Recommended Reading from The New School
Curl up this winter with a good book by members of The New School community. We extend our thanks to the university’s MFA Creative Writing Program and Center for New York City Affairs for compiling compelling memoirs, literary fiction, poetry and coffee table books with something to inspire, inform, and delight everyone. Be sure to check out the complete set of recommendations for top 2019 Fiction, 2019 Nonfiction, and 100 Books by MFA Creative Writing Alumni.
BOOKS BY ALUMNI
Sweetbitter
by Stephanie Danler, MFA (2014). Knopf.
Sweetbitter tells the story of a young woman’s coming-of-age, set against the glitzy, grimy backdrop of New York’s most elite restaurants. A national bestselling novel, called “Brilliantly written” and “Outstanding” by The New York Times Book Review, it has been adapted into a television series on Starz with Danler serving as Executive Producer.
No Walls and the Recurring Dream
by Ani DiFranco, Liberal Arts student (1991). Penguin Random House.
The celebrated singer-songwriter recalls a coming-of-age journey, from teenage nights sleeping in a Buffalo bus station to becoming an activist, feminist, and creator of her own music label, Righteous Babe Records.
Prisoner
by Jason Rezaian, BA Liberal Arts (2001). HarperCollins.
In July 2014, Rezaian, the Washington Post Tehran bureau chief, was accused by Iranian authorities of spying for the US. Notwithstanding the absurdity of the charges, he was held for 18 months, subjected to exhausting interrogations and a farcical trial, and became a bargaining chip in nuclear negotiations with Iran. He writes with wit and grace about his ordeal and eventual return to the US.
American Founders: How People of African Descent Established Freedom in the New World
by Christina Proenza-Coles (MA Liberal Studies and Sociology 1998; PhD Sociology and Historical Studies 2004). NewSouth Books.
Inventors and investors, pirates and soldiers, scientists and presidents: women and men of African descent, often far outnumbering European immigrants, founded settlements, undermined slavery, and championed freedom from their first days in this hemisphere. American Founders uses an array of classroom-friendly features to tell their stories.
No Hard Feelings
by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy, MFA Transdisciplinary Design (2015). Penguin Random House.
Insecurity. Panic. Confusion. Rage. In short, just another day at the office. Two self-confessed introverts offer helpful and hilariously illustrated advice about navigating the emotional minefield of the modern workplace.
BOOKS BY FACULTY
Story
by Jennifer Firestone, Associate Professor of Literary Studies. Ugly Duckling Presse.
Firestone’s new poetry book, Story, is a cryptic film, an old photograph, and a mystery, where narrative, memory, truth, and trauma are interrogated, and where credibility slips much like the language that is storytelling.
Contested City: Art and Public History as Mediation at New York’s Seward Park Urban Renewal Area
by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, Urban Studies faculty. University of Iowa Press.
Bendiner-Viani’s Contested City tells untold stories, dating back fifty years, of community activism at the controversial Seward Park Urban Renewal Area that stems from five years of work with New School students in her City Studio class.
The Impeachers
by Brenda Wineapple, MFA Creative Writing faculty. Penguin Random House.
The Impeachers is a critically acclaimed and timely account of the dramatic 1868 Congressional impeachment and near-conviction of President Andrew Johnson in the super-heated political atmosphere of post-Civil War Reconstruction.
In Putin’s Footsteps
by Nina Khrushcheva, faculty, New School International Affairs, and Jeffrey Tayler. MacMillan.
Nina Krushcheva, as both an ex-pat and insider (she is Nikita Khrushchev’s great-granddaughter), along with her co-author, draw on their extensive travels across Russia’s vast reaches to present a panorama of the country under Vladimir Putin’s leadership.
Conversations on Conflict Photography
by Lauren Walsh, Urban Studies and First Year faculty. Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
This richly illustrated book features conversations with award-winning photographers, photo editors, and representatives of human rights and humanitarian organizations about the dangers and ethical dilemmas of working in the world’s conflict zones.
BOOKS ABOUT THE NEW SCHOOL
A Drama In Time: The New School Century
by John Reed, Associate Professor Of Writing Across Media. Profile Books.
Weaving together the essential moments that built The New School, A Drama In Time tells the bold, aspirational story of the birth of a new university guided by the progressive ideals of egalitarian, lifelong education.
I Stand In My Place With My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Art at The New School
conceived and produced by Silvia Rocciolo, Lydia Matthews and Eric Stark. Duke University Press.
I Stand in My Place with My Own Day Here: Site-Specific Art at The New School features essays by more than 50 renowned authors considering thirteen monumental works commissioned by The New School between 1930 and the present—ranging from mural commissions by José Clemente Orozco to installations by Agnes Denes, Kara Walker, Alfredo Jaar, Glenn Ligon, Sol LeWitt, and Martin Puryear, and Michael Van Valkenburgh.