Plohn Hall Library, Authors, and Artists

Plohn Hall Library

Mostly Recent '66 Books, News, Documentaries, Art Exhibitions, Articles, and More! 

Also see the '66 Stories page for shorter, unpublished '66 works.

July 12, 2021. Bob Kopf’s father was part of a group from western PA that became a core on Princeton’s championship football teams of the mid -30s. Bob thought it was a story worth disseminating because of how this group came together, the success, the nationally renowned coach and wanted a book about it. Bob asked Tom Benghuaser to write the book and funded Tom's research and writing. It is now available here on Amazon for next to nothing.

March 19, 2021. Jim Dashow's planetarium opera, Archimedes (PAW 2007 article), is now available (as of 4/10/2022) for streaming with the libretto visible on the screen (the video animations were too complicated to include). See the NeumaRecords listing which includes the libretto (This excellent review is helpful). Here is an announcement for a triple CD from Amazon, and NeumaRecords has extended program notes, the libretto, reviews, and the streaming audio. From an Amazon editorial review: "From Mantua and Bayreuth to warehouses and wilderness, opera composers have often created dramas for particular kinds of spaces. Now add planetariums to the list. That hemispherical stage of scientific wonderment is the perfect venue for James Dashow’s monumental opera, Archimedes."

February 22, 2021. Shall We Gather at the River?, is a Poetry Foundation tribute to our late classmate Lewis MacAdams. "Lewis MacAdams was one of California’s great conservationists. But his book-long epic poem, The River, may be his most enduring legacy."

January 26, 2021. Jon Wiener is coauthor with Mike Davis of Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties. From PAW Online (January 20), the book "is an in-depth look at the history of 1960's Los Angeles from the perspective of several activist movements of the time, including civil rights, anti-war, gay liberation, and the women's movement. From Malcom X and Angela Davis to Chicano Blowouts, and the California counterculture LA was a hotbed of political and social activism."

November 2, 2020. Jim Timbie has coauthored an important book with former Secretary of State George Shultz '42 and co-edited another with Shultz and Jim Hoagland.

• A Hinge of History: Governance in an Emerging New World. Here is a New York Times interview with Shultz and a 2016 Washington Post article about Jim.
• Beyond Disruption: Technology's Challenge to Governance, co-edited by George Shultz, Jim Hoagland and James Timbie

October 31, 2020. Every now and then, the PHL librarian finds a book published long ago. In this case, Richard Harriman's How to be a Survivor A Plan to Save Spaceship Earth (1971) is coauthored with Paul Ehrlich.

October 20, 2020. Steve Harwood writes, "Since COVID restrictions began, I have pursued a new hobby: making videos. These are hardly of the caliber of the ’66 authors in the Plohn Hall library. However, it turns out that widely available video editing software enable anyone to mimic Ken Burns. My efforts were for my own enjoyment and that of my family. But classmates might view them and say, “Hey, I can do that too” and find their way to a new fun, activity. Here is a selection of some of the videos I’ve made."

October 6, 2020. Tony Zee's Fly By Night Physics: How Physicists Use the Backs of Envelopes will be published at the end of the month by Princeton University Press, the publisher of Tony's three Nutshell books as well as his popular books such as Fearful Symmetry. Fly by Night Physics is designed for advanced undergraduates.

June 20, 2020. Better late than never, here's Lanny Jones's 2005 biobraphy, William Clark and the Shaping of the West.

April 9, 2020. See Lanny Jones's Wall Street Journal article, Camus' 'Plague' Foretold Coronovirus describes a plague in many ways similar to the current Covid-19 epidemic. A WSJ subscription is required.

February 8, 2020. After retirement, Terry O'Keeffe pursued his literary and historical interests and wrote the first in-depth treatment in English of E. E. Kisch’s work as a playwright, High Treason and Low Comedy: Egon Erwin Kisch’s Cabaret Plays as History and Art, to be published April 22. Terry's February 5 death is a great loss. Scroll down to September 18, 2016 for more about Terry's publications and work on the Kisch book. The class has at least two other distinguished translators. David Dollenmayer, whose translation of Goethe's biography is in the PHL as is his translation of a novel treating Goethe's later years. Jeff Green "has had the privilege of translating major Hebrew writers such as Mendele, Gnessin, Hazaz, Agnon, Amalia Kahana-Carmon, Aharon Appelfeld, and Dan Tsalka".

January 17, 2020. Special PHL Literary Exhibit - Lanny Jones has started to investigate the letters T.S. Eliot wrote to his confidante Emily Hale. The letters are now been opened and are in Firestone Library. Lanny co-authored Is January the Cruelest Month in the January 16 Wall Street Journal about initial investigations.

January 11, 2020. See the slide show above for recent arrivals at the Plohn Hall Library, with an explanation from the head librarian.

• Paul Mahlstedt - Paul is a contributing author to a 1988 published paper and a report issued by the Pentagon's Regional Conflict Working Group of the Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy.
• Douglas Penick, Andrew Plaks, and Wheeler Thackston, who entered Princeton with '66 and graduated in '67; and
• F. William Engdahl, who entered Princeton with '65, graduated with '66, but has opted to be listed with Alumni Records as a member of '65.

January 6, 2020. Newly arrived on the PHL shelves is Isn't It Their Turn to Pick Up the Check?: Dealing with All of the Trickiest Money Problems Between Family and Friends -- from Serial Borrowers to Serious Cheapskates coauthored by Leonard Schwarz '65 and his wife Jeanne Fleming (Leonard graduated in '66, making him a '66 author. His credentials are further solidified by attendance at a recent '66 San Francisco lunch). Please note their wonderful inscriptions to the class in the 2014 Korean edition of the book! Look carefully at the cover illustration - that's right - Mike Witte is the artist.

November 11, 2019. Jim Dashow's DVD of computer music compositions "Soundings in Pure Duration, Vol 1" is the first music DVD (pictured above) on the Plohn Hal Library shelves. Jim is a pioneer in digital sound synthesis, known more colloquially as "computer music",  having had his first experiences with it under the tutelage of Hubert ("Tuck") Howe, class of '64.  Computer music was born as a result of a collaboration between Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., and a couple of Princeton composers, most notably J. K. Randall, Dashow's principal undergraduate teacher and composer of the first significant computer generated works in the mid-1960's. Jim's planetarium opera, ARCHIMEDES, a work designed for the full immersion ambiance of a planetarium  was produced at the Hemisferic Planetarium in Valencia, Spain, on June 10, July 10, 12 and 18 of this year (2019). Also see this 2007 PAW article.

November 10, 2019. Doug Crase's The Revisionist & the Astropastorals: Collected Poems is now in the PHL and contains an inscription to the class (above). See the "Sightings" page for a photo of Doug with his '66 roommates, taken at an October 30 party in New York.

September 14, 2019. David Dolenmayer's translation of A Man in Love: A Novel by Martin Walser portrays 73-year old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in love with a 19-year old countess. "... Caught in a storm of emotion and torn between despair and unwillingness to give up hope, he begins an elegy in his coach as he pursues her ...". David's translation of the resulting “Marienbad Elegy” and the German original are included.  Also see David's translation of the recent biography Goethe: Life as a Work of Art.

May 27, 2019. Charley Wertheimer is the 122nd '66er represented in our class library. He edited Flying Into The Storm - An Infantry Soldier's Journey by his friend and neighbor Bill Norris. Dagger Four is OK:  Brig. Gen. Norman C. Gaddis POW Memoir also written by Bill Norris and edited by Charles.

April 24, 2019. The Language of Motion is the catalog for Jay Lagemann's 2014 sculpture show at the Academy Art Museum in Easton, MD. Scroll down for other examples of Jay's work as well as a slide show of the show.

April 18, 2019. The US Department of Justice published a redacted version of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report. Print and Kindle versions are available from multiple sources (click here for those available on Amazon), and online versions are available from the Department of Justice website, from major news organizations, and elsewhere.

March 8, 2019. Tom Scott's posthumously published The Universe as It Really Is: Earth, Space, Matter, and Time takes the reader on a integrated tour of the universe starting with elementary particles through atomic physics to chemistry, and on to life, geology, and the origins of the universe. Tom's wife Bonnie wrote a beautiful forward ending with "Tom believed that science and our understanding of the universe are always works in progress, calling for the best we have of observation, experimentation, collaboration, measurement, data, theory, and critical review. This book continues the shared endeavor for better comprehension of our physical world. We hope you will enjoy it."

February 8, 2019. Wallace Judd authored a series of books in the mid-70s regarding calculator games (Games Calculators Play, Dogfight and More Games Calculators Play) and mathematical recreations (Thinkerthings, Math MatActivities, and Patterns to Play on a Hundred Chart).

February 8, 2019. Prentice-Hall published Bruce Gates' Social Arogram Administration: The Implementation of Social Policy in 1980.

January 16, 2019. Bob Klahn, the creator of 60 New York Times crosswords puzzles, has authored and co-authored several crossword puzzle books, with four pictured here. The titles say it all, and you'll find numerous other titles in the web pages. The first book's summary says "Solvers can begin their cranium-crushing crossword journey with this collection by legendary constructor Bob Klahn. It tests their wits with everything from trivia teasers to witty wordplay." The two most recent among the four pictured are Absolutely Nasty® Crosswords Level 1 (Absolutely Nasty® Series) and Super Coffee Shop Crosswords.

December 11, 2018. Here are three PHL additions. Where the Girls Are, Business Careers After College, and 2018: A Season for the Ages, Jim Merritt's game-by-game description of the undefeated football season supplemented with postgame analysis by Henry Von Kohorn and an informal email group of Tiger fans. 

October 10, 2018. Robert Evans' Seven Secrets of the Savvy School Leader has just been added to the '66 Library at Plohn Hall, which already included Rob's The Human Side of School Change.

September 12, 2018. Tom Lemberg is the 2014 author of Difficult Times: A Fresh Look at Democracy in Modern America.

September 18, 2018. Mike Burrill (who died in May, 2018) authored Sustainable Transportation and Development - Planning, Funding, Results.

May 18, 2018. With the recent addition of books by Art Davidsen, Arch Elias, David Kern, Tom Lemberg and Richard ("Fitz") Fitzpatrick, the '66 Library now has 175 books authored/co-authored/edited/translated by 69 classmates. The Library does not yet include additional books by the currently represented authors nor books written by other '66ers...but we continue to work on the project. The class owes a special thank you to Jon Holman for identifying class authors, both alive and deceased.

April 30, 2018. Monte Ray is the author of two books recently added to the Plohn Hall Library: Monetary Terrorism: How to Survive and Prosper From the Secret War on National Currencies (2012) and Legal Dynamite: Seven Explosive Secrets of American Law (2016).

April 30, 2018. Nelson Hendler addresses conceptual methods of problem solving, as they are applied to medicine and chronic pain with his recently published Why 40%-80% of Chronic Pain Patients Are Misdiagnosed and How to Correct That.






April 30, 2018. Bill Pressly's 1984 James Barry: The Artist as Hero is now in the Plohn Hall Library. Search below for Bill's 2016 prize winning James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art.






April 30, 2018. Tony Zee's latest book from the Princeton University Press is On Gravity: A Brief Tour of a Weighty Subject. The Amazon summary promises Tony's "signature warmth and freshness of style, On Gravity opens a unique pathway to comprehending relativity and gaining deep insight into gravity, spacetime, and the workings of the universe."





The Plohn Hall Library also has Tony's less weighty but more digestible updated 2014 second edition of Swallowing Clouds: A Playful Journey through Chinese Culture, Language, and Cuisine.


April 29, 2018. Three books by Hussein Adam, who passed away in late 2017, have been added to the Plohn Hall Library, and one more is on the way. The titles are: War Destroys, Peace Nurtures - Somali Reconciliation and Development (2003, co-edited), From Tyranny to Anarchy - The Somali Experience (2007), and Removing Barricades in Somalia - Options for Peace and Rehabilitation (1998).

April 14, 2018. Charles S. Keefe (1876 to 1946): Colonial Revival Architect in Kingston and New York by William Rhodes "restores Keefe to his rightful place among tradition-minded architects who were dismayed by the rise of modernism. This richly illustrated volume gives a full and colorful account of Keefe's professional and personal life." (from the Amazon synopsis).  "A native and lifelong resident of Kingston, New York, with offices in both Kingston and New York City, Charles S. Keefe (1876 1946) established himself in the 1920s and 1930s as a leading architect in the study and revival of old Colonial buildings, specializing in middle-class houses and outbuildings on upper-class estates. His designs received wide publication in professional journals and popular magazines, but since his death in 1946 he has fallen into obscurity. In CHARLES S. KEEFE (1876-1946): COLONIAL REVIVAL ARCHITECT IN KINGSTON AND NEW YORK," William B. Rhoads is a leading scholar of the Colonial Revival.

March 25, 2018. Martin Winch is the author of Biography of a Place: Passages through a Central Oregon Meadow. From the Amazon summary, Martin's book "explores and weaves together the social and natural history of one meadow. It digs down into the roots of place. This is a meadow with a surprising and entertaining story and a memorable cast of characters. The storyline flows across overlapping circles of connection among people and place. This is a pleasurable, novel way to understand how a social and natural landscape became what it is today."

March 25, 2018. Russ Hurlburt has published widely; four titles are shown here. In addition to the four shown here (The Amazon pages will take you to Russ' other books), a recent book is Investigating Pristine Inner Experience: Moments of Truth (2011). From the Amazon summary:

"You live your entire waking life immersed in your inner experiences (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc.) - private phenomena created by you, just for you, your own way. ... Investigating Pristine Inner Experience explores how to apprehend inner experience in high fidelity. This book will transform your view of your own inner experience, awaken you to experiential differences between people, and thereby reframe your thinking about psychology and consciousness science.... The author, a pioneer in using beepers to explore inner experience, draws on his 35 years of studies to provide fascinating and provocative views of everyday inner experience and experience in bulimia, adolescence, the elderly, schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome, virtuosity, and so on.".

March 20, 2018. Bruce Lesile has a new co-authored book in the Plohn Hall Library. Sixty-Four Campuses - One University: The Story of SUNY is written with Kenneth O'Brien and another contributor.






February 17, 2018. Ed Bronstein is a professional artist working in Philadelphia. An American Artists November, 2005 article discusses Ed's work and transition from architect to painter. There are several examples of his work (in addition to the samples below). Ed's website has additional paintings, articles, interviews, and videos.

  

February 13, 2018. John Heminway's In Full Flight: A Story of Africa and Atonement is "the remarkable story of one woman's search for a new life in Africa in the wake of World War II--a life that sparked a heroic career, but also hid a secret past." Click here for a Wall Street Journal review of this story of Dr. Anne Spoerry (1918-99). The WSJ review includes the following, "Spoerry was revered as 'Mama Daktari' an indefatigable 'mother doctor' and the first female member of the Flying Doctors service of the African Medical and Research Foundation. ... John Heminway, a winner of two Emmys, first met and interviewed Spoerry in Kenya in 1980, when he was working in Africa as a journalist and filmmaker. He was curious about Spoerry's past but was rebuffed when he asked her about it. Nonetheless, Spoerry let him accompany her as she flew from one rural village to another on her medical rounds-treating and operating on many of Kenya's poorest inhabitants and vaccinating them against polio and smallpox. Mr. Heminway wrote often about these journeys, and an expanded version of one of these profiles appeared in his book No Man's Land (1983). But throughout the 20 years that Mr. Heminway continued both to write about and socialize with Spoerry, he was never able to persuade her to open up about her life before she became Mama Daktari. On that, she remained silent and inscrutable."

January 28, 2018. Michael Peterman scores "3 hat tricks and a power-play goal" (Charles Plohn's imagery) with a collection of books (pictured below) all authored, co-authored, edited, forwarded or introduced by Michael. Michael adds, "English Studies at PU taught me what to look for and what to do. And I am still doing it. In fact, I am off to Texas (Austin) in mid-February to get warm and to look into another writer's papers at the Harry Ransom Research Library."

December 29, 2017. Peter A. Wilson is co-author of a new RAND Corporation report, U.S. Military Capabilities and Forces for a Dangerous World - Rethinking the U.S. Approach to Force Planning. Peter writes, "Gents,  Attached is a recently released report on rethinking U.S. global defense force planning. I view it as my de facto big project swan song with RAND.  I think you'll find the analysis of interest in light of the recently released Trump National Security Strategy. All, have a pleasant new year. See you in January."  Note: The link will take you to a page where you can get a pdf version or order a hard copy. Click here for additional reports Peter has authored, including recent reports on Korea and Ukraine.

December 15, 2017. Jim Mengert's Sea Glass, "A collection of 100 short lyric poems addressing the thoughts, feelings, experiences, and memories of a poet who has lived to "a certain age.", is receiving excellent reader reviews.

December 15, 2017. Bob Brooks and his son A.C. have just published The Clown Forest Murders, following up on Justi the Gifted. Read it to answer such questions as: "Did clown-colored mushrooms spark the gruesome murders? Will his memories of the murders save him or kill him?" Bob writes, "For those of you who have read The Clown Forest Murders and wonder how two authors work to produce one book, I offer a keen insight into the process in my blog posted on www.brooks-authors.com.  Check it out to discover the secret of cooperation."

October 17, 2017. Lanny Jones is the co-translator of Saving Charlotte: A Mother and the Power of Intuition by Pia de Jong. The author, a best-selling novelist, lives in Princeton.

October 17, 2017. David Dollenmayer's latest translation from German is Goethe: Life as a Work of Art. "This sterling biography of Germany’s greatest writer presents Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as if we are seeing him for the first time."

August 21, 2017. Nelson Hendler's fourth book, "Why 40%-80% of Chronic Pain Patients Are Misdiagnosed, and How to Correct That" is available from Nova Publishing.

August 3, 2017. Bob Brooks writes to announce the appearance online of his short story "Psycholizards," a SF tale with a bit of a Christmas theme.  It appears now in the Aug 1 issue of Aurora Wolf, A Literary Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy.  It is the featured story on the cover page and has a great graphic.

April 3, 2017. T.R. Reid's latest book, our soon, is A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System. T.R. covers tax policy alternatives, and he discussed the book at our Feb 25 Alumni Day dinner. Click here for an April 3 Fresh Air NPR interview with Terry Gross, Author Looks To Other Countries To Rethink America's Complicated Tax Code. T.R. was featured in a long segment of the April 13 PBS NewsHour and has an April 14 OpEd (Filing Taxes in Japan Is a Breeze. Why Not Here?) in the New York Times. Finally, here's a New York Times review.

    

January 7, 2017. Riesling Rediscovered: Bold, Bright, and Dry is John Haeger's latest book about wine and is featured in the Dec 7, 2016 PAW "Holiday Bookshelf". From the publisher, "John Winthrop Haeger explores the history of Riesling to illuminate how this variety emerged from a crowded field of grape varieties grown widely across northern Europe. Riesling Rediscovered is a comprehensive, current, and accessible overview of what many consider to be the world’s finest and most versatile white wine." John's 2008 Pacific Pinot Noir: A Comprehensive Winery Guide for Consumers and Connoisseurs is also available. 

December 14, 2016. Jamie Spencer writes that his second book, Modified Raptures, is his "first true piece of fiction” and now available from his publisher and Amazon. Set in both St. Louis and outer space, Jamie says this book "dramatizes in detail the ways time's irresistible demands can shape (or doom) human relationships, careers and lives”.

December 14, 2016. Larry Scott follows up with the following note: "The editor of The Journal of Organic Chemistry invited me to write a personal perspective on my 44 years of research in organic chemistry. Last week, my PERSPECTIVE was published and highlighted on the cover of the journal (J. Org. Chem. 2016, 81, 11535).

November 8, 2016. Larry Scott's Fragments of Fullerenes and Carbon Nanotubes: Designed Synthesis, Unusual Reactions, and Coordination Chemistry” (co-edited by M. A. Petrukhina)was chosen for the 2012 Alpha Sigma Nu Book Award as the best book of the year in the natural sciences by a faculty member at one of the sixteen institutions comprising the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities. Click here for an interview with Larry that also explains the book's unusual cover.

May 31, 2016. Terry Seymour was spotted at the 50th with his just-released Boswell's Books: Four Generations of Collecting and Collectors. From the Amazon summary: "Since the day in 1791 when The Life of Johnson was published, James Boswell has ranked among our greatest authors. With the discovery of Boswell's journals and other papers in the twentieth-century, and their subsequent publication by Yale, armies of scholars have dissected his life, methods and manners. Yet until now, no one has attempted to document the books in his personal library. Terry Seymour has combed Boswell family inventories, the four Boswell auction sales, evidence from the Boswell papers, and two centuries of auction records and dealer catalogues to provide a remarkably complete reconstruction.The more than 4,500 entries, each one representing a title, document not only James Boswells library, but also that of his father, grandfather and two sons."

May 31, 2016. David Dollenmayer's translation of two works by the Austrian novelist Michael Köhlmeier has just appeared. Idyll with Drowning Dog is about a couple trying to deal with the loss of their daughter in a freak hiking accident. David dedicated the translation to Asher Green, son of Jeff Green '66. Asher died in a hiking accident in Peru in 2007. David's 2015 translation of Martin Walser's A Gushing Fountain (New York: Arcade Publishing, 2015) was just reviewed in the New York Review of Books.

Larry Lindsey's Stump! follows a young marine in the Pacific during World War II. Senator Bill Bradley '65 says ""In STUMP! Larry Allen Lindsey beautifully recounts the late Lee Kelley's powerful World War II stories. STUMP! is a moving tribute to our 'greatest generation'."". Larry's website will bring you up-to-date on Larry's activities.