Book reviews fall 2007

New titles by University faculty and a doctoral student

By Gayla Marty

From M, fall 2007

Latino Minnesota

Latino migrants, immigrants, and their U.S.-born children have been contributing to the economic, cultural, and social fabric of Minnesota for more than a century. Through lively prose and photographs old and new, Roethke traces the story from the first recorded Mexican settlers in 1860 to workers who have formed the backbone of Minnesota's agricultural, food processing, manufacturing, and service industries since the early 1900s. Roethke is a doctoral student in art history at the Twin Cities campus.

Afton Historical Society Press, 2007; ISBN 978-1-890434-73-1; $24.00 hc

The Feast of Love

Bradley, twice divorced, is a guy who can't sleep. Walking his dog under the stars, he begins to discover a whole world of connections and varieties of love, and we get to discover them, too. The novel--a National Book Award finalist--inspired the new movie starring Morgan Freeman and Greg Kinnear, due out from MGM this fall. Baxter teaches creative writing at the Twin Cities campus and is the author of eight novels as well as many poems and short stories.

Vintage, 2000; ISBN 978-0-307387-27-1; $14.95 pb

You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein

Are you interested in captivating and challenging math problems created by Soviet mathematicians that can be solved using elementary math (i.e., without calculus)? Curious as to whether you'd be eligible for freshman admission to the math department at Moscow University? Want to learn about the use of math as a weapon of ideological control in the USSR during the 1970s and '80s? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this book is for you. U physics professor Mikhail Shifman, who lived through it all, has been awarded the Blaise Pascal Research Chair in Paris for the coming year.

World Scientific, 2005; ISBN 978-9-812562-79-1; $32.00 pb

Contact the University of Minnesota Bookstores, located in Coffman Memorial Union and the St. Paul Student Center, at 612-626-0559 or generalbooks@umn.edu. Look for faculty authors at www.bookstores.umn.edu/genref.