Four Wars, Five Presidents: A Reporter’s Journey from Jerusalem to Saigon to the White House, Terence Smith ’60 (Rowman & Littlefield). As a veteran television news reporter, Smith won Emmys in the late 1980s for his stories about nuclear power and Hurricane Hugo. His memoir covers his globetrotting, five-decade career reporting on major news events and reflects on changes in journalism that he experienced firsthand. The longtime foreign and political correspondent, son of legendary sports writer Red Smith ’27, worked for The New York Times, CBS and PBS, witnessing the shift from an era of print dominance to the heyday of broadcast networks to the digital revolution.
Chained to History: Slavery and U.S. Foreign Relations to 1865, Steven J. Brady ’98Ph.D. (Cornell University Press). A new nation, conceived in liberty, faced diplomatic challenges from the first days of the American Revolution as the reality of human bondage undercut the ideal of freedom. Support for abolitionism grew abroad while the institution of slavery persisted in the United States. Brady, a George Washington University historian, chronicles how slave interests in the Democratic Party and fractious domestic politics over the issue complicated international relations on matters including trade, extradition treaties and military alliances.
Madre: The Nun Who Was Mother to the Orphans of Honduras, Kathy Martin O’Neil ’87 (Cornelia Avenue Press). In 1966, Sister María Rosa Leggol stopped a plane taking off from Honduras in her determination to secure funding to help children in desperate need. On the tarmac, she persuaded the country’s richest man to support her work, going on to establish a network of villages, schools, farms and clinics for destitute boys and girls. O’Neil, a former managing editor of Outside magazine who has taken frequent mission trips to Honduras, tells the story of Sister María Rosa’s chutzpah and great goodness in service to the most vulnerable