FACULTY BOOKS

FACULTY BOOKS

notebook

CAMPUS

JOSHUA BENNETT

English & Creative Writing Assistant Professor

Owed

In this powerful and moving collection of poetry, Bennett evokes the complex experience of being a young Black man, with its pain, love, tokenism—and humor. He includes odes on the high-top fade, long johns, a father’s gold chain, and the plastic on a grandmother’s couch. Four poems are titled “Reparation,” a central theme.

Penguin Poets (September 2020),

96 pp., $20

WILLIAM CHENG

Music Chair and Associate Professor

Loving Music Till It Hurts

The question musicologist Cheng poses is: “How do we love music, even embrace it as vital to human thriving, without intentionally or unintentionally weaponizing this love?” Cheng probes the consequences of judging, and misjudging, people by the music they love. He uses examples as diverse as Susan Boyle’s audition for Britain's Got Talent, the public shaming of Britney Spears for singing off-key, and the murder at a Florida gas station of a high school student who wouldn’t turn down his rap music.

Oxford University Press (November 2019), 408 pp„ $29.95

EZZEDINE C. FISHERE

Senior Lecturer, Middle Eastern Studies

The Egyptian Assassin

A corruption-fighting lawyer who becomes a government target—and later a terrorist and an assassin—zigzags in overlapping narratives through North Africa, Paris, and Afghanistan. This gripping novel about lost love, shattered idealism, gruesome jihadi training, and a vengeful quest for justice ends with a treacherous journey through the Gilf Kebir desert after a daring rescue.

Hoopoe/American University in Cairo Press (September 2019), 320 pp„ $17.95

JASON LYALL

Government Associate Professor

Divided Armies: Inequality & Battlefield Performance in Modern War

Lyall makes a compelling argument that a nation’s unequal treatment of minorities has dangerous consequences in wartime, adversely affecting battlefield conduct and leading to defeat. Based on Project Mars, his statistical analysis of 250 wars since 1800, Lyall correlates prewar ethnic and racial inequities with greater rates of desertion, side-switching, casualties, and insubordination.

Princeton University Press (February 2020), 528 pp„ $35