ALL-NIGHT PARTY: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930 By Andrea Barnet CW’74. (Algonquin Books, 2004. $16.95.) Meet the women of Greenwich Village and Harlem in the early 20th century who shoved aside social conventions and became the voices of the new feminine spirit. The cast of characters includes Margaret Sanger, who led the birth control movement; Bessie Smith, the hot-tempered “Empress of the Blues”; and Edna St. Vincent Millay, the Pulitzer-winning poet. Order this book

MAGNIFICENT OBJECTS: From the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology Edited by Jennifer Quick, Staff. (University Museum, 2004. $59.95—cloth; $29.95—paper.) Enigmatic cultures past and present are represented by the 220 eye-catching artifacts in this book. Among them, a shadow puppet from Java, a fluted tumbler from ancient Ur, a chief’s chair from Angola, and neolithic tools from Denmark—all part of the University Museum’s collections. Order this book

OFF THE WALL: Wonderful Wall Coverings of the Twentieth Century
By Lena Lencek and Gideon Bosker C’72. (Chronicle Books, 2004. $22.95.) The designs in wallpaper tell the story of a century, from the French arabesques of the 1920s to postwar geometric patterns. This is a colorful tribute to a decorating medium that moved from the salons of the elite to become “a truly democratized and democratizing purveyor of domestic elegance, refinement, and in some cases, downright kitsch.” Order this book

THE SOUND ON THE PAGE: Style and Voice in Writing By Ben Yagoda G’91. (HarperCollins, 2004. $23.95.) Anyone who’s read Hemingway or Dickens or Cynthia Ozick knows that style matters. This book draws on interviews with more than 40 writers to show how each of them developed their own stylistic distinctiveness. Ben Yagoda is the author of The New Yorker and the World It Made and co-editor of The Art of Fact. Order this book

MEDICINE, SCIENCE, AND MERCK By Roy Vagelos C’50 Hon’99 and Louis Galambos. (Cambridge University Press, 2004. $30.00.) Before he was the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company that developed numerous lifesaving drugs, Dr. P. Roy Vagelos was the son of Greek immigrants who helped make candy for his family’s sweet shop in New Jersey. This autobiography traces his life from early childhood to his undergraduate days at Penn and his rise through the ranks of Merck & Co. He is also a former chair of the Penn Trustees. Order this book

BEFORE IT HAPPENS TO YOU: A Breakthrough Program for Reversing or Preventing Heart Disease By Jonathan Sackner Bernstein EE’83, with Kate Kelly. (Da Capo Press, 2004. $26.00.) The best time to do something about heart disease is in its earliest stages, writes Dr. Jonathan Sackner Bernstein, director of the Heart Failure Prevention Program at North Shore University Hospital in New York. He goes beyond current guidelines for blood pressure and cholesterol to recommend an early-intervention plan that includes treatment with up to four “safe and proven medications.” Order this book

GOVERNANCE OF TEACHING HOSPITALS: Turmoil at Penn and Hopkins By Dr. John A. Kastor C’53. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, $55.00.) In the Penn section, Kastor recounts how rapid expansion in the 1990s to compete in a health-care market that never emerged resulted in massive deficits for Penn’s Health System, prompting large-scale layoffs, the ouster of CEO and Medical School Dean William Kelley, and a new governance structure. Order this book

THE ART OF THE ADVANTAGE: 36 Strategies to Seize the Competitive Edge By Kaihan Krippendorff EAS’94 W’94. (Texere, 2004, $29.95.) Kaihan Krippendorff, a veteran of McKinsey & Co. and other consulting firms, gives the old notion of business-as-warfare a new twist. He shows how companies can use lessons drawn from The 36 Stratagems, a 2,500 year-old treatise from China’s “warring states” period, to devise unfamiliar and unpredictable corporate strategies, and how Microsoft and Coca-Cola, among others, have been doing just that—without knowing it. Order this book

© 2004 The Pennsylvania Gazette
Last modified 07/01/04