Woodward, Sterling Professor
of History
The
Strange Career of Jim Crow
Oxford University Press, 1955
Woodward's influential study of the history of the Jim Crow laws
and of American race relations debunked the popular notion that
segregation had always been part of the Southern way of life and
provided a nuanced analysis of the course of white Southern resistance
to desegregation decisions by the Supreme Court.
Robert
Woodward '65 & Carl Bernstein
All
the President's Men
Simon & Schuster, 1974
In their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting for the Washington
Post, Woodward and Bernstein doggedly pursued the dirty tricks
and dark secrets of the Watergate scandal. The book details all
the events and personalities in an affair that began as a bungled
burglary and ended with the resignation of President Nixon. |
