Cool Books for the Warm Weather Months: Eight Recent Titles from New School Writers
Private Equity, by Carrie Sun (MFA in Creative Writing, 2020), PenguinRandomHouse.
In search of a job that would finance her creative writing studies, the author takes employment as a personal assistant to a hedge fund founder. Now, welcome to a Succession-like world of extreme wealth and privilege, recounted in her debut book. “The joys of Sun’s memoir,” writes a reviewer for Time, “lie in the absurdity of her tasks: coaxing a famous athlete to a company party, sourcing Mitt Romney’s phone number on a deadline, coordinating private-jet departures. . . . It’s [Sun’s] personal revelations that elevate the book above a typical tell-all.”
Mysticism, by Simon Critchey (Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy, New School for Social Research), New York Review of Books.
His previous disquisitions have covered subjects from the inner world of soccer fandom to the artistry of David Bowie to the meaning of being bald. Now Critchey turns his sharp analysis and lucid writing to the experience of spiritual transcendence. As a review in The Economist notes, he treats the subject with rigor and rationality, combined with a playfulness that produces sentences like: “God might be ineffable, but the mystics are constantly effing the ineffable, for as long as it effing takes.”
Heatwave, by Lauren Redness (Associate Professor of Illustration at Parsons School of Design), Penguin Random House.
What happens when it’s just too hot to have any fun? In what School Library Journal calls “a dazzlingly original feat of graphic design,” an award-winning illustrator uses blazing red pages to depict the intensity and hazards of a summer heatwave. A cool blue symbolizes the relief that comes with a sudden and unexpected cloudburst during a day at the beach. Designed for pre-K to second-grade youngsters, Heatwave was named an NPR “best book” of 2024.
How to Win Friends and Influence Fungi: Collected Quirks of Science, Tech, Engineering, and Math from Nerd Nite, edited by Chris Balakrishnan and Matt Wasowski (MFA in Creative Writing, 2006), St. Martin’s Press.
Geeky takes on subjects ranging from Kuwaiti camel spiders to recycling astronaut solid waste for outer space fuel: Welcome to a distillation of the lively monthly drink-and-think gatherings held across the globe known as Nerd Nite. Its co-founders have now pulled together narratives, infographics, and laugh-out-loud musings from scientists and the writers who love them in a book sure to delight STEM enthusiasts. Next up: “What Birds Can Teach Us about the Impending Zombie Apocalypse.”
Definitely Better Now, by Ava Robinson (MFA in Creative Writing, 2022), Harper Collins.
After completing 52 weeks of sobriety, on a tight, disciplined circuit of work, home, and AA meetings, 26-year-old Emma’s sponsor gives her the go-ahead to start fresh and think about romance again. But before she’s truly ready to take the plunge, well-intentioned friends create a profile of her and put it on a dating website. What follows is an acutely observed comic novel that Shelf-Awareness calls” a not-to-be-missed debut that encourages anyone, sober or not, to embrace the messy imperfections of a life worth living.”
Being Black in America’s Schools, by Brian Rashad Fuller (New School Associate Provost for Strategy, Operations & Partnerships), Kensington Books.
A former top policymaker for NYC Schools (until recently known as the City Department of Education), the author calls for a re-imagining of education that addresses historic and ongoing inequities in areas ranging from school discipline to standardized testing. Fuller’s “vantage point is as uncommon as it is valuable,” writes Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s School of Journalism. “This is a book we need yesterday.”
Mystery Lights, by Lena Valencia (MFA in Creative Writing, 2014), Tin House.
An influencer attempts to derail a viral TV marketing campaign with her violent cult following. A marriage between two ghost hunters is threatened when one of them loses her ability to see spirits. These and other stories in this debut collection, says a reviewer for The Guardian, “are beautifully written, with believable characters in vividly described settings… and all are shot through with unease and a streak of strangeness that makes them outstanding.”
Better Faster Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women, by Maggie Mertens (MFA in Creative Writing, 2012), Hatchette Books.
Before there were running shoes for women, they ran barefoot or in nursing shoes. They disguised themselves as men. And they faced down doctors who, convinced the women were flirting with permanent injury, wanted to put them on bed rest. From the first boundary-breaking marathon with a female competitor in 1896 to today's most intense ultramarathons, Mertens, a freelance sports writer, introduces readers to the women who have helped redefine our image of strength and power.
Ring, by Michelle Lerner (MFA in Creative Writing 2008), Bancroft Press.
Ring is a seemingly ordinary dog who takes on an extraordinary role. Accompanying a terminally ill man to a remote, snowbound, Canadian end-of-life sanctuary, Ring helps others who also have come there grapple with loss and despair and find companionship, hope, and healing. “A stunning, hypnotic book,” writes novelist Ellen Pall of Lerner’s riveting and richly researched debut novel.
Lauren Leiker is a research assistant and Bruce Cory is editorial advisor at the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.