ShelfLife@Texas

Nina Godiwalla’s memoir of working on Wall Street begins with a sweaty walk to work through New York City, catching her heel in a grate, begging for help from a nearby blood-soaked fishmonger and eventually arriving at the JP Morgan office only to discover that she was at the wrong building.

Little did she know that temperamental high heels would be the least of her troubles in the years ahead.

Godiwalla, BBA ’97, chronicles the rest of her harrowing finance career in
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Since the days of the American Revolution, nation-building has been deeply embedded in America’s DNA. Yet no other country has created more problems for itself and for others by pursuing impractical reconstruction efforts in war-torn nations, argues Jeremi Suri, professor in the Department of History and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.

In his new book “Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama,” Suri examines more than 200 years of U.S. policy to explain the successes and failures
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The accent is still there, made faint by long years away from Australia.

Dominic Smith, a 2003 alumnus of the Michener Center’s MFA program in writing, was born in Brisbane and grew up in Sydney, but his education and work have taken him far from the continent since—he earned his B.A. in Iowa and worked in the dotcom boom in Europe before coming to The University of Texas at Austin for graduate school.  Smith seems to have found Texas to his liking,
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Talia Stroud

Fox News, MSNBC, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Rush Limbaugh Show, National Public Radio — with so many options, where do people turn for news?

In her debut book, “Niche News: The Politics of News Choice,” (Oxford University Press, May 2011) Talia Stroud, assistant professor of communication studies in the College of Communication, investigates how people navigate these choices and the political implications that their choice ultimately entails. By combining an analysis of the various
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Alberto Martinez. Photo by Judy Hogan, administrative assistant in the Department of History.

Legend has it Benjamin Franklin ventured out on a stormy day to fly a kite with a lightning rod and a key dangling on the end of the string. When the lightning struck the kite, the powerful bolt charged the metal key. Franklin then touched the key and got zapped, thus proving the electrical nature of lightning.

It is a captivating story. Yet just as Pecos Bill never
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On the brink of graduating high school, Marisa must make some tough decisions. Should she stay close to her family, marry a nice boy and get a job at the local grocery store? Or should she go off to college to study engineering at The University of Texas at Austin? Caught at the crossroads, Marisa must decide whether she has what it takes to break free and follow her dreams.

Inspired by her teaching experience at Chávez High School in Houston
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While young women’s educational and career opportunities have skyrocketed over the past two decades, their opportunities for stable, long-term relationships have declined, according to the new book “Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying,” by University of Texas sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker.

The book has already received widespread attention, including on CNN, salon.com and The Washington Post. Regnerus, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology, recently sat down with us to discuss
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Lori Aurelia Williams, a 1996 graduate of The University of Texas at Austin’s masters program in Creative Writing/English and one of the first distinguished Michener fellows on campus, has just published her fourth novel, “Maxine Banks is Getting Married,” with Macmillian’s Roaring Brook Press.

Since the 2001 release of her debut novel from Simon and Schuster, “When Kambia Elaine Flew in from Neptune,” Williams has been recognized as one of the freshest and most powerful voices in young adult literature.  Her books, all
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Karen L. Engle, Cecil D. Redford Professor in Law and director of the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice, has written a new book, “The Elusive Promise of Indigenous Development: Rights, Culture, Strategy” (Duke University Press, 2010).

Engle traces the history of indigenous peoples’ uses of international law to make claims for heritage, territory and economic development, considering the prevalence of particular legal frameworks and their costs and benefits for indigenous groups. Her account highlights the dilemmas
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David Wevill

On November 10, our community will get a rare chance to hear the work of one of our most beloved yet enigmatic poets.  David Wevill has spent the last 40 years in Austin as a teacher, translator and editor.  He retired in 2007 from the University, where he was the heart and soul of the poetry programs of the Department of English and, later, the Michener Center for Writers.

Over the decades, Wevill has mentored scores of students who have gone on win some
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