Mason Bookshelf

Massud Alemi, BA History ’91, Interruptions, IBEX Publishers, 2008

Set in modern day Iran, this novel tackles issues of human rights abuses through the story of Farzin, a gay man living in Tehran, who finds himself accused of a crime he did not commit.

Alemi, who lives in the Washington, D.C., area, was born in Iran and moved to the United States in 1977. He writes fiction and nonfiction in English and Persian. Interruptions is his first novel.

Scott Clarkson, JD ’82, Windows to Vietnam: A Journey in Pictures and Verse, Cheshire Publishing Company, 2007

Windows to Vietnam is a collection of more than 140 photographs taken by Clarkson and 30 related poems by poet Veita Jo Hampton that address the culture, diversity, economy, and lifestyles of the Vietnamese people today.

Clarkson is a Los Angeles-based corporate attorney who travels worldwide, creating a collection of photography explorations of such countries as Aruba, England, France, Germany, Mexico, Peru, Scotland, Switzerland, Thailand, and the Bahamas.

Madlon Laster, PhD Education ’96, Brain-Based Teaching for All Subjects: Patterns to Promote Learning, Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2008

The book describes an approach to teaching that mimics the way the brain learns and retains information. Chapters on visual models for basic curriculum concepts and ways to present them to students are included.

Now retired, Laster taught for 42 years in schools in Winchester, Virginia; Wooster, Ohio; Nashville, Tennessee; Tehran, Iran; and Beirut, Lebanon. She and her husband, James, live in Winchester.

David Lowe, MA History ’02, Meade’s Army: The Private Notebooks of Lt. Col. Theodore Lyman (editor), Kent State University Press, 2007

Meade’s Army contains anecdotes, vignettes of officers, and descriptions of military campaigns as witnessed by Lt. Col. Lyman, Gen. Meade’s aide-de-camp during the Civil War.

Lowe is a historian for the National Park Service. His previous works include the books Civil War Sites in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Bentonville Battlefield Resources, and Civil War in Loudoun Valley, and articles in North and South Magazine and Civil War Battlefield Guide.

Rod Smith, MFA ’05, Deed, University of Iowa Press, 2007

In Deed, Smith looks at the question of ownership in this lyric, ambitious, and rebellious work.

Smith has written nine other books of poems, including Music or Honesty, Poèmes de l’Araignées, and In Memory of My Theories. His poems have appeared in many print and online journals and anthologies, including the Baffler, The Gertrude Stein Awards, Java, New American Writing, Poetics Journal, and Shenandoah. He edits the journal Aerial, publishes Edge Books, and manages Bridge Street Books in Washington, D.C.