New Releases

Although a liberal-arts education has been seen as a “luxury for the entitled,” Michael S. Roth *84 argues in Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters (Yale University Press) that “the demand that we replace broad contextual education meant to lead to lifelong learning with targeted vocational undergraduate instruction is a critical mistake.” Roth writes about thinkers throughout American history and their ideas on education.

In Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats, and Media Constructed a New American (University of Chicago Press), G. Cristina Mora *09 examines how different cultures and nationalities — such as Puerto Rican, Mexican-American, and Cuban-American — became grouped together in the category of “Hispanic.” She looks at the roles that government officials, activists, and media executives played in this development.

The narrator of Sharona Muir ’78’s debut novel, Invisible Beasts (Bellevue Literary Press), is Sophie, an amateur naturalist who can see invisible animals. The chapters are divided into tales in which she describes the invisible beasts and reflects on human nature.