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| Books by Centre Alums | |||
Browsing the bookstore shelves or library stacks for the perfect read can be a daunting task. Why not narrow the field and choose a book written by fellow Centre alums? From poetry collections and memoirs to history and self-help, Centre alumni are a prolific bunch who leave no subject uncovered. Below are some of the books most recently published by Centre alumni. Click here for a list of books (that we know of) organized by class year.
 David Steere ’53 has published three books on psychotherapy: Spiritual Presence in Psychotherapy: A Guide for Caregivers (Routledge, 1997) and The Supervision of Pastoral Care (Westminster John Knox Press, 1989), both about the spiritual dimension in psychotherapy, as well as Bodily Expressions in Psychotherapy (Brunner/Mazel, 1982), about understanding bodily expression and its effect on psychotherapy.  Lee Estes ’46 has most recently published Fading Warriors (FPSA, 2005), a collection of stories from World War II veterans providing insight into the war. He is also the author of Fading Textures: Vintage Architecture, Industry, and Transportation in Northeast Louisiana (Univ of Southwestern Louisiana, 2001), an aesthetic record of the disappearing architecture in Louisiana. Celia Creal McDonald ’60 has published Hal Z. Cox HAD TO TELL SOMEONE: A Collection of His Poems, Memorial Edition with David C. Buck (LaRue County Herald News, 1986). The book is a collection of poems by Hal Z. Cox, a Hodgenville black poet whose poems often appeared in Kentucky newspapers such as the Herald-News and Courier-Journal. Cox was a man of distinction who served as a link between the segregated sections of his community. The book was only part of a project that included an audio-visual show about Cox, which was funded by the Kentucky Arts Council. Funding for the project, including the book, was provided primarily by the Kentucky Humanities Council.  Rob Robertson ’63 has written The Wonder Team: The Story of the Centre College Praying Colonels and Their Rise to the Top of the Football World (Butler Books, 2008). Despite the acclaim the team received in the years after World War I, few now remember the talented and colorful young men who put Centre College on the map. The book takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when the creation of the Wonder Team was the dream of one man: Robert L. “Chief” Myers-1907. For more information, please e-mail drrob4life@aol.com or see www.thewonderteam.com.
Deanna Burleson Beineke ’69 is co-author of Dayton (Arcadia Publishing, 2007), a history of Dayton, Ky., for the publisher’s Images of America series.
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C. Thomas Hardin ’63, a former director of photography at the Louisville Courier-Journal who shared in three Pulitzer Prizes, is the editor of the lavishly illustrated book Our Standard Sure: Centre College Since 1819, with text by retired Courier-Journal columnist and feature writer Bob Hill. The colorful and picturesque stroll through Centre history, from the College's founding in 1819 to the present day, includes chapters on Centre’s first century, women at Centre and related institutions, men’s and women’s sports, campus culture, the College during war, the years of change during the presidency of Thomas A. Spragens, and the modern era, as well as more than 700 photographs and other illustrations. Our Standard Sure comes from a line in Centre’s current alma mater, “Centre Dear,” written in 1942 by the Reverend Elwood L. Haines, with music by faculty member Richard Warner. (The book includes the lyrics to not only “Centre Dear,” but also other alma maters associated with Centre, Kentucky College for Women, and related institutions.) Published by the College in 2009, it is available at Chenault Alumni House (
Jon Ryker ’89 and Jo Rogers have written Education, Not Babysitting! A Foundation for Reclaiming Your Public School (iUniverse, 2009). The authors, both of whom have taught in the public schools, explain how schools lose their way under competing priorities, a lack of leadership, and a lack of oversight, and they show how taxpayers, parents, students, teachers, and administrators can drive the process of refocusing a district on its sole critical mission—maximizing student learning. For more information, see 
Alan Schweitzer '59 has most recently published The Bracelet (Eloquent Books 2009), his third science fiction novel. The story centers on protagonist Ray Willis, who discovers a mysterious bracelet that bridges time and space. After being transferred to a parallel universe, Willis spends the story alarmed and tormented by a past life he cannot understand. Schweitzer's first two novels were published by subsidy publishers. The first, The Carradine Legacy, was published in 2000, and the second, In Search of Neva, was published in 2002. 
John David Dyche ’82 has written Republican Leader: A Political Biography of Senator Mitch McConnell (ISI Books, 2009), a book columnist George Will calls “respectful without being reverent.” It is based on dozens of interviews with McConnell’s colleagues, friends, and rivals, as well as with the senator himself.
Mark McDaniel ’71 has written a memoir, A World to Remember: Coming of Age on the Eve of a New Millennium (Lulu.com, 2009). The book recalls his childhood in Owensboro, Kentucky, his years at Centre during the height of the Vietnam War, and his eventual decision to join a monastery; he went on to spend two decades as a Benedictine monk at Saint Meinrad Archabbey, in Southern Indiana. He is now a Roman Catholic priest in the Archdiocese of Louisville and teaches part time at Bellarmine University and Spalding University. 
Nils Peterson ’54, named Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County, Calif., in 2009, is the author of a gathering of Christmas poems, For This Day (Frogonthemoon Press, 2008); a collection of poems, Driving a Herd of Moose to Durango (Jotunheim Press, 2005); a collection of poems, many of which recall his days at Centre, called The Comedy of Desire with an introduction by Robert Bly (Blue Sofa Press, 1994); and a chapbook of poems, Here Is No Ordinary Rejoicing (No Deadlines Press, 1976). 
Teresa A. Daniel ‘79 has written Stop Bullying at Work: Strategies and Tools for HR & Legal Professionals (Society for Human Resource Management, 2009). Highlighting her recent research delineating the key differences between a bully and a “tough boss,” the book provides practitioner-oriented solutions designed to help human resource and legal professionals take proactive steps to deal with the problem within their organizations. 
Terry Noel ’78 has published Empty Nest Egg: Why You Must Start Your Own Business NOW (available from createspace.com or from Amazon on Kindle). The book looks at how learning to open a business can mean the difference between prosperity and poverty as our economy becomes more unstable over the coming years. 
Barbara Fleming Phillips '76 has written a chapbook of poetry, Early Lessons (Finishing Line Press, 2009), published by a small award-winning press in Georgetown, Kentucky. The poems are rooted in childhood memories and, says Sherry Chandler,“illuminate the small miracles and larger lessons of life.” 
Robert Dickey ’54 has written Dynasty of Dimes (St. Margaret Publishers, 2009), the story of the eccentric entrepreneur Charles Garvin and his Beech Bend Park, an amusement park in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Throughout the almost 40 years of the Garvin era, the price of admission remained a dime, and Garvin remained in complete control of his fiefdom, even controlling the time of day—regardless of what clocks indicated beyond the park boundaries. Some of the characters in the book and their families have close Centre connections. The author, a Bowling Green native, grew up attending Beech Bend Park and later moonlighted as its publicist, before starting a law practice. His first client was park owner Charles Garvin. 
Dan Rush ‘71 is co-author (with Gale Pewitt) of The St. Albans Raiders (Papers of the Blue & Gray Education Society, No. 19, summer 2008), about the Confederates’ northernmost action of the Civil War. Led by Centre alumnus Bennett Henderson Young-1862, a band of mostly Kentuckians attacked St. Albans, Vt., in 1864. Their unexpected success surprised the Federal government and shocked the Northern public. Rush is a professor of surgery at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, who studies Kentucky Confederate regiments and soldiers as a hobby. 
Larry Hood ‘70 has written Restless Heart: Kentucky's Search for Individual Liberty and Community (University Press of America, 2008), about ironies and paradoxes that give the Commonwealth’s way of life much of its meaning, power, vitality, wonder, and capacity to endure. He has also written another history, Visions of Zion: Christianity, Modernization, and the American Pursuit of Liberty, Progressivism in Rural Nelson, and Washington Counties, Kentucky (University Press of America, 2005), as well as a novella (under the name James Scott) set in Kentucky, The Old Man Who Danced Naked Around the Flag Pole (Authorhouse, 2006). Now retired from Kentucky state government, he is a professor of American and Kentucky history at the University of Kentucky.
Jerry A. Cunningham '69 has written No Coin for Charon (Big Muddy Press, 2008), the first in a planned trilogy. The story begins in Danville in 1824 and follows its protagonist, John Calvin Cabell, as he is forced to start a new life in Memphis.
Alysia Fischer ‘93 has written Hot Pursuit: In Search of Ancient Glass-blowers (Lexington Books, 2008). The book examines ancient glass-workers at the site of Sepphoris, in northern Israel, which she first visited as a Centre student. By drawing upon the knowledge and experience of current Middle-Eastern glass-workers to interpret the artifacts excavated at the site, she creates a picture of the life and work of craftspeople living 1,500 years ago. The book incorporates methods drawn from the four fields of anthropology and calls for more integration among the sub-fields. She teaches in the anthropology department at Miami University. 
Geoffrey Douglas ‘67 has written The Classmates: Privilege, Chaos, and the End of an Era (Hyperion, 2008). The book explores what happened to the Class of 1962 at St. Paul's School, a boarding school in New Hampshire. The class included not only Douglas but also John Kerry, whose 2000 presidential run prompted a flurry of e-mail correspondence amongst the classmates. The book is part memoir and includes mention of Douglas’ time at Centre. Kirkus Reviews says: “He discovered that St. Paul's alumni had endured a broad range of experiences since graduating, and he eloquently chronicles those experiences.”
George Ella Hoskins Lyon ’71 has published a memoir, Don’t You Remember? (Motes Books, 2007), that explores a childhood experience that seems to reveal another lifetime. Bobbie Ann Mason calls it “an irresistible story filled with suspense and wonder” and Silas House says it is “haunting, thought-provoking, brave, amazing, and maybe even the best book yet from this beloved author." 
Trudy Knowles ’73 has published What Every Middle School Teacher Should Know, Second Edition with Dave F. Brown (Heinemann, 2007)
Nelson Rhodus ’75 has published White Lick Creek (AuthorHouse, 2007), a collection of nonfiction poetry and prose that reflects on his Kentucky childhood.
Keen Babbage ’76 has published Extreme Economics: The Need for Personal Finance in the School Curriculum (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2007), which identifies what children and teenagers need to know about personal finance and shows educators how to design instructional activities that enable students to learn about personal finance in real, fascinating, and meaningful ways.
Corky Deaton ‘81 has written Grace Happens: A Recovering Alcoholic's Perspective on Holy Transcendence (Tate Publishing, 2008). Grace Happens is the true story of a man’s struggle with addiction and the subsequent journey through recovery to freedom spotted with events that some might consider coincidence, but recognized by the recovering and clean addict as God’s grace manifested through the men and women with whom we interact on a daily basis. 
Susan Franks Sieweke ’81 has published Annie Nell Meets the Sock Gnomes (Tate Publishing & Enterprises, 2007), a children’s book whose heroine solves the mystery of why socks go missing in the dryer.
Lynnell Major Edwards ’86 has publishedThe Highwayman’s Wife (Red Hen Press, 2007), a collection of poems. “What a wicked pleasure the poems of Lynnell Edwards are, with their saucy boldness, their wild feminine bravada, their sly rhymes and clattering consonants. In The Highwayman’s Wife, Edwards reinterprets old myths and legends, twists the old formal strategies, undomesticates domesticity, mixes drinks, plants dahlias with a pick-axe, and laments and resurrects laughing, bitter, bright the wench,” says Cecilia Woloch.
Bryan Prendergast ’95 has published his first novel, Detention Center in Red (iUniverse, 2007), a philosophical work about which Kirkus Reviews wrote, “Prendergast’s writing is parsimonious, incisive, and as stark as the landscape it paints. He skillfully deploys the eloquence of reticence: His characters are as bright and evocative as Persian miniatures . . .” 
Andre Bergeron ’98 has published The Devil’s Ridge (Mars Media Publishers, 2007), a novel about a hunt for the legendary ape Bigfoot.
Will Lavender ’99 has published his first novel, Obedience (Random House/Shayne Areheart Books, 2008), a thriller set on a college campus. Kirkus Reviews calls it “an inspired thriller about cognitive dissonance, conjectural misdirection and the conspicuous dichotomy between academia and the real world.”