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The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
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Mark Salzman ’82 Consider this spiritual dilemma: You’re a cloistered nun, and after years of striving—and apparently failing—to feel close to God, you begin to have visions that inspire brilliant poetry. Your writing is published to great acclaim and helps the monastery with its finances. It becomes a far-reaching form of ministry, and the Vatican invites you to take part in special ceremonies. But the visions are accompanied by severe headaches, and these turn out to be caused by a brain tumor that causes temporal lobe epilepsy. Surgery offers a cure, but at a tremendous cost—your literary connection to the Lord. Many gifted writers, artists, and mystics—Tennyson, Proust, Van Gogh, Saint Paul, and Saint Teresa of Avila, among them—may have suffered from this disorder, whose symptoms include an outpouring of writing and an obsessive interest in religion. And as Sister John of the Cross, the cloistered Carmelite nun who is the protagonist of Mark Salzman’s spare and powerful novel, ponders what appears to be a choice between surgery and salvation, she thinks about Dostoevsky, a known epileptic. “If [he] had been given the option of treatment, would he have taken it? Should he have?” she wonders, trying to figure out “how to tell the difference between genuine spiritual experiences and false ones.” While Sister John wrestles with these issues, she is joined on a long night of decision-making by her fellow nuns in a touching display of solidarity. “A sister might feel lost, but she was never alone,” says the nun. In prose rich with the eloquence of monastery silence, Salzman offers a meditation on the meaning of community and service and the nature of faith.
Richard
Benson, Dean of the School of Art As a photographer and art school dean, Richard Benson has a special perspective on the University’s history. And he brings it to bear in his selection of images for his illustrated tour of Yale over the past century on the occasion of its Tercentennial. Benson notes that “Yale entered the 20th century as a small college . but the tremendous growth of the past 100 years has transformed it into one of the world’s great universities.” Benson mined the archives for photographs and wrote an engaging commentary for the images. His text is accompanied by contributions from President Richard Levin, Provost Alison Richard, art historian Jules Prown, and others."We enter Yale’s fourth century with confidence and commitment,” writes President Levin in an essay at the end of the book. The history Benson has presented in both pictures and words shows that Levin has a solid foundation on which to build.
Carl Zimmer ’87 Parasites have long been the Rodney Dangerfields of the natural world. Not only did the myriad varieties of animals and plants that make their biological livings off of other animals and plants get scant respect, they were also seen as “a grave warning for humans,” says Carl Zimmer. Biologists and theologians alike noted that instead of evolving towards a higher plane, parasites were “the sine qua non of degenerates.” But in this examination of the often remarkable lifestyles of the parasitic and the infamous, Zimmer shows that a new viewpoint has emerged. “A parasite lives in a delicate competition with its host for the host’s own flesh and blood,” he writes. In profiling such creatures as zombifying fungi and castrating barnacles, along with the scientists who study them, the author reveals how this balance has been struck over time and what it has meant for the evolution of species. Zimmer explains how organisms like blood flukes, tapeworms, and the protozoan that causes malaria manage to elude the body’s inner defenses, colonize “the most hostile habitats nature has to offer,” and evolve “beautifully intricate adaptations in the process.” Especially intriguing is his account of recent research that demonstrates how parasites can actually manipulate the behavior—even the anatomy—of their hosts to do their bidding. “Parasites have probably been driving the evolution of their hosts since the dawn of life itself,” says Zimmer, adding that they might in fact be necessary for good ecological health. In confronting the uneasy relationship between humans and the planet—itself a kind of parasitism—there’s a lesson. “If we want to succeed as parasites, we need to learn from the masters,” he writes.
Wilbur
Cross ’41 In Disaster at the Pole, Wilbur Cross has added to the annals of Arctic exploration an epic of tragic adventure that brings to life General Umberto Nobile’s ill-fated polar expedition of 1928. As well as providing a compelling account of the dangers of aeronautic exploration, Cross illuminates the political and scientific rivalries that dominated the enterprise, notably those arising from the rising Fascist government in Italy. In 1926, in the dirigible Norge commissioned by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, Nobile had achieved a historic flight over the Pole—only three days after Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennet had crossed the Pole by airplane. Encouraged by this success, the general, a pioneering aeronautical engineer, designed the Italia, an improved lighter-than-air craft, and planned a new scientific expedition to the Arctic. Well aware of the perils of his undertaking, Nobile sought to surpass the achievement of simply crossing the Pole. His goal was to land scientists to conduct research on the ground—not only at the Pole, but also along the Siberian Coast, in Greenland, and at other points never before visited by modern Europeans. Heavily burdened with supplies and a crew of 20, the Italia set off from Milan on April 15, 1928. The flight to its base at Kings Bay in Spitsbergen, Norway, itself an amazing feat, was achieved on May 6, 1928. After repairs and two preliminary jaunts—including a 69-hour, 2,500-mile flight to Nicholas II Land and back—the Italia set off for the Pole in the predawn hours of May 23rd. The airship would never return. Wilbur Cross has produced a remarkably detailed account of an important chapter of Arctic exploration. Disaster at the Pole tells a story of passionate science, courage, tragedy, and survival.
Brief Reviews John R. Bockstoce ’66
Barnaby Conrad ’75
Laura A. Corio, MD, and Linda G. Kahn ’89
Michael DiGiacomo ’68
David L. Katz MD, ’93MPH
William Zinsser
More Books by Yale Authors T. D. Seymour Bassett ’35 John R. Bockstoce ’66 Brent C. Bolin ’62, ’68MArch William G. Bowen ’72LLDH and James L. Shulman ’87, ’93PhD Jeff Carlson and Glenn Fleishman ’90 Thurston Clarke ’66 Jane Dailey ’87 Melissa Jayne Fawcett Karla Gottlieb ’88 Paul Kane ’84 C. Brian Kelly ’57 David Kessler, Dean of the Yale School of Medicine Janice R. Levine ’76 and Howard J. Markham, Editors Paul Lussier ’81 Townsend Ludington ’57, Editor Aaron L. Mackler ’80, Editor Caitlin Macy ’92 Charles Martin ’74, ’88PhD Archer Mayor ’73 Mark A. McIntosh ’82 Dana Milbank ’90 David Nadal ’95MMus, Editor and Transcriber David Nadal ’95MMus, Editor and Transcriber David Nadal ’95MMus, Editor and Transcriber Susan Naquin ’74PhD, Editor Vincent Pitts ’69 Rachel Seidman ’95PhD Jonathan Stone ’78 Kim Todd ’92 Shelby Tucker ’57 Stephen G. Waxman, Chairman, Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine Myrna M. Weissman ’74PhD, Editor Allan M. Winkler ’74PhD Tom Wolfe ’57PhD
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