2020 Mixed Media List

Turkey, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and the Philippines all have long histories of migration, regime change, and democratic fragility. KATRINA BURGESS, an associate professor of political economy at Fletcher, uses the four countries’ cases to bring together these themes and examine the complex interplay between states and diasporas, asking how homeland conditions create dispersal and migrants, in turn, transform the state.

TATIANA ANDROSOV (F80) wrote this book in 1969 and 1970, right after she graduated from Mount Holyoke, and finally published it for her fiftieth reunion. It steps back in time to follow the fortunes of four friends from their first day at the Seven Sisters school until the day that three of them graduate. Also this year, Androsov released the novella Mangoes and Blood, which takes place on a single evening in the 1970s, when a young Austrian woman and her fellow partygoers are taken hostage at a fancy reception in an unnamed East African city.

BEA BOCCALANDRO (F89) brings her experience as founder of a global consulting firm to this guide. In it, she shows how to get the most out of work by adding as little as five minutes a week of “social purpose” activity in ways as simple as mentoring other workers and being “kinder than necessary” to clients. Anecdotes from administrative assistants, Fed Ex drivers, celebrities, and the author’s own father help make this personal-fulfillment roadmap an easy read.

Co-written by current Fletcher student BENNETT CLIFFORD (F21), this highly readable yet research-packed book—which draws from official documents, court cases, social media posts, and interviews with ISIS members and law enforcement officials—is key to understanding how so many Americans have gotten involved in jihadist activity in the past five years. It’s essential for anyone trying to understand the current moment.

In this erudite tome, MARGARET M. deGUZMAN (F96) a law professor at Temple University, asks what it takes to justify special rules of jurisdiction, process, and punishment for crimes so grave as to be shocking. The concept of gravity is insufficiently researched, she argues, though it permeates international criminal law, and reconceptualizing it to align the popular understanding of the term with its legal realities can “better support the long-term legitimacy” of such laws.

This memoir of a hitchhiking trip two college kids—one of them author RAYMOND DUNCAN (F62 & F64)—embarked on in the mid-1950s is fun and fast-paced. The pair leave California with $300, their passports, tickets to cross the Atlantic by sea, and 10 days to get to New York. Their adventures—by motorcycle once they hit the continent—take them from small-town USA to the most storied cities of Europe and finally, to Cold War East Berlin, with several harrowing stops along the way.

This autobiography follows the life of two-time Nobel Peace Prize nominee and educator JOHN E. ENDICOTT (F73 & F74). The story moves from his birth in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1936, through World War II and his years in government service during the conflicts that followed it, to his current post as president of South Korea’s Woosong University, giving a behind-the-scenes perspective of both international events and academia.

Edited by NANCY W. GLEASON (F07 & F11) and Catherine Shea Sanger, these essays “detail significant trends in active learning pedagogy, writing programs, language acquisition, and implications for teaching in the liberal arts, adult learners, girls and women, and Confucian heritage communities.” A must-read for educators, administrators, policymakers, and development professionals in Asian countries.

Climate change isn’t just about the environment. It’s also going to have wide-ranging implications for global politics, particularly as China, Russia, and India increasingly gain on the U.S. in terms of international commerce and military capabilities. In this carefully researched book, GEOFFREY F. GRESH (F07 & F11) points to maritime Eurasia as a center of strategic activity as the melting of the polar ice cap heats up the competition for newly exposed natural resources.

One of today’s hottest topics is China’s challenge to Western hegemony, but there was a time when the tables were turned. In this fascinating account of how commerce, communication, innovation, and political dominance moved from East to West, PETER F. KROGH (F61 & F66) covers a lot of ground, touching on Leif Ericson, Genghis Khan, the Medieval plague years, the age of exploration, and the Founding Fathers before coming full circle back to China and Deng Xiaoping.

By GEORGE LAMBRAKIS (F69) a career diplomat who has worked in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, this book is less the how-to guide its title might suggest and more an inside peek into the Foreign Service life from one who lived it to its fullest. More than two dozen photographs and three appendices supplement the author’s tales of adventure and history-making world events.

JEFFREY D. McCAUSLAND (F81 & F84) and co-author Tom Vossler analyze crucial junctures in the strategy at Gettysburg—the largest battle ever fought in North America—not only for their place in history but for what contemporary business leaders can take from them. Vignettes come to life through photographs and maps, and each is followed by a group of “leadership moment” questions for readers to ponder and a detailed section on what can be learned by the actions of the men involved, providing a unique perspective for today’s executives.

This well-written memoir recounts the struggle PAUL PODOLSKY (F96) and his wife had with the daughter they adopted from a Russian orphanage as a toddler after the state removed her from her severely neglectful biological mother. From the beginning Sonya exhibited strange behaviors, and her eventual diagnosis of reactive attachment disorder explains her behavioral issues and inability to show love, empathy, or remorse, leaving the family no choice but to confront the most difficult decision of their lives.

Since COVID-19 was first discovered, rumors have flown that it “escaped” from a Wuhan lab. WILLIAM SARGENT (F71) author of several books on science and the environment, considers the possibility through the lens of history, looking at times that medicine and biological warfare have intersected, from Native Americans encountering smallpox in the early 1600s to the early-2000s SARS epidemic. In the second part of the book he turns toward COVID-19 and its impacts.

This third book from PETER SKAGESTAD (F85) who has taught philosophy at several prestigious colleges and universities, is an astute analysis of the life and philosophy of R.G. Collingwood, the English philosopher, historian, and archaeologist. Collingwood died in 1943 at age 43 little known outside his fields of study but influential within them—and is still relevant today, Skagestad proposes, particularly for his “prescient warning of the rise of populism in the 21st century.”

This updated edition of a beautifully illustrated coffee-table book originally published in 2015 explores every aspect of Muskeget, a speck of land off Nantucket. The father of former Murrow Center director CROCKER SNOW JR (F68) bought about half of the island’s 250 or so acres with two friends in the late 1940s, so no one is more qualified to dissect its terrain, endemic and native species, and quirky recent human history.

Talk about turning your life around. This autobiography from ROY A. STACY (F70) starts dramatically, with his witnessing, as a child growing up in Oahu, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Several years later his family left Hawaii for California, where life was difficult and despite his mother’s best efforts, Stacy was heading for a life of crime. When he joined the Air Force to avoid going to jail, it changed his life, turning him toward academics and eventually a career in international development.

In the past few decades we’ve come to see the value of sustainability in business, but it’s hard for successful companies to “break free from the linear, take-make-waste industrial model,” says GREGORY UNRUH (F99). He proposes using principles that account for the sustainability of the earth’s biosphere—materials parsimony, value cycling, power autonomy, sustainable product platforms, and function over form—as a basis for a new business model, proactively pursuing creative destruction to get a jump on the changes to come.

For decades upstate New York—prosperous until the mid-20th century—suffered an economic decline that was beginning to seem immutable. But in this scholarly work CHARLES W. WESSNER (F70 & F81), and co-author Thomas R. Howell use Albany and its surrounding towns as a case study in how technology can combine with entrepreneurship, innovation, and investment to spur economies and transform development.

The genesis of this book was a project JULIE ZOLLMAN (F10) worked on in Kenya in 2012 using the “financial diaries” method, which gathers data on the economic lives of poor households through bimonthly interviews for a year. She presents her research on the topic by broadening individual Kenyans’ case studies into chapters encompassing “looking for money,” “managing money,” healthcare, interactions with government, the financial situations of women and children, and “stories of achievement and aspiration.”

This film, from independent documentary maker ADRIANA BOSCH (F80 & F84) tied for the Audience Achievement Award at the Miami International Film Festival and was one of the highlights of Latino international film festivals in Boston, Los Angeles, and San Diego. It tells the story of the Cuban poet, novelist, and essayist José Lezama Lima, who died in 1976 a legend among Latin American writers. The documentary includes film clips, interviews, and letters he wrote to his sister (read by Alfred Molina). With music by Arturo Sandoval, the film is, according to Bosch, “a manifesto about freedom.” It is expected to air on PBS sometime in 2021.

ALEX DE WAAL, research professor and executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Fletcher, hosts this podcast, which “features African scholars, writers, policymakers, and activists on issues of peace, justice, and democracy.” It is presented in partnership with  African Arguments  and Tufts'  Institute for Global Leadership. (online)

Hosted by MICHAEL KLEIN, William L. Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs at Fletcher, this weekly podcast on key economic issues is an offshoot of the online publication EconoFact, of which Klein is executive editor. Guests have included members of the Council of Economic Advisers and the board of governors of the Federal Reserve, the chief economist at the IMF, and reporters on the economics beat, such as Binyamin Appelbaum. “Many of the people I have interviewed are friends, and it has been really nice to get a chance to make public the kind of discussions we often have in private,” says Klein. (Apple, Google, Spotify, SoundCloud, online)

KRISTEN RAINEY (F06) based in Bozeman, Montana, hosts this podcast “about rest and rejuvenation, unplugging from technology, transitions, and transformations, and spending time and energy on the things that really matter to you.” (Apple, Google, Spotify, online)

Fletcher Professor Emeritus JOHN PERRY'S podcast is based on his popular Global Maritime History class. “Revolution at Sea invites listeners to embark on a wondrous exploration of the human history of the sea as a resource, avenue, and arena.” JAMIE ROSENBERG (F13) and ALBERT BUIXADE FARRE (F13) assisted in the development of the podcast. (Apple, Google, Spotify, and online)

This eight-episode podcast, the first from the geopolitical risk-assessment publication Foreign Brief (in partnership with the Fletcher Forum), is about “how the events of 2020 have accelerated global trends, and made the world’s challenges, like authoritarianism, soft power, data privacy, and the future of work, more visible.” ELIZABETH DYKSTRA McCARTHY (F21) is the podcast’s creator and executive director and MAX KLAVER (A19 & F21) its managing editor, but a half-dozen other Tufts students and alumni have worked on it too. Well worth a listen. (Apple, Breaker, Spotify, Overcast, Google, Radio Public, Pocket Cats, online)

Award-winning writer ELLIOTT ACKERMAN, A03, F03, served five tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and has said he’s “always been interested in the intersection between the political and the personal.” In this, his third novel and fourth book, he revisits twenty-four hours in that space through the story of Catherine, an American looking to divorce her Turkish husband, Murat, a real estate developer, and move back to the U.S. with her son and her photographer lover. When Murat attempts to prevent her, he unwittingly exposes a web of deception and corruption in this intricately suspenseful yarn.

How could the U.S. dismantle a terror organization of multiple independently operating networks that harnessed cutting-edge information technologies? U.S. intelligence operatives faced just this challenge when confronting Al-Qaeda in Iraq. In his latest book, Professor RICHARD SHULTZ, director of Fletcher's International Security Studies Program, traces the origin and rise of the Joint Special Operations Task Force (known as Task Force 714) and its cooperation with U.S. intelligence agencies in tracking and eliminating Al-Qaeda’s leadership, destroying its infrastructure, and suppressing its insurgency through covert means. Shultz also explores the new challenges of the information era in intelligence collection and how U.S. intelligence agencies have evolved to meet them.

In this volume inspired by a Twitter thread, DANIEL DREZNER, a professor of international politics at Fletcher, comments on reports of President Trump’s behavior by his own staff and supporters. On Twitter, Drezner collected more than 1,000 instances in which an ally or subordinate of the president described him as if he were a toddler, with a short attention span, little self-control, and similar attributes. Such behavior is particularly troublesome in the nation’s chief executive now, Drezner argues, because presidential power has increased as the legislative and judicial branches have ceded authority to the White House since the 1980s. Drezner’s analysis will interest anyone concerned with the erosion of formal and informal checks on the presidency.

In this scholarly work, COURTNEY J. FUNG, F12, an assistant professor of international relations at the University of Hong Kong and member of Fletcher’s Board of Advisors, focuses on China’s status, or standing in the international system. She argues that status is an often overlooked factor motivating the country’s foreign policy and its views on regime change and humanitarian intervention by the United Nations. By parsing Beijing’s behavior regarding interventions in Sudan, Libya, and Syria, Fung shows that status is not only a cause for conflict, as is commonly assumed, but also a “determinant for cooperation.” Her ideas provide an important foundation for anyone interested in the international relations of this rising global superpower.

Comprised of the volumes "Chosen," "Torn," and "United," the entire Beautiful Ones trilogy was released in June 2019, so you won’t have to wait to find out what happens next. Set more than a half-century in the future, the fast-paced adventure thrillers alternate chapters in the voices of Olivia, a British lawyer, and DeAnn, an American geneticist, rivals in a strange competition run by an organization called the Cassandra Programme. Tension builds as the two women realize their lives are at stake—and eventually that if they fail, millions of others will die as well—in this series by OM FAURE, F99, a futures expert and principal at SAMI Consulting in Newbury, England.

“The North Korean story isn’t just about nuclear weapons and long-range missiles,” writes CHUNG MIN LEE, F84, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Korean and East Asian security affairs. “It’s about 25 million people incarcerated in the world’s biggest jail.” Kim Jong Un is a figure of endless fascination for Americans—and has taken on even greater prominence in the age of Trump—partly because his actions and motivations are shrouded in mystery. Lee helps shed light on them here, concluding that all of the possible futures of Kim’s isolated, constrained, and despondent country “may end in a global humanitarian crisis.”

John Adams became the first ambassador for the newly formed United States in 1785, and for nearly a century and a half after that it was unthinkable that a woman could step into the role. Women were considered too emotional, unprepared for the potential dangers inherent in a foreign posting, and lacking the social contacts necessary for the job. Then, in 1933, the famously progressive Franklin Delano Roosevelt took a chance and appointed filmmaker and Florida Congresswoman Ruth Bryan Owen ambassador to Denmark and Iceland as part of his “new deal for women.” PHILIP NASH, F88, an associate professor of history at Penn State Shenango, ably tells her story, and those of five other pioneering women, here in engaging mini-biographies.

America has become a place many no longer recognize, with democracy and the environment under siege and plutocrats running the show, argues CHRISTOPHER SCHAEFER, F65, F67, F69, a consultant and the founder of the Waldorf School in Lexington, Massachusetts. Schaefer calls the current moment “the long emergency,” and has written this book of essays to analyze and solve, through radical social reform, the problems he says are destroying the earth and human well-being. Among his topics:  9/11, the crisis of Western capitalism, toxic excess, income inequality, oppression, and Donald Trump. With a foreword by writer and entrepreneur Eric Utne.

In the 21st century, businesses are increasingly faced with complex, "wicked" problems--challenges with social and environmental dimensions they cannot solve on their own. This is especially common in the frontier markets of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the former Soviet bloc. In many cases, the best solution is to create cross-sector partnerships with organizations from outside the business world--foundations, nonprofits, government agencies, and more. The resulting partnerships can generate business value as well as positive social impact, thereby benefiting companies and communities alike. "Partner With Purpose" by Steve Schmida, F04, is a step-by-step guide to planning, launching, and successfully maintaining cross-sector partnerships, illustrated with vivid real-life stories from the author's work with companies around the world.

The Vietnam War remains an unfinished chapter in the lives of 1,600 American families whose loved ones—along with more than 300,000 Vietnamese—were never accounted for when the fighting stopped. In this, her third war-related book, SARAH E. WAGNER, F02, an associate professor of anthropology at George Washington University, brings to life the stories of some of these young men, seen in poignant photographs. She also describes the work of the forensic scientists still working to identify the missing from bare slivers of remains, and visits the families grappling with their return a half-century after their loved ones left home to risk the ultimate sacrifice.

As a former European luxury goods correspondent for Reuters, ASTRID WENDLANDT, F99, author of two previous books published in French, is in a unique position to observe and analyze a world many readers will only ever dream about. The luxury industry would not exist, the author writes, “if we did not nurture irrational needs,” yet it generates $1.3 trillion in worldwide sales. Here, Wendlandt profiles legendary luxury goods executives—along with the late Karl Lagerfeld, longtime creative director of Chanel—to gain insights into leadership and the origins, symbolism, and future of luxury.

In this exhaustive, 600-page volume, investment banker, historian, and noted expert on Turkey and the Middle East HENRY P. WILLIAMS III, F74, an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, distills his lecture series and transports the reader “from East to West, across the centuries, juxtaposing geography and discovery, politics and war, religion and arts, terrorism, key figures, and human triumph,” as he writes in his preface. The book starts with the Pentateuch and the Koran and goes right up to 2016, touching on religion, history, commerce, law, leadership, nationalism, civil rights and minorities in both countries, immigration, and more. It’s a lot to cover, but for those interested in the two countries, it’s a must read.v