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Spring 2024

Memoirs

New and Noteworthy
Winter 2011

New & noteworthy

 

Standing above the Crowd
by James “Dukes” Donaldson ’79
Aviva Publishing, New York, 2011

Donaldson mines his experiences as a former Cougar basketball and NBA star, entrepreneur, mentor, and community leader not just to tell his own story, but to motivate readers in achieving success and confidence in their own endeavors. A profile of Donaldson appeared in the Winter 2003 issue of this magazine, and a web-only story in 2006.

 

Eliminate the Chaos at Work
by Laura Leist ’91
John Wiley and Sons , Hoboken, NJ, 2011

Noted organizational consultant Laura Leist offers proven techniques to tame … » More …

Video: Nicole Braux Taflinger narrates a slideshow of her photos from Occupied France in WWII

Nicole Braux Taflinger was only 13 when the Germans invaded France in 1940. She has published a memoir of her time growing up in Nancy, Lorraine, called Season of Suffering: Coming of Age in Occupied France, published by Washington State University Press in 2010. In it she recalls the severe shortages, collaboration, disappearances, and despair and hope of a teenage girl. After Nancy was liberated, Nicole met a dashing young American airman named Ancel Taflinger, General Patton’s personal pilot. They married and eventually settled in Pullman, Washington. 

In this narrated slideshow, Nicole talks about some of her photos and her youth.

 

 

Read … » More …

Spring 2011

Nicole Braux Taflinger ’66, ’68—Season of Suffering

Nicole Braux (now Taflinger) was 13 years old when Germany invaded France in 1940. Years later, having survived the occupation with her mother, married an American airman, and moved to Pullman, she has written a lovely and moving memoir.

First written for her children, Season of Suffering: Coming of Age in Occupied France, 1940–45 (WSU Press) recalls the occupation of Nancy, the severe shortages, collaboration, disappearances, and despair and hope from the perspective of a teenage girl.

“The first week of the war ended my childhood,” she writes, “as if a fairy touched me with a magic wand.”

Stationed … » More …

Fall 2006

The memories of a queen

Before there was Wisteria Lane, there was the French royal court at the Palais du Louvre in Paris. It was a place of forced marriages, lovers and infidelities, imprisonments and poisonings, sword fights and murders. And all that was just within the castle walls.

A little bit of that past is hidden in Washington State University’s archives, in a delicate book with a yellow leather cover. It is a firsthand account of life there with details of some of the greatest scandals and intrigues of French history.

The 378-year-old vellum-paged book holds the memoirs of Marguerite de Valois, also known as Queen Margot. She was … » More …

Spring 2009

The Love Letters

In 1907, Othello had no high school, so Xerpha Mae McCulloch '30 traveled 50 miles to Ritzville to finish school. There she met, and fell in love with, Edward Gaines, a few years her senior. The recent gift to Washington State University of her steamer trunk reveals the life of a woman whose story is not only threaded through the University's, but also through the story of agriculture in Washington State. » More ...
Fall 2002

Real People Don’t Own Monkeys

Ever thought of using an iguana to catch a date? How about using your dog as a private detective or a parrot as a guard dog?

As a veterinarian with about 20 years of experience, Dr. Veronika Kiklevich has seen all that and more. Dr. K., as she insists people call her, is a former clinical instructor at Washington State University’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital, where she practiced clinical medicine and taught veterinary students.

Having witnessed many times over the years that pet owners can be as strange as their animals, herself admittedly included, she decided to write some of her most memorable experiences in her … » More …

Spring 2003

The Ministry of Leadership: Heart and Theory

 

I was honored when asked to review The Ministry of Leadership: Heart and Theory, by former Washington State University president Glenn Terrell (1967-1985). I couldn’t agree more with President V. Lane Rawlins’s assessment: “Anyone who loves Washington State University will find this book irresistible”; or the appraisal offered by former Washington governor and U.S. senator Dan Evans: “Glenn Terrell has produced a powerful personal memoir. He presided over Washington State University during one of the most troubling and activist periods in our nation’s history. His leadership style successfully guided the University during its difficult times.”

In The Ministry of Leadership, Terrell divides his tenure … » More …

Winter 2005

Kill the Editor

A job warranting more assassination attempts than the president of the United States exists in cities around the world.

The job? Editing a newspaper.

John R. Irby, a WSU clinical associate professor of communication, wrote a new book, Kill the Editor: The Often Bizarre Relationship with Readers, that chronicles 25 years of newspaper experience from the editor’s chair.

Irby collected personal stories and letters from readers for the bulk of the book’s material. The book highlights the emotions of all humans from a perspective the public never experiences: That of a professional journalist.

Leticia Gomez, editor for American Book Publishing, Irby’s publisher, said the book … » More …

Fall 2002

Staying Tuned: A Life in Journalism

In the beginning, radio was his second choice. After a journalistic teething in the service of the ANETA news agency in the Netherlands, Daniel Schorr wanted to be a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. When he fell victim to the Jewish-owned paper’s self-imposed quota on Jewish reporters, Schorr went to work for Edward R. Murrow at CBS in 1953.

The signal that he had made the grade came on New Year’s Day 1956, as “Murrow’s Boys” made the transfer to television. Schorr had left his post in Russia to join Howard K. Smith, Richard C. Hottelet, Eric Sevareid, and Murrow’s other far-flung correspondents … » More …