PAW BOOK CLUB
Welcome to PAW Book Club, where Princeton alumni and friends read a book together.
Here’s how it works: Four times a year, members read a book — written by an alum or faculty member — and send their questions to the Princeton Alumni Weekly. We ask the author their questions, record the interview, and post it as a podcast. With each new read, PAW randomly selects 25 members to receive a FREE signed copy of the book.
Current Read
Desi Arnaz: The Man Who Invented Television
Todd S. Purdum ’82
Desi Arnaz may be best known for playing Ricky Ricardo on the 1950s hit I Love Lucy, but he contributed far more than those performances to the television industry. The techniques he pioneered with that early sitcom — including the live audience model and synchronized cameras — revolutionized the medium and remain gold standard approaches today.
Purdum’s book follows Arnaz’s remarkable life, from his family’s 1933 flight to Miami during the Cuban Revolution through his rise as an entertainer who tapped into growing American demand for Latin music. The result is a fresh biography for a familiar — but for too long underestimated — Hollywood face.
Send us your questions by Oct. 1, 2025.
Past Book Club Reads
Explore our past interviews
Lauren Ling Brown ’12 Sets a Thriller at a Princeton Eating Club
‘Some Princeton students have reached out saying that they really identified with the characters, especially multiracial young women, and that meant so much to me’
‘Sweet Fury’ by Sash Bischoff ’09
‘None of these characters are black and white. I wanted everything and everybody in this book to live in the gray area, because that felt like life to me’
‘By Any Other Name’ by Jodi Picoult ’87
‘I never set about to write this story because I wanted to take down Shakespeare. I did it because I love those plays, and I wanted to understand how they…
‘Intimacies’ by Katie Kitamura ’99
‘I don’t know that we can always be reduced to events that have happened in our past …. I’m very much interested in the way that characters behave in the…
Bianca Bosker ’08 on Cracking Open the Art World
‘How does an artwork go from being the germ of an idea in someone’s studio to this masterpiece that we obsess over in museums?’
PAW Book Club: ‘Going Infinite’ by Michael Lewis ’82
“On the witness stand, [Sam Bankman-Fried] came across as more dishonest than I’ve ever experienced him in life.”
PAW Book Club: ‘The Breakaway’ by Jennifer Weiner ’91
“Abortion is a topic that gets very polarized very, very quickly. And I think that one of the things that fiction can do is give us a level of remove…
Questions or Book recommendations?
Reach out to Liz Daugherty at ehulette@princeton.edu or Carlett Spike cspike@princeton.edu.
PAW In Print
July 2025
On the cover: Wilton Virgo ’00 and his classmates celebrate during the P-rade.