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Rock 'n' Roll Dreams
by Frederick Baron ’69
In 200 years, there’s never been another musician—or Amherst freshman—quite like Jim Steinman.
Short Takes
by Katherine Duke ’05
Character Studies: Here are the three best fictional figures ever portrayed by Amherst alumni actors.
The Bicentennial Rereading Project
Very few alumni magazines run book reviews these days. We, however, consider them a hallmark of our publication, so in planning this special issue, we challenged ourselves to put a Bicentennial spin on our book reviews. Normally, we review new works by alumni and faculty. This time, we asked two reviewers: What’s one book you encountered in college that you’d want to review today? For Paul Statt ’78, it was a novel written when the College was a mere 30 years old: Moby-Dick, “the greatest work I’ve ever read.” Statt has reread it three times since freshman year. Makena Onjerika ’10 chose to reread a memoir, Aké: The Years of Childhood. As an Amherst senior in 2009, Onjerika was “biting my nails over whether I would ever amount to anything.” Aké offered comfort. What would it do for her in 2021? Read on to find out.
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Call Me Outcast
by Paul Statt ’78
What Melville taught a worried freshman.
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Made in Childhood
by Makena Onjerika ’10
Stories are exactly my problem at the moment.