Recent works by alumni and faculty

Professor’s travel through time

Great storytellers receive applause from their audiences following their tales.

In his book Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality (Thunder’s Mouth Press), Physicist Ronald L. Mallett recalls the time his UConn students applauded after a lecture.

The response to Mallett’s autobiographical story of his quest to build a working time machine — which includes a crash course in physics — is generating the same result. Publisher’s Weekly says Mallett’s “simple prose makes for clear and concise explanations of the science involved,” noting that “he must be an excellent teacher.”

Mallett says he could not separate his drive to pursue time travel from his life since his passion for his work stems from the premature death of his father, who died at age 33 from a heart attack.

After reading The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells, Mallett hoped to see his father again by going back in time.

“I want people to realize this interplay of science in my life is a part of my life, woven into the fabric of my life,”Mallett says.

“I didn’t want it to be a science lesson. By having it autobiographical, I want readers to acquire the science information as I did.”

Mallett says he also hopes readers will understand there is an excitement about science.

“Science is a human activity like music or literature,” he explains.

”Some say that science is the dispassionate inquiry of nature. I believe nothing is more passionate than the inquiry of nature. It’s easier for people to see that a composer has passion or an artist. But if you look at the lives of scientists, you see something similar.”

The physicist says he kept his work on time travel a closely held secret for years, fearing ridicule.

However, a colleague at the University of Michigan, the astrophysicist Fred Adams, encouraged him to “come out of the time travel closet” because many other respected physicists were beginning to do serious research into the subject.

“Fred had originally suggested doing a book about it,” Mallett recalls.

“I didn’t want to write a book about other people’s contributions to time travel, unless I made a contribution.”

The favorable reaction and publicity surrounding the publication of his time machine concept in a prestigious scientific journal established Mallett as a contributing pioneer in his field, so he began writing his book.

— Kenneth Best

Vienna Voices: A Traveler
Listens to the City of Dreams
Jill Knight Weinberger ’92 Ph.D.
(Parlor Press)

Weinberger combines a travelogue with family history in Vienna Voices: A Traveler Listens to the City of Dreams. A noted travel writer previously honored with the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, Weinberger traces her 28-years of journeying to Vienna with her husband’s family history in the city. As a creative writing professor at Central Connecticut State University, she brings an eye for detail and an ear for dialogue to her writing that allows the reader to see and hear the city of Mozart, Schubert and Freud.

Sandra Rodriguez Barron’s debut novel has already been well received in critical reviews. It is part of the Borders Original Voices program, which highlights books that are considered innovative, and was named as a BookSense notable selection by the American Booksellers Association. The story centers on an expatriate El Salvadoran woman who leaves Connecticut to return to her homeland, where she begins to unravel the mystery and a tangle of secrets held by her wealthy relatives just before the death of her mother. Some scenes and references in the novel are linked to the UConn campus.

The Harvard Five in New Canaan
William D. Earls ’85 (BUS)
(W.W. Norton)

In a package of photography, architectural line drawings, narratives and published criticism, Earls offers insight into how one of Connecticut’s affluent suburban bedroom communities became the launching pad for modern home design in the middle of the 20th century. Between 1947 and 1966, five renowned architects who spent time at the Harvard Graduate School of Design created new homes for themselves and clients in New Canaan, Conn., a community otherwise noted for its 300-year-old New England structures. Included is the work of Philip Johnson and his famed Glass House, which is now part of the National Historic Trust for Historic Preservation.