Seven new books from URochester faculty span Beethoven, bees, and the borderlands.
Science Nonfiction: Behind the Scenes in University Research
Darren Lipomi, the Arthur Gould Yates Professor of Engineering and chair of chemical and sustainability engineering, delivers a Kitchen Confidential for the lab. Part memoir, part confessional, and part advocacy, Lipomi’s candor about graduate school, failed experiments, and the economics of the $60 billion research enterprise demystifies the people who actually drive the work of discovery, with all its risks and rewards. (Buckland Creek Press)
Six Dead German Composers and How They Got That Way
A retired neurosurgeon and professor emeritus of neurosurgery, Robert Bakos applies a clinician’s eye and ear to Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and both Schumanns, weighing historical records against modern medical scholarship. The result invokes musical biography and pathology to propose how illness, suffering, and resilience shaped six extraordinary creative lives, rather than merely shortening them. (McFarland)
Breaking Families, Making Families: Adoption and Child Welfare in the 1990s
Historian and physician Mical Raz, the Charles E. and Dale L. Phelps Professor in Public Policy and Health, maps the political history behind 1990s adoption reform, culminating in the 1997 Adoption and Safe Families Act. Drawing on archives, legislation, and oral histories, she argues that bipartisan enthusiasm for adoption reshaped—and often severed—poor families of color through punitive intervention. (University of North Carolina Press)
Recipes for the Melting Pot: The Lives of The Settlement Cook Book
Nora Rubel, the Elizabeth Denio Professor in the Department of Religion and Classics, traces the most successful charitable cookbook in American history from Lizzie Black Kander’s late-19th-century Milwaukee cooking classes to Jewish kitchens nationwide. More than a compendium of recipes—and not even remotely kosher—the book taught newcomers to adapt to America without surrendering the flavors of home. (Columbia University Press)
Traces of Intimacy: Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and the Borderlands of Race
Assistant Professor of History Jedediah Kuhn presents case studies of Native American and Mexican American lives across the Sierra borderlands of Nevada and California, from the Gold Rush to mass incarceration. Reading archives against the grain, he discovers that both groups have existed as lovers, neighbors, and rivals who strategically claimed or denied their connection to survive colonization. (University of California Press)
The Book of Bees: A Life-Size Guide to Bees Worldwide
Biologist Robert Minckley, a professor of instruction who keeps 62,000 specimens and has a sweat bee named for him, edits a life-size portrait gallery of more than 400 species. Bold photography and field detail on behaviors, flowers, and human encounters make the case that there’s more to the proverbial hive than just the honeybee. (University of Chicago Press)
Strangers and Settlers: Migration Politics in a Local’s World
Associate Professor of Political Science Bethany Lacina draws on four decades of opinion surveys and census records to drill into the complexities of minority and migrant life in the context of culture, economics, and in-group identities. Suggesting that migration politics unfold within a nativist status quo, she contends that conflicts turn on a persistent question: Who counts as a local, and who decides? (Oxford University Press)
This story appears in the fall 2026 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the University of Rochester.
