Recent publications by Rice alumni
The Gray Rhino: How to Recognize and Act on the Obvious Dangers We Ignore
by Michele Wucker ’89
(St. Martin’s Press, 2016)
The provocative theory of Wucker’s latest book is that, in business, politics and everyday life, the most likely, high-impact threats are the ones we are often least prepared for. Like “a two-ton rhinoceros aiming its horn in our direction,” these are the threats we should be working hardest to avoid — but time and time again, they’ve caught business leaders and policymakers off guard. Take the bursting of the housing bubble in 2008 or the cyberattacks that have done irreparable damage to businesses and entire nations. They shouldn’t have blindsided anyone, Wucker argues. Yet, she explains, “the very obviousness of these problematic pachyderms is part of what makes us so bad at responding to them.” The book, Wucker’s third, proposes a solution based on her extensive background in policy formation and crisis management — both as a journalist at Dow Jones and the International Financing Review and as a think tank executive at the World Policy Institute and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
[tw-divider][/tw-divider]
Fuego
by Leslie Contreras Schwartz ’02
(Saint Julian Press, 2016)
With images of floods and fire, birth and death, violence and the exhausted calm of motherhood, Schwartz’s debut poetry collection is an exploration of survival in the face of daunting odds. As the Houston Chronicle put it in a review, “Schwartz doesn’t use words to smooth over life’s edges. Instead, she writes about the jagged parts directly … (This is) a collection of clear, crisp poems that tangle directly with the stuff of life.” Schwartz, who has an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College, has published poems in Pebble Lake Review, Southern Women’s Review, Storyscape Literary Journal and other publications; her essays have appeared in the Houston Chronicle, OZY, The Huffington Post and Dame Magazine. — JENNIFER LATSON
