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Off the Shelf

The Annunciations of Hank Meyerson, Mama’s Boy and Scholar
By Scott Muskin (M.F.A. ’98)
Hooded Friar Press (2009)
This award-winning debut novel features a complex protagonist who is both sympathetic and pathetic, intelligent and oblivious, victim and violator. A self-described mama’s boy, Hank Meyerson is unkempt, overweight, and indulgent. His life takes an emotional rollercoaster ride through acts of betrayal and their repercussions. He travels from Minneapolis to Montana in an attempt to piece together a self he can live with and find redemption.

Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature Is at Odds with Economics—and Why It Matters
By Peter Ubel (M.D. ’88)
Harvard Business Press (2009)
A physician and director

of the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan, Ubel understands the limits of human rationality and the ways people act against their self-interests. For example, despite an obesity epidemic, people continue to consume high-fat, over-processed food. This is killing people and rewarding exploitative companies. The free market will never cure obesity, Ubel argues. He believes an unregulated free market can be dangerous for people’s health and well-being and that, in some cases, the government must regulate markets to stop the damage people do to their bodies and their finances—and to the economy as a whole.

Fried: Surviving Two Centuries in Restaurants
By Steve Lerach (B.A. ’96, M.L.S. ’07)
Minnesota
Historical Society Press/Borealis Books (2008)
For 200 years, dating back to the era of France’s King Louis XVI, an odd collection of chefs and cooks have served the dining public. Fried interweaves the history of restaurants with stories from the author’s 30 years of working in the food industry. Lerach started as a restaurant dishwasher and worked his way up to professional chef, including running the kitchens at the University of Minnesota. With humor and poignancy, he tells the tales from behind the lines, complete with the personal and often tragic stories of the characters who found livelihoods and acceptance in restaurant kitchens.

It’s a Cat’s World . . .
You Just Live in It
By Justine Lee
Three Rivers Press (2008)
Assistant

clinical specialist in the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, Lee has written a companion book to It’s a Dog Life . . . but It’s Your Carpet. Domestic cats are enigmas to many people, including longtime cat owners. With tried and true advice and irreverent humor, the author explains cats’ behavior and health issues and offers tips on dealing with frustrating cat problems, such as how to stop kitty from begging for food in the middle of the night.

Pemberley Manor . . . Darcy and Elizabeth, for Better or Worse
By Kathryn L. Nelson (B.A. ’74)
Sourcebooks Landmark (2009)
In Jane Austen’s famous Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet spar over class and manners, exposing their respective pride and prejudice.

Weathering heartache, miscommunication, and scandal, the two find love at last. But does it last? Do the Darcys live happily ever after? In this sequel, Nelson takes up the story after they begin married life and considers how their vulnerabilities, personalities, and propensities might play out in one of literature’s most famous unions.

Tell Me True: Memoir, History, and Writing a Life
Edited by Patricia Hampl (B.A. ’68) and Elaine Tyler May
Minnesota Historical Society Press/Borealis Books (2008)
A popular genre for readers and writers, memoirs have fallen under great scrutiny with questions of their accuracy. Memoirists must draw on their memories and imaginations, yet audiences demand narratives that, while worthy of fiction,

are completely factual. Hampl, an essayist and memoirist, and May, the author of several books on 20th century America, have navigated the gray areas between fact and memory, history and imagination, in their writings. Both Regents Professors at the University, they have collected 14 original essays from award-winning memoirists and historians who show how to tell compelling, and true, stories. Included are essays by André Aciman, Alice Kaplan, and Cheri Register.

Minnesota considers books by or about University of Minnesota alumni or faculty for inclusion in Off the Shelf. Review copies may be sent to: Editor, Minnesota, 200 Oak St. SE, Suite 200, Minneapolis, MN 55455.

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