The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, Daniel Coyle ’87 (Bantam Books). What do the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, Navy SEAL Team Six, a gang of jewel thieves and the San Antonio Spurs have in common? They all offer examples of how to create a culture that turns a collection of individuals into a cohesive group. The bestselling author Coyle’s sixth book identifies three key components that successful organizations share across diverse fields.
The Escape Line: How the Ordinary Heroes of Dutch-Paris Resisted the Nazi Occupation of Western Europe, Megan Koreman ’86 (Oxford University Press). Extending from the Netherlands through Belgium and France into Switzerland and Spain, what became known as the Dutch-Paris escape line spirited Jews, Nazi resistance fighters and Allied pilots who crashed behind enemy lines to safety during World War II. With exclusive access to some recently declassified archives, Koreman documents the underground network credited with rescuing thousands but that, by necessity, kept its efforts all but unrecorded.
Christians, Muslims, and Mary: A History, Rita George-Tvrtković ’07Ph.D. (Paulist Press). How has the shared devotion to Mary among Christians and Muslims influenced centuries of relations between the two religious traditions? George-Tvrtković, associate professor of theology at Benedictine University, explores the ways Mary has served as both a bridge and a barrier. Rather than presenting a comparative theology, the book focuses on how Mary informs the Christian theology of Islam, culminating with a reflection on the 1965 Vatican II document Nostra Aetate, which acknowledged the common reverence for the mother of Jesus in both the Bible and the Qur’an.
The Qur’an & The Bible, Gabriel Said Reynolds (Yale University Press). A groundbreaking study from a Notre Dame religious scholar demonstrates the influence of biblical characters, imagery and literary devices on the sacred Islamic text. Accompanied by a full translation of the Qur’an by Ali Quli Qarai, Reynolds’ analysis covers academic debates on the relationship between the two holy books and offers a new way to see their connections.
A Course Called Scotland: Searching the Home of Golf for the Secret to Its Game, Tom Coyne ’97, ’99MFA (Simon & Schuster). Golf has always been Coyne’s idea of a good time. Once, while studying abroad, he chose a round at famed St. Andrew’s over joining his friends in Amsterdam. Ever since, he has pursued twin passions of playing golf and writing about it. His latest book recounts his journey to more than 100 courses in Scotland, the birthplace of the game and home to some of the most famous and unforgiving links in the world.
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Cuéntame: Narrative in the Ecclesial Present, Natalia Imperatori-Lee ’07Ph.D. (Orbis Books). Cuéntame is a Spanish word meaning “tell me a story,” and Imperatori-Lee’s book establishes a narrative of the Catholic faith from a Latino point of view. The associate professor of religious studies at Manhattan College emphasizes “the power of stories to properly account for the experience of the people of God.”
Feminist Manifestos: A Global Documentary Reader, Penny A. Weiss ’80, ’87Ph.D. (NYU Press). Spanning three centuries and more than 50 countries, this collection includes 150 documents from feminist organizations and meetings. Edited by Weiss, who focused on community-based activism by including only collectively written texts, the anthology presents a wide spectrum of feminist thought, addressing issues of political participation, education, religion, work, reproduction, violence, racism and environmentalism.
Steampunk A to Z, R. E. Lane (CreateSpace). Horatio the Hedgehog is your guide through the labyrinthine imagination of Lane (the pen name of Rachelle Justice ’06M.S.). In the pages of this children’s picture book, the intricacies of steampunk are doodled into alphabetical parts with snippets of verse accompanying the drawings as Horatio makes his way along the winding path from A to Z.
Political and Economic Relations between the U.S. and Canada, Sukyong Joan Choi ’84Ph.D. (Chungnam National University Press). Canada won diplomatic independence from Great Britain after World War I, then set about securing autonomy from its larger, more powerful neighbor to the south, the United States. Choi, professor emeritus at Chungnam National University in Korea, where she twice served as director of its American-Canadian Studies Institute, explores the historic relationship between the countries in this Korean-language volume.
The Life and Times of Gerald M. Belian: One Man’s Journey, Jerry Belian ’62 (JB Publications). Belian had two books in mind, one personal, one professional. As he put pen to paper, he realized they could not be separated. A career engineer, Belian retired in 2014 and set to work on these combined memoirs, an account of a life that benefited from “the love, prayer, caring, mentoring, guidance, and assistance” of hundreds who influenced him along the way.
Jason Kelly is an associate editor of this magazine.