Julia Christensen ’05
The MIT Press, 2008

When a big box store upsizes, it leaves behind a changed landscape that can't be changed back. In Big Box Reuse, the author shows how 10 communities have addressed this problem, turning vacated Wal-Marts and Kmarts into something else: church, library, school, medical center, courthouse, recreation center, museum, and other civic-minded structures. The book’s first-person accounts and color photographs reveal the hidden stories behind the transformation of these facades into gateways of community life.

Julia Christensen, MFA ’05 (see Rensselaer magazine, Summer 2005), is an artist whose work has been featured in publications, and shown in galleries and museums nationwide. She is Henry R. Luce Visiting Professor of the Emerging Arts at Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Richard Simon ’73 and Robert W. Draeger
iUniverse, 2008

The tools included in this book help managers know when to stay the strategic course and when and how to change direction through the use of self-assessments, knowledge of life-cycle analysis, and strategies tailored to transition and succeed in each lifecycle stage. Case studies based on extensive research on scores of firms drawn from dozens of industries provide real-world examples, with graphs and tables using actual data. A copyrighted seven-step validation method is included.

Richard Simon ’73 is a vice president of Easton Consultants in Stamford, Conn..

Michael Kupferschmid ’68
CRC Press, 2009

This book, like its first edition, is about a small and simple subset of Fortran chosen for its utility in numerical computing. The book introduces concepts most engineers and scientists need for casual programming and then moves on to advanced topics in memory management, program design, archaic usages, software development in Unix, code optimization, vector and parallel processing, Modern Fortran, and data-parallel programming. The Second Edition includes new material about file I/O, Linux, and CPU timing on Intel processors.

Mike Kupferschmid ’68 recently retired after 27 years as scientific programming consultant in Rensselaer’s Voorhees Computing Center. He consults to industry and still teaches math and Fortran as an adjunct faculty member.

Julie Berry ’95
Bloomsbury, 2009

A fairy-tale fantasy for young adults, this debut novel earned critical acclaim even before its launch in March. When Lucinda Chapdelaine was a small child, her parents left for the royal ball and never returned. Ever since, she has been stuck in servitude at her evil aunt’s jewelry store. Then, a mysterious visitor and an unusual gem set in motion a string of twists and turns that will forever alter Lucinda’s path. Confronted by family secrets and magical surprises, Lucinda is determined to find her own happily ever after.

Julie Berry ’95 and her husband, both RPI graduates, are the parents of four young sons. Berry has written a humor column for the MetroWest Daily News since 2004.