Divining Women

There's a hot new trend in publishing a "trickle up" phenomenon. Interest in religion, once relegated to the respectable but obscure bookshelves of the serious few, is on the upswing, and one reason is that highly educated readers are whetting their appetites on smart new approaches to religious study. A new book by Dartmouth religion associate professor Susan Ackerman '80, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and, Biblical Israel I f ' (Doubleday) is a perfect example. Using a history juH of religion approach and the broad new lenses of them and gender and women's studies, Ackerman has divided the female characters in the Bible's Book ofjudges into types to provide the framework for an analysis of them and I other, "kindred representations" of biblical women. The book, which is the first by a female author to be published in the Anchor Bible Reference Library, presents striking portraits, notable for the independent and diverse roles these ancient Israelite women performed.

•A Gap at Green Hills (University Editions) by Richard S. Jackson '39. This first novel details a lifetime love match between a Dartmouth graduate and his childhood sweetheart whose marriage disintegrates with the crib death of one of a set of twins.

• Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Cosmetic Surgery but Couldn't Afford to Ask (Broadway Books) by Dr. Alan Gaynor '67. In 1980 he opened his own cosmetic surgery center in San Francisco and is now regarded as a leading cosmetic surgeon on liposculpting and is credited with inventing the Gaynor cannula.

• Fear of Judging: Sentencing Guidelines in the Federal Courts (University of Chicago Press) by Kate Stith-Cabranes '73 and Jose A. Cabranes. An account of a judicial reform movement that increased the number of federal prisoners fourfold in 15 years by Yale Law School professor Stith-Cabranes and former U.S. circuit and district judge Cabranes.

• Bright Colors Falsely Seen: Synaesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge (Yale University Press) by Kevin Dann '78. An historical look at a rare form of perception in which one sense may respond to stimuli received by another sense. Drawing on studies of autism and hallucinogenic drugs, Dann offers new perspectives on synaesthesia and the related mode of perception called eideticism and how they relate to the evolution of human consciousness

• The Scalpel and the Silver Bear (Bantam) by Dr. Lori Arviso Alvord '79. Alvord, who is half Navajo, combines Western medicine with traditional Navajo healing principles.

• The Clothes of Nakedness (Heineman) by Benjamin Kwakye '90. Kwakye, a Ghanaian living in the United States, earned the Commonwealth Writers Prize for "Best First Book" in the Africa region for this novel set in the inner-city world of Nima, Accra. He portrays the lifestyle of a small group of unemployed men who take to locally distilled alcohol as a means of consolation every night.

• America and the Law: Challenges for the Twenty-first Century (Austin & Winfield), by Stephen Herman '91 is a collection of essays on the basic issues facing the American legal system. Exploring recent events such as the McDonalds coffee case, tobacco litigation, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the O.J. Simpson trial, New Orleans lawyer Herman captures the essential arguments concerning free speech, crime and punishment, the two-party system, and tort reform.