A novelist’s thoughts on storytelling, a geologist’s soil restoration strategy, an environmentalist’s memoir, a celebration of Latino music influences, a poet’s meditations on her changing city 鈥�

Yes, and a best-selling author’s latest work, a podcast reborn as a book, a collaboration of world-class violists and even tales of brave Icelandic seawomen 鈥� at this festive time of year, 91探花 faculty creations can make great gifts for the Dawg on your shopping list.

Here鈥檚 a quick look at some gift-worthy books and music created by 91探花talents in the last year or so 鈥� and a reminder of some perennial favorites.

Charles Johnson, “.” Johnson, National Book Award-winning author of “” and longtime professor of English, discusses his art in a book stemming from a year of interviews. “There is winning sanity here,” the New York Times wrote: “Johnson wants his students to be ‘raconteurs always ready to tell an engaging tale,’ not self-preoccupied neurotics.” Published by .

Marisol Berr铆os-Miranda, Shannon Dudley and Michelle Habell-Pall谩n, ““ An extraordinary exhibit at the Smithsonian and Seattle’s Experience Music Project (now Museum of Pop Culture) comes to life as a book, detailing Latino influence on American popular music from salsa to punk, Chicano rock to the Miami sound. Berrios-Miranda is an affiliate associate professor of ethnomusicology, Dudley an associate professor of music and Habell-Pall谩n an associate professor in the Department of Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies. It’s a dual-language volume 鈥� English on the right side, Spanish on the left. And as a bonus the authors have created an American Sabor on iTunes and Spotify; the book flags specific songs with a playlist icon. Published by 91探花 Press.

David R. Montgomery, “.” Montgomery, a professor of Earth and space sciences, won praise for his popular 2007 book “.” Several books later he returned in 2017 with this view of environmental restoration based on three ideas 鈥� “ditch the plow, cover up, grow diversity.” said Montgomery’s well-expressed views “will convince readers that soil health should not remain an under-the-radar issue and that we all benefit from embracing a new philosophy of farming.” Published by .

Margaret Willson, Willson is an affiliate associate professor of anthropology and the Canadian Studies Arctic Program. In her years working as a deckhand she came across historic accounts of a woman sea captain known for reading the weather, hauling in large catches and never losing a crew member in 60 years of fishing. “And yet people in Iceland told me there had been few seawomen in their past, and few in their present,” she said. “I found this strange in a country of such purported gender equality. This curiosity led to the research and all that came from it.” Published by .

Estella Leopold, “.” Leopold is professor emeritus of biology and the youngest daughter of , who wrote the 1949 classic of early environmentalism, “.” She returns to scenes of her Wisconsin childhood in this follow-up, describing her life on the land where her father practiced his revolutionary conservation philosophy. Published by .

David Shields, “.” Shields is a professor of English and the best-selling author of many books, starting with his 1984 novel “.” In 2017 he brought out this collection of essays that the New York Times called “a triumphantly humane book” and him “our elusive, humorous ironist, something like a 21^st century Socrates.” The paper’s praise continued: “He is a master stylist 鈥� and has been for a long time, on the evidence of these pieces from throughout his career. . . All good writers make us feel less alone. But Shields makes us feel better.” Published by .

Joseph Janes, “.” The year 2017 saw Janes’ popular podcast “” become a book under a slightly different title. Janes is an associate professor in the Information School who writes here about the origin and often evolving meaning of historical documents, both famous and less known. Some of his favorite “documents” are Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fictional list of communists, the Fannie Farmer Cookbook and the backstory to what’s called the Rosie the Riveter poster. Published by .

Frances McCue, Well-known Seattle poet, teacher and self-described “arts instigator,” McCue is a senior lecturer in English. She was a co-founder of Hugo House, a place for writers, and served as its director for 10 years. Those experiences fuel this book of poems about the changing nature of the city. “This is Seattle. A place to love whatever’s left,” she writes. Published by .

Scott L. Montgomery, “.” Scientific research that doesn鈥檛 get communicated effectively to the public may as well not have happened at all, says geoscientist Montgomery in this second volume of a popular 2001 book. A prolific writer, Montgomery is a lecturer in the Jackson School of International Studies. “Communicating is the doing of science,” he adds. “Publication and public speaking are how scientific work gains a presence, a shared reality in the world.鈥澛� Published by .

Odai Johnson, “.” The true cultural tipping point in the run-up to the American Revolution, writes Johnson, a professor in the School of Drama, might not have been the Boston Tea Party or even the First Continental Congress. Rather, he suggests, it was Congress’ 1774 decision to close the British American theaters 鈥� a small act but “a hard shot across the bow of British culture.” Published by .

Here are some recordings from 2017 involving faculty in the 91探花School of Music:

Melia Watras, “.” Music professor Watras offers a collaboration from of world-class violists performing and sharing their own compositions with each other. Her own playing has been described in the press as “staggeringly virtuosic.” Richard Karpen, School of Music director, is among several guests. The title comes from the number of strings on the instruments used: two violas, one violin, and the 14-string viola d’amore. .

Cuong Vu 4-Tet, “.” A live collaboration between Vu, 91探花Jazz Studies chair, and renowned jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, who is an affiliate professor with the School of Music. Recorded in 2016 at Meany Theater, Vu and Frisell were joined by artists in residence Ted Poor on drums and Luke Bergman on bass. Released on .

Craig Sheppard, “.” Sheppard, longtime professor of music and a world-class pianist, plays sonatas and mazurkas by Frederic Chopin recorded live at Meany Theater in February 2017. The Seattle Times said of an earlier Chopin concert of Sheppard’s that his playing featured “exquisite details 鈥� it was playing that revealed layer after layer of music in each piece, as if one were faceting a gemstone. Released on .

Here are some other notable recent UW-authored books:

• Research on poverty and the American suburbs in “,” by Scott Allard, professor in the Evan School of Public Policy & Governance.
• Literature meets science to contemplate the geologic epoch of humans in “,” co-edited by Jesse Oak Taylor, associate professor of English.
• A popular science exploration of machine learning and the algorithms that help run our lives in “,” by Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science and engineering.
• A close look at four of America’s electoral adventures in “” by Margaret O’Mara, professor of history.
• A fully revised second edition of Earth and space sciences professor Darrel Cowan’s popular 1984 book, “.” This 378-page paperback is filled with details about Washington state geology.
• The story of a city’s transition from the Ottoman Empire to Greece in “” by Devin Naar, professor of history and Jewish studies.
• A city that “thinks like a planet” is one both resilient to and ready for the future that the changing Earth will bring, says Marina Alberti, professor in the College of Built Environments in “.
• Todd London, professor and director of the School of Drama, follows the professional theater experiences of 15 actors from the 1995 class of Harvard’s American Repertory Theater in “.”
• Dr. Stephen Helgerson, a 91探花School of Public Health alumnus and physician in preventive medicine for four decades, uses the novella form to tell of the influenza epidemic’s arrival in his state in “.”
• On the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, an exploration of faith that results in the common good in 鈥�,鈥� co-authored by Steve Pfaff, professor of sociology.
• Calm down from holiday 鈥� and tech-induced stresses 鈥� by thinking mindfully with “” by communication professor David Levy.

Finally, still-popular and pertinent books from a few years back include the second edition of “” by Jeffrey Ochsner, professor of architecture; “” by Randlett with Frances McCue; “” by Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences; and the ever-popular “” by Bill Holm, professor emeritus of art history. All of these were published by , which has many other great titles.

The true cultural tipping point in the run-up to the American Revolution, writes 91探花 drama professor in his new book, might not have been the Boston Tea Party, the British naval blockade or even the

Rather, Johnson suggests in “,” it was that Congress’s decision in late October of 1774 to close the theaters in British America.

“To close them was a small and radical act of the Continental Congress among far weightier measures,” he writes, “but a hard shot across the bow of British culture.”

The book was published in late spring by University of Iowa Press. The work “offers extraordinarily well-written, engaging prose that tells compelling stories about early America and Atlantic theater and the social worlds in which it traveled,” wrote reviewer Peter Reed of the University of Mississippi. Another reviewer praised its “wit and grace,” adding, that Johnson’s narrative voice “is reminiscent itself at times of an 18^th century novelist.”

Johnson, a professor of theater history and head of the ‘s doctoral program, answered a few questions about the book.

Q: Set the scene for us, if you would 鈥� it’s 1774 in the thriving British-American colonies. Theater of the day is, as you write, “a quintessential salon of civility” and “the single greatest school for manufacturing Britishness.” Why was this, and why was it so popular?

Odai Johnson: At no point in America’s long history were we Americans more British than on the eve of the Revolutionary war. Discontents were present, but there was not yet the re-fashioning of national identity that would make British-Americans into Americans. Its hard for us to imagine our way back before that charismatic event of 1776, but colonies just didn’t declare independence in the 18th century. Even the long tradition of rebellions 鈥� Irish, Scots, Indian uprisings, slave uprisings 鈥� were uniformly unsuccessful.

The idea of resisting the British empire was truly radical, and the idea of abandoning it in favor of “independency” was enormously brave and frightening. What kept British-Americans British was a large investment in shared culture. And for that, London was the capital. It was the center of trade, of education, of the arts, and of all the arts, nothing was more British, more the concentrated center of culture, than the theater.

Q: Plays staged by actor-manager were, as your book title expresses, “like London in a box,” bringing these rustic early American “closer to the urbanity” of that city. Could you tell a bit about Douglass, his company and his place in history?

David Douglass, the Scottish actor and manager was the founder of American theater. He ran his “American Company” of actors in the British colonies and the Anglophone Caribbean from 1757 to 1777. He arrived in New York in 1758, built and operated a chain of theaters all across the colonies, and at no point was he more successful than when the war broke out and he and his company retired to Jamaica to sit out the hostilities.

At that point, early 1775, he owned seven theaters from Charleston, South Carolina, to New York City. He had collected a base of patrons that included the wealthiest and most influential clients on the continent 鈥� plantation owners, the British governor and signers of the Declaration of Independence. It is not hyperbole to claim of Douglass that he was the most well-connected man in America.

Q: The Founding Fathers, it seems, were big theatergoers. You write that then-Colonel George Washington subscribed to and attended several of Douglass’s theaters, and Virginia Assemblyman Thomas Jefferson often spent half of his 15-shilling per diem at the theater daily. What drew them so?

We are fortunate to have memorandum books for a few high-profile theater goers. Washington was a regular in the theater, attending some years four of Douglass’ theaters 鈥� in Annapolis, New York, Williamsburg and Alexandria 鈥� while Jefferson, as a young burgess in Williamsburg at court season could attend the theater six nights out of seven.

It was a place, of course, to be seen, but also, we forget, actors were among the most mannered people (at least on stage), and so for learning how to conduct oneself as well; manners, poise, polish, actors were modeling high culture. Even the language of the stage so deeply informed this revolutionary generation. If one reads with the stage in mind, it all sounds cribbed from a good tragedy, with King George the Macbethian “tyrant of the Earth.” Jefferson had clearly eaten of the tragic fruit!

Q: Everything changed in October of 1774 when the Continental Congress voted to close the British theaters. What was the reaction it the early American theater world? What became of the actors?

Wars, of course, are always bad on the theater season. But if we read these times not from 1776 and everything that happened afterward, but from the uncertainty of late 1774 and early 1775, we begin to appreciate how inconceivable war with Great Britain was to most British Americans.

Surely there would be some compromise. Concessions would be made, the rhetoric would all ratchet down, trade would resume, theaters would re-open.聽 But of course none of that happened. The actors watched, waited, and were actually in New York while war preparations were hastily being made. None of them chose sides, instead they sailed off to Jamaica to wait out the uncertainty of it all.

Q: At the close of 1774, you write, “New York, and indeed all the colonies were a powder keg, and the maniacs had all the matches.” Anyone not publicly supporting the rebellion, you quote a correspondent of the time, “is a Tory and subject to tar and feathers.” A sense of personal danger comes through your story at such times 鈥� was this indeed a dangerous time for the average person?

It鈥檚 a handy reminder, in our own divided times, just how deadly it could be to own the wrong positions in the wrong company. Neutrality was not an option; positions had to be declared. It divided families, broke up long friendships, forged new political divisions and communities and utterly re-mapped the social landscape of America.

What I find curious as a scholar of performance is the way the very last plays produced in America already anticipated the breaking off ties. Eight of the last 10 plays Douglass produced all dramatized the dangers of rebellion and the costs of political turmoil 鈥� from Shakespeare’s and to 鈥� the play that gave so many American rebels their language of tragic sacrifice. It would have been quite chilling to witness the staging of rebellion and the failed subject-Monarch contracts, over and over, just before the war broke out.

Q: In this violent new “world turned upside down,” you write: “Of course, there would be no more theater,” adding that this was not the frivolous concern it may seem. What was the effect on culture? How long did it take a new American theater to arise?

This was a problem that has not been fully explored. Theaters were British 鈥� all the plays were British, the actors were British trained. There was no American theater at the time of the Revolutionary war. And so when the war was over, America emerged as a nation among nations, and the actors returned, but they had no story of consequence to tell.

It would be into the 19th century before the first serious American playwrights would emerge. That gap is very revealing, because one can measure how deeply British the Americans were before the war by how little new culture emerged immediately after it. It took a while 鈥� Ralph Waldo Emerson was still complaining about the want of distinctly American voices well into the 1840s.

Q: Finally, in your preface you mention a history of early England by medieval scholar , who left pages in his book blank for subsequent scholars to fill in, and write that you could easily do the same, “to fill in the many gaps and speculations.” What gaps remain to be filled in this history?

What’s left to do: For all the influence that David Douglass, being so public a figure, so well known and so well connected, insinuated in so many social circles, he left very little about himself as a private person. I was years tracking whatever I could find of him 鈥� but apart from legal documents and newspaper op-eds, he left no letters, no private correspondence of his life. And the same is true for most of his company of actors. They left little of their own lives behind. So well-known and so unknown.

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For more information, contact Odai Johnson at odai@uw.edu.

From Helen of Troy to the Kardashian sisters, celebrities have fascinated the public for centuries. Why? And what is the effect on those in the spotlight?

This year’s , presented by the 91探花 , explores the power of celebrity from unique perspectives at 7:30 p.m. on three autumn Tuesday evenings in the . The series is titled “Celebrity and its Discontents.”

Oct. 7: , “.” In this first talk, Johnson, professor of drama and director of the school’s doctoral program, will examine the relationship between celebrity and the artist it feeds upon. “Sometimes it feasts upon the private life, but usually it begins with the choice bits 鈥� the artistic impulse itself,” Johnson said.

Oct. 21: , “.” In an era that believes beauty is in the eye of the beholder, Blondell, professor of classics, asks how one can possibly cast any performer as the most beautiful woman in the world? This talk, she said, explores “how harnessing the glamour of stardom is the most persuasive means of capturing Helen of Troy’s mythical celebrity on screen.”

Blondell is the author of “” (2013) and is at work on a project exploring Helen in modern cinema and culture.

Nov. 4: , “.” Madden, principal lecturer in drama, teaches the Alexander Technique, an educational process used by actors that seeks to calm unnecessary movement and provide balance, named after Frederick Matthias Alexander (1869-1955).

Madden noted that one function of celebrity is “to hold up to us what is possible.” She said Alexander’s type of celebrity “reminds us that we can pioneer our lives, responding to discontent with constructive desire and steadfast in our ability to be a celebrity in our own world.” Madden is at work on a book about the process, to be published in 2015.

The three lectures will provide insights into the phenomenon that once prompted radio comedian Fred Allen to say, “A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.”

The cost for each evening is $10, but students get in free. Tickets are available .