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Mason Spirit is published three times a year by the Office of Advancement and Alumni Relations in conjunction with the Office of Communications and Marketing.
Books
Building Peace in America
By Colleen Kearney Rich on December 14, 2021
When George Mason University doctoral student Emily Sample and Douglas Irvin-Erickson, assistant professor and director of the Raphaël Lemkin Genocide Prevention Program at Mason’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, were editing the volume Building Peace in America (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), the United States was a hotbed of unrest, and it was as if their predictions had come true.
A Public Policy Failure
By Buzz McClain, BA '77 on September 3, 2021
A new book of essays, Managing Challenges for the Flint Water Crisis (Westphalia Press), examines the crisis as a failure of municipal management.
Sidebar: In the Stacks
By Colleen Kearney Rich on July 1, 2019
While not every NEH grant results in a book, many do. Faculty often use the year or summer away from teaching to write a draft of the book they are planning.
Creative Differences
By Priyanka Champaneri, BA '05, MFA '10 on March 20, 2019
When most people think of how the great ideas of our time came about, they envision a single ‘eureka!’ moment when the idea arrives, fully formed, to only a special few. Mason management professor Matthew Cronin’s new book argues otherwise.
Unraveling a Tragedy
By Colleen Kearney Rich on November 26, 2018
In her latest book, The Tragedy of Benedict Arnold: An American Life (Pegasus Books, 2018), Antonin Scalia Law School professor Joyce Lee Malcolm takes a new look at the man commonly known as one of the most infamous traitors in U.S. history.
Q&A with Peter Leeson
By Lindsay Bernhards, BA '18 on August 6, 2018
In his second book, Peter T. Leeson, PhD Economics ’05, shares the economic reasoning behind some of the world’s strangest practices and superstitions. It turns out that these rules were actually not so much strange as they were meticulously planned responses to pressing social problems. From Italy’s criminal prosecution of cockroaches and crickets to accused criminals in Liberia choosing to drink poison to determine their fates, Leeson’s new book studies the rational thought behind irrational practices.
Building a Mystery
By Colleen Kearney Rich on March 1, 2018
This fall Mason English professor and novelist Laura Ellen Scott, MFA ’93, saw the release of the second book, Crybaby Lane (Pandamoon Publishing, 2017) in her New Royal Mysteries trilogy. The books revolve around a university and its crime writing program in the fictional Ohio town of New Royal.
Alumni Profile: Rion Amilcar Scott
By Tara Laskowski, MFA '05 on December 4, 2017
Rion Amilcar Scott, MFA Creative Writing ’08, my friend and fellow MFA grad, won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction for his story collection Insurrections.
Much More to the Story
By Cathy Cruise, MFA '93 on November 7, 2017
Mason communications officer John Hollis is a history buff, seasoned journalist, and author whose second book was published in October from Hugo House Publishers. The Making of a Hero: The Life and Death of Sgt. Rodney M. Davis tells the story of Hollis’s wife’s uncle, an African American who was presented a posthumous Medal of Honor for saving the lives of five fellow Marines in one of the fiercest battles of the Vietnam War.
Stranger Than We Can Imagine
By Arthur Wesley, BA '17 on August 9, 2017
In his new book Exoplanets: Diamond Worlds, Super Earths, Pulsar Planets, and the New Search for Life Beyond Our Solar System (Smithsonian Press, 2017), Mason astronomy professor and NASA scientist Michael Summers shares the latest research on exoplanets, which are planets beyond our solar system. The book was written with co-author James Trefil, Robinson Professor of Physics at Mason.
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