Holy Cross Bookshelf

Follow

• 

  Book V of the Mathematical Collection of Pappus of Alexandria, translated by John B. Little

  Pappus of Alexandria and John B. Little

  John B. Little is the translator.

  Book V of the Mathematical Collection is addressed to a certain Megethion, about whom we know nothing else. From the context he may have been a student or patron of Pappus in Alexandria. In a heading at the start, Pappus says that the general theme will be comparisons between different geometric figures. The overall structure brings interesting relations and connections to the fore. The book opens with a very well-known and charming discussion of how the importance of such comparisons can be seen by considering the structures built by non-human creatures such as bees. This might seem surprising since the bees do not seem to have the power to reason about geometry in the ways that humans do. But Pappus starts by identifying tilings of the plane as plans for the cross-section of a structure like a honeycomb. He points out that only equilateral triangles, squares, and regular hexagons can form regular tilings of a plane and those are the only conceivable possibilities for the tidy and systematic bees. Among these options, the bees have settled on the hexagon for their honeycombs because a hexagon encloses a greater area than a triangle or a square of the same perimeter. Since the perimeter of the cell gives a measure of the quantity of material needed to construct the cell, while the area is related to the storage capacity, the hexagonal shape is the most economical one for storing honey. The bees possess a certain kind of ``geometric foresight'' aimed at providing for the material needs of their lives. On the other hand, humans can reason and are convinced by logical demonstrations and this leads to a greater form of wisdom. Hence Pappus proceeds to give proofs that the rectilinear plane figure of maximal area with a given number of sides and a given perimeter must be equilateral and equiangular. In addition, among regular polygons with the same perimeter, polygons with more sides always contain more area. Moreover, the circle with the same perimeter or circumference is larger in area than all the regular polygons. These theorems were apparently first established by Zenodorus (ca. 200 - 140 BCE (?)) although Pappus does not mention him by name. After considering a somewhat similar result for regions bounded by arcs of circles, Pappus shifts the discussion to the realm of three-dimensional figures and results he explicitly attributes to Archimedes (ca. 287 - 212 BCE). The main theme is comparisons between figures such as polyhedra, cones, and cylinders on the one hand, and the sphere on the other hand. Pappus introduces the five regular (Platonic) solids, then provides a quite detailed discussion of the thirteen ``semi-regular'' or Archimedean solids. No surviving work of Archimedes describes these solid figures, though, so Pappus's account is interesting from the historical point of view. Pappus then shows that the sphere is greater than any regular polyhedron of the same surface area. The final sections of Book V contain an exposition of famous results from Book I of Archimedes' On the sphere and cylinder, and a proof that the regular polyhedra have a property parallel to what was seen earlier for plane polygons. Namely, if the surface areas are equal, the polyhedron with more faces encloses a greater volume.

• 

  Pappus of Alexandria, Book III of the Mathematical Collection

  Pappus of Alexandria and John B. Little

  John B. Little is the translator.

  This is a translation of Book III of the Mathematical Collection by Pappus of Alexandria (ca. 290 - 350 CE) from the original Greek to English, following the edition of Friedrich Hultsch. While other books of the Mathematical Collection have been translated into English and short quotations from Book III have appeared in a number of places (see the Introduction), to my knowledge, no complete English translation of Book III has been published. Pappus was very influential as a sort of conduit between knowledge preserved from ancient Greek mathematics and European mathematicians in the Renaissance. This is evident here in the way Pappus discusses several solutions for the problem of the duplication of the cube in the first section of this book. The rest of Book III deals with a number of other problems in plane and solid geometry. The opening section is addressed to a certain Pandrosion, who was apparently a fellow teacher of mathematics in Alexandria, and the earliest female mathematician of whom any record has survived.

• 

  Pappus of Alexandria, Book VIII of the Mathematical Collection

  Pappus of Alexandria and John B. Little

  John B. Little is the translator.

  This is a Greek-to-English translation of one section or chapter of a larger ancient Greek work called the Mathematical Collectionby Pappus of Alexandria (ca. 290 - 350 CE). Specifically, this is “Book VIII”' of that work. To date and to the translator’s knowledge, no complete English translation of Book VIII has been published.

  Pappus was very influential as a bridge between the knowledge that had been preserved from ancient mathematics and European mathematicians in the Renaissance. This specific part of Pappus' work deals with applications of geometry to questions in mechanics.

  The format includes an introductory essay, followed by the translated text, with numerous footnotes giving context, annotations, etc. The translator used of a number of figures from a scanned version of the classic scholarly edition of the Greek text of Pappus (and a Latin translation) edited by Friedrich Hultsch and published in the 1870's. These come from gallica.bnf.fr, the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and its partners.

• 

  Old Enemies: A Satire

  Lee Oser

  "In an America running on algorithms, outrage, and half-truths, ex-journalist Moses Shea is down on his luck. Blacklisted in New York, dumped by the only woman he ever loved, he has one skill that might save him--he's a wizard at languages. His last chance comes through his old Harvard pal Nick Carty, whose business empire could use a man of Moses' talents. But when his new job lands him on the campus of a defunct Catholic college, the disgraced newspaperman gets pulled back into the news."--Publisher description.

• 

  Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America

  Leila Philip

  "In the rich naturalist tradition of H Is for Hawk and The Soul of an Octopus, Beaverland tells the tumultuous, eye-opening story of how beavers and the beaver fur trade shaped America's history, culture, and environment. Before the American empires of steel and coal and oil, before the railroads, there was the empire of fur. Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver's profound influence on our nation's early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. As Leila's passion for this weird and wonderful rodent widens from her careful observation of its dams in her local pond, she chronicles the many characters she meets in her pursuit of the beaver: fur trappers and fur traders, biologists and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers and beaver enthusiasts. What emerges is a startling portrait of the secretive, largely hidden world of the contemporary fur trade and an immersive ecological and historical investigation of these animals that, once trapped to the point of extinction, have rebounded to become one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Now, beavers offer surprising solutions to some of the most urgent problems caused by climate change. Beautifully written and filled with the many colorful characters-fur trappers and fur traders and fur auctioneers, wildlife managers and biologists, Native American environmental vigilantes. She meets a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, using drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams. She meets an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the beaver whisperer. Beaverland transports readers into scenes of beavers in their ponds and the scientists and fur trappers in pursuit of them, widening arcs of information to reveal the profound ways in which beavers and the beaver trade shaped history, culture, and our environment." -- Provided by publisher.

• 

  Monkey in Residence & Other Speculations

  Xu Xi

  Observations of contemporary life that make monkeys of us: this existential disbelief thrums through speculative stories and essays in Xu Xi’s latest collection. These 16 short pieces, evenly divided between fiction and nonfiction, are in turn elegiac, satiric, darkly comic, lyrical, even confessional in tone, and traverse the inequities and abuse of power in sex, politics, race history, culture, and language across a disquieting transnational terrain. Prepare to be disturbed, enlightened, and maybe even entertained. -- Publishers statement

• 

  Practical Geometry

  Christopher Clavius S.J. and John B. Little

  John B. Little is the translator.

  This is a Latin to English translation of Geometria Practica by Chrisopher Clavius, S.J. (1538-1612), the preeminent Jesuit mathematician and mathematical astronomer of his time. The first edition of Geometria Practica appeared in 1604. This translation is of the second edition from 1606, produced by the printshop of Johann Albin in Mainz.

  In preparing this translation we have made use of the electronic version of the 1606 edition of the Geometria Practica maintained by the Bayerische StaatsBibliothek. In particular, all of the figures have been copied from the scanned images here. The typesetting was done with the LaTeX system. In an attempt to duplicate the organization of the original book as much as possible, the marginal references and labels as in Clavius's original have been included. References in the form "Book X, Prop. Y" are references to Clavius's own edition of Euclid's Elements. This was very influential and a standard text in Jesuit schools all over the world for much of the 17th century. The text has been annotated to provide some of the history behind this text, explain Clavius's sources, identify other mathematicians that Clavius references, etc.

• 

  Sonder: A Poetry Journal 2021

  English Dept., College of the Holy Cross

  Susan Elisabeth Sweeney is the faculty advisor for this publication.

  Sonder is a compilation of student poetry written for the course "Introduction to Creative Writing: Poetry" at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. Students taking the course produced this journal as a final class project under the guidance of their instructor, Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Monsignor Edward G. Murray Professor of Arts and Humanities

• 

  Getting to Know the God We Believe in: Some Lessons from Religious Life

  William Reiser S.J.

  A collection of reflections and articles by a member of the Society of Jesus, with particular emphasis on the spirituality underlying religious life. Some chapters are commentaries or reflections on the annual messages from Popes John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis for the World Day of Prayer for Vocations in the spring.

• 

  The Story of Here: A Graphic Guide to Holy Cross and College Hill

  Sarah Luria, Jesse Carson, Mia Cronin, Daniel D'Ambrosio, Sara Donohue, Kerry Flaherty, Hannah Ford, Jenna Giardina, Andrew Lydon, Cameron Magalotti, Brett McCarron, Matthew Shea, Nora Sheehan, William Solomon, Marco Spataro, Connor Sullivan, Thomas Thiel, and Paihan Wu

  This illustrated guide captures the history of the section of Worcester where the College of the Holy Cross is located. Historical sources and imaginative interpretations based on historical research are combined to create a unique "then and now" approach and experience of "double vision" to tell the story of College Hill.

  This guide was a project of Montserrat Seminar 111N, taught by Prof. Sarah Luria in Spring 2020.

• 

  Principles of Conflict Economics: The Political Economy of War, Terrorism, Genocide, and Peace

  Charles Anderton and John R. Carter

  Conflict economics contributes to an understanding of violent conflict and peace in two important ways. First, it applies economic concepts and models to help one understand diverse conflict activities such as war, terrorism, genocide, and peace. Second, it treats coercive appropriation as a fundamental economic activity, joining production and exchange as a means of wealth acquisition. In the second edition of their book Principles of Conflict Economics, Anderton and Carter provide comprehensive, up-to-date coverage of the key themes and principles of conflict economics. Along with new scholarship on well-established areas such as war, terrorism and alliances and under-researched areas including genocides, individual and family aspects of war, and conflict prevention, they apply new economic tools to the study of war and peace such as behavioral economics and economics of identity and offer deeper research and policy insights into how to reconstitute societies after large-scale violence.

• 

  Beneath the Cross: A Historical Tour of the Holy Cross Jesuit Cemetery

  Sarah Campbell M.A., M.S.I.S.

  What began as a guide for the Jesuit cemetery at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts has become a collection of biographical profiles and an historical timeline written as the College celebrates its dodranbicentennial. The book consists of seven chapters, each dealing with one of the seven 25-year periods that make up the College’s 175 years. Each chapter includes, for its time period, a view of how the College looked, a timeline outlining the important events that occurred and a short biography of the men who died and were buried in the cemetery.

• 

  In, Out and About on The Hill: LGBTQIA+ Alums Reflect on Life at Holy Cross, 1978-2018

  College of the Holy Cross

  A new, expanded edition of reflective essays solicited by Prof. James B. Nickoloff from lesbian and gay alumni regarding their life at the College of the Holy Cross. The timeline begins in the late 1970s and extends to the late 2010s.

  James B. Nickoloff, editor.

  Contributing authors include:

  Christopher Campbell

  Carlito Espudo

  Ellen J. Keohane

  Lawrence Manfredi

  Malcolm McCluskey

  Rusmir Music

  Nan O'Connor

  Carmine Salvucci

  Jeannie Seidler

  Mairead M. Sullivan

  Meghan T. Sweeney

  The first edition was published in 2010.

• 

  The Boy in the Labyrinth

  Oliver de la Paz

  In a long sequence of prose poems, questionnaires, and standardized tests, The Boy in the Labyrinth interrogates the language of autism and the language barriers between parents, their children, and the fractured medium of science and school. Structured as a Greek play, the book opens with a parents' earnest quest for answers, understanding, and doubt. Each section of the Three Act is highlighted by “Autism Spectrum Questionnaires” which are in dialogue with and in opposition to what the parent perceives to be their relationship with their child. Interspersed throughout each section are sequences of standardized test questions akin to those one would find in grade school, except these questions unravel into deeper mysteries. The depth of the book is told in a series of episodic prose poems that parallel the parable of Theseus and the Minotaur. In these short clips of montage the unnamed “boy” explores his world and the world of perception, all the while hearing the rumblings of the Minotaur somewhere in the heart of an immense Labyrinth. Through the medium of this allusion, de la Paz meditates on failures, foundering, and the possibility of finding one's way.

• 

  Freedom Made Manifest: Rahner’s Fundamental Option and Theological Aesthetics

  Peter Joseph Fritz

  Karl Rahner's seemingly inscrutable theology of freedom can be summarized simply: human freedom makes manifest (or fails to make manifest) God's eternal decision to create, to save creation, and thereby to share Godself. Freedom is something real, a substantive freedom for: for saying "yes" to God's merciful self-giving. This freedom most often comes to light not in extraordinary triumphs of spirit, but amid small acts whereby common sinners and downtrodden people travel a pilgrim journey, gradually finding ways to form and to express a life that reflects –however dimly― God's refulgent light. Freedom Made Manifest explicates Rahner's theology of freedom by elucidating its configuration and sources. Much of its inquiry centers on the fundamental option: each human person's eternal decision made, paradoxically, in time, as a definitive answer to God's personally-tailored call to salvation. This idea stems from three principal sources: Catholic conversations with transcendental-idealist philosophy, penitential theology and practice, and Ignatian spirituality. Rahner's unique redeployment of these sources inflects the fundamental option with theologies of concupiscence, mercy and forgiveness (especially as ecclesially mediated), and devotion to Jesus Christ. Awareness of these inflections can show how Rahner's theology of freedom may assist in theological reflection on freedom's susceptibility to injury and trauma. To these clarifications the author adds a major emendation, arguing that Rahner's theology of freedom is most adequately interpreted as a theological aesthetic of freedom, attentive to freedom's depth dimension in the heart of each person, through which and out of which God's free decision to self-reveal is expressed or concealed. Following upon Karl Rahner's Theological Aesthetics (CUA Press, 2014), which introduced Rahner's "Catholic sublime," and anticipating a volume on "world," this volume contributes to theological-aesthetic thinking not at the stratospheric level of being's transcendentals, but within the sensed (aesthetic) friction of everyday existence.

• 

  The Epic of the Buddha: His Life and teachings by ChittadharHridaya

  Chittadhar Hrdaya, Todd Lewis, and Subarna Man Tuladhar

  Todd Lewis is a translator for this book.

  This award-winning book contains the English translation of Sugata Saurabha (“The Sweet Fragrance of the Buddha”), an epic poem on the life and teachings of the Buddha. Chittadhar Hṛdaya, a master poet from Nepal, wrote this tour de force while imprisoned for subversion in the 1940s and smuggled it out over time on scraps of paper. His consummate skill and poetic artistry are evident throughout as he tells the Buddha’s story in dramatic terms, drawing on images from the natural world to heighten the description of emotionally charged events. It is peopled with very human characters who experience a wide range of emotions, from erotic love to anger, jealousy, heroism, compassion, and goodwill. By showing how the central events of the Buddha’s life are experienced by Siddhartha, as well as by his family members and various disciples, the poem communicates a fuller sense of the humanity of everyone involved and the depth and power of the Buddha’s loving-kindness. For this new edition of the English translation, the translators improved the beauty and flow of most every line. The translation is also supplemented with a series of short essays by Todd Lewis, one of the translators, that articulates how Hṛdaya incorporated his own Newar cultural traditions in order to connect his readership with the immediacy and relevancy of the Buddha’s life and at the same time express his views on political issues, ethical principles, literary life, gender discrimination, economic policy, and social reform.

• 

  The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures

  Lynn Hunt, Thomas R. Martin, Barbara H. Rosenwein, and Bonnie G. G.

  Thomas R. Martin is a co-author of this book.

  A highly readable and integrated narrative of political, social and cultural history, The Making of the West: A Concise History captures the spirit of each age as it situates Europe within a global context. The rich narrative pays sustained attention to important topics and developments over time and reveals the cross-cultural interactions that have shaped today's world, presenting the history of the West as an ongoing process.

• 

  International Order: A Political History

  Stephen A. Kocs

  Where does international order come from? How is it established and maintained? Why does it break down? With every sovereign state its own master, how can order prevail? Answering these questions in a briskly paced, systematic survey, Stephen Kocs explores the rise and fall of successive international systems across the centuries―from the dynastic institutions of Renaissance Europe, to the power-politics systems of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, to the liberal international systems of the contemporary world.

• 

  Modeling and Data Analysis: An Introduction with Environmental Applications

  John B. Little

  Mathematical models—equations of various sorts capturing relationships between variables involved in a complex situation—are fundamental for understanding the potential consequences of choices we make. Extracting insights from the vast amounts of data we are able to collect requires analysis methods and statistical reasoning. This book on elementary topics in mathematical modeling and data analysis is intended for an undergraduate “liberal arts mathematics”-type course but with a specific focus on environmental applications. It is suitable for introductory courses with no prerequisites beyond high school mathematics. A great variety of exercises extends the discussions of the main text to new situations and/or introduces new real-world examples. Every chapter ends with a section of problems, as well as with an extended chapter project which often involves substantial computing work either in spreadsheet software or in the R statistical package.

• 

  The Purple Book

  Office of Mission

  This untitled volume, commonly referred to as "The Purple Book" was first produced in 2011 by the College Committee on Mission and Identity to provide informative essays on Jesuit education, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, and the history of the College of the Holy Cross. It was intended that the book might also offer a rich sampling of sacred texts and poems submitted by students, faculty, and members of the staff.

• 

  Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement: Reframing History with Comics

  Jorge Santos

  The history of America’s civil rights movement is marked by narratives that we hear retold again and again. This has relegated many key figures and turning points to the margins, but graphic novels and graphic memoirs present an opportunity to push against the consensus and create a more complete history. Graphic Memories of the Civil Rights Movement showcases five vivid examples of this: Ho Che Anderson's King (2005), which complicates the standard biography of Martin Luther King Jr.; Congressman John Lewis's three-volume memoir, March (2013–2016); Darkroom (2012), by Lila Quintero Weaver, in which the author recalls her Argentinian father’s participation in the movement and her childhood as an immigrant in the South; the bestseller The Silence of Our Friends, by Mark Long, Jim Demonakos, and Nate Powell (2012), set in Houston's Third Ward in 1967; and Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby (1995), whose protagonist is a closeted gay man involved in the movement. In choosing these five works, Jorge Santos also explores how this medium allows readers to participate in collective memory making, and what the books reveal about the process by which history is (re)told, (re)produced, and (re)narrativized. Concluding the work is Santos’s interview with Ho Che Anderson.

• 

  The Political Philosophy of Montaigne

  David Lewis Schaefer

  This provocative book provides a comprehensive interpretation of Montaigne's Essays as a work of political philosophy. David Lewis Schaefer diverges from the prevailing view, which prizes the Essays as an example of authentic literary self-portrayal but holds that the book is not a coherent philosophical work. Arguing for Montaigne's significance as one of the philosophic architects of the intellectual revolution that generated the distinctive characteristics of modernity, Schaefer demonstrates the extent to which Montaigne was a systematic, radical, and political thinker. For the 2018 second printing, the author has included a list of his most important publications on Montaigne since this book's original publication.

• 

  Cultivating Peace: The Virgilian Georgic in English, 1650-1750

  Melissa Schoenberger

  During the decades following the English civil wars, British poets seeking to make sense of lingering political instabilities turned to Virgil’s Georgics. This ancient poem betrays deep ambivalences about war, political power, and empire, and such poets as Andrew Marvell, John Dryden, and Anne Finch found in these attitudes valuable ways of responding to the uncertainties of their own time. Composed during a period of brutal conflict in Rome, Virgil’s agricultural poem distrusts easy stability, urging its readers to understand that lasting peace must be sowed, tended, reaped, and replanted, year after year. Like the ancient poet, who famously depicted a farmer’s scythe suddenly recast as a sword, the poets discussed in Cultivating Peace imagine states of peace and war to be fundamentally and materially linked. In distinct ways, they dismantle the dream of the golden age renewed, proposing instead that peace must be sustained by constant labor.

• 

  Framing Mary : the Mother of God in Modern, Revolutionary, and Post-Soviet Russian Culture

  Amy Singleton Adams and Vera Shevzov

  Amy Singleton Adams is co-editor of this book.

  Despite the continued fascination with the Virgin Mary in modern and contemporary times, very little of the resulting scholarship on this topic extends to Russia. Russia's Mary, however, who is virtually unknown in the West, has long played a formative role in Russian society and culture. Framing Mary introduces readers to the cultural life of Mary from the seventeenth century to the post-Soviet era. It examines a broad spectrum of engagements among a variety of people--pilgrims and poets, clergy and laity, politicians and political activists--and the woman they knew as the Bogoroditsa. In this collection of well-integrated and illuminating essays, leading scholars of imperial, Soviet, and post-Soviet Russia trace Mary's irrepressible pull and inexhaustible promise from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Focusing in particular on the ways in which both visual and narrative images of Mary frame perceptions of Russian and Soviet space and inform discourse about women and motherhood, these essays explore Mary's rich and complex role in Russia's religion, philosophy, history, politics, literature, and art. Framing Mary will appeal to Russian studies scholars, historians, and general readers interested in religion and Russian culture.

• 

  Encrucijada de la palabra y la imagen simbólicas : estudios de emblemática

  Blanca Ballester Morell, Antonia Bernat Vistarini, and John T. Cull

  John T. Cull is a co-editor.

  Papers from the X Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Emblemática, held at the Arxiu del Regne de Mallorca, Majorca, Spain, December 17-19, 2015.