This Spring, UMass Press is thrilled to publish the first full biography of C. Everett Koop, Dr. Koop: The Many Lives of the Surgeon General by Nigel M. de S. Cameron. This intimate biography draws on thousands of documents and hundreds of interviews with family, friends, and colleagues to tell the story of one of the most recognizable public figures in late-20th century America.
When Ronald Reagan chose C. Everett Koop to be Surgeon General of the United States in 1981, liberal politicians, women’s groups, and even the public health community opposed the nomination because of his conservative social views and strong anti-abortion beliefs. By the time he left office in 1989, the same people who had vilified him as “Dr. Kook” were singing his praises, and many conservative politicians and activists who had championed his nomination were criticizing him as a traitor.
Koop, guided above all in his decisions by his unwavering physician’s commitment to saving lives, remains a sterling example—to both left and right—of how public officials should conduct themselves.
This spring also brings the publication of the 2024 Juniper Prize winners! This year’s fiction winners are Joyriders by Greg Schutz and Gichigami by Lindsey Steffes. Joyriders, Schutz’s debut short story collection, offers a resonant vision of rural and small-town life: lonely, half-haunted landscapes are pierced with moments of light, and even the most taciturn faces conceal inner worlds both rich and strange. Gichigami, an eerie coming-of-age novel, is a poignant exploration of the lives of women and girls of the Midwest. With rich prose and vivid imagery, Lindsey Steffes spins a tale of loss, longing, and betrayal set against the backdrop of the harsh yet beautiful landscape of Lake Superior.
This year’s poetry winners are Once When Green by Mark Irwin and Strange Hymn by Carlene Kucharczyk. While deeply personal, Once When Green engages the earth, “gulls, / gray, quarreling air, their ha-ha-ha-ing at our trace / of garbage and carbon,” and addresses mortality as well as the consequences of global warming—how it impacts humans, animals, and the plant life that sustains us all. As readers traverse Strange Hymn, they learn how the body sings, the many iterations of Mary, what sirens truly think of Odysseus, how a Morning Glory unfurls, and lessons in orthodontics, but most importantly, how to live with absence. Kucharczyk is a master of manipulating time and space through her dynamic use of form, creating a narrative that begs, “After I’m gone, don’t bury my body— / Burn it, and turn it into song.”
This year’s creative nonfiction winner, Because We Must by Tracy Youngblom, is a riveting memoir detailing the tragic accident in which Youngblom’s son Elias’s car was struck head-on by a drunk driver. After the accident, Elias begins his long journey of recovery, and alongside him, Youngblom faces her own challenges, supporting her son’s recovery while coping with her own emotions, fears, and trauma. Youngblom traverses her family’s lives before and after the accident, capturing the complications of grief, recovery, and the strength it takes to move forward—because we must.
Spring and Summer also brings a captivating new title by John Hanson Mitchell, renowned author of Legends of a Common Stream and Ceremonial Time. Mitchell’s most recent work, The Garden at the End of Time: Getting By in the Age of Climate Change, details the information he reads from various climate sources and what it prompts him to do in his own small corner of the world: namely, to cultivate a garden. Readers discover the impossibility of separating gardening from global warming, while also seeing the solace that exposure to plants can offer, in addition to their contribution to carbon consumption. With gravitas, kindness, and wit, Mitchell offers a model for maintaining a connection to nature even as it reels from manmade threats.
The third installment in the new Black New England series, Carol R. Gardner’s The Divided North: Black and White Families in the Age of Slavery, follows two Portland, Maine families—one Black and one white—as they navigate the turbulent 1800s. In this compelling narrative and dual biography, Gardner demonstrates that the North was a critical proving ground for American notions of freedom and equality, as telling as any town, plantation, or battlefield in the South.
The newest addition to the Activist Studies of Science & Technology series, Out Doing Science: LGBTQ STEM Professionals and Inclusion in Neoliberal Times by Tom Waidzunas, Ethan Czuy Levine and Brandon M. Fairchild explores the transformation of LGBTQ STEM professionals from oppositional outsiders to assimilationist insiders. Drawing on historical archives, oral interviews, and participant observation of professional societies and workspaces, the authors advocate for a “queer STEM” that challenges and transforms the racism, classism, sexism, cisheterosexism, and imperialism of these fields, institutions, and workspaces.
Transcendent Woman: Margaret Fuller’s Art and Achievement by David M. Robinson outlines the development of Margaret Fuller’s philosophy, which Robinson defines as a “purpose-oriented form of thinking, tailored to the commitment and assets of each individual.” Robinson traces Fuller’s intellectual journey, first in relation to her family and the people around her in New England and later in her travels in the midwestern United States and, more importantly, through Europe and her residency in Italy. Drawing extensively on primary sources, Robinson charts Fuller’s development and achievement as an original thinker and fearless advocate of democracy.
Emerson’s Daughters: Ellen Tucker Emerson, Edith Emerson Forbes, and Their Family Legacy by Kate Culkin is a biography of a sisterhood, the first full-length study of the lives of Ellen Tucker Emerson and Edith Emerson Forbes, the daughters of Lidian Jackson and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Building on archival research into the extensive correspondence between the sisters, it adds to the growing body of work on women’s contribution to Transcendentalism while opening a window onto the rich, and understudied, family life of the “Sage of Concord.”
Click here to see the full Spring & Summer 2025 catalog and discover more great titles!
