William Neikirk ’60 CI is the
author of “The Copperhead Club,”
a novel about Stella Jasper, a selfcentered, free-spending socialite
in suburban McLean, Virginia,
who is jolted into reality when
her husband, a well-connected
Washington lobbyist, abruptly
disappears and leaves her cashstrapped, snubbed by her friends,
and under investigation by the
FBI. Angered and on her own,
she slips away incognito and
follows his trail to a small town
in the Kentucky mountains, where
she meets B. J. Matson, a local man who has been a
lifelong loner. Together, they unexpectedly play a behind-thescenes role in solving a mystery that fuels a major scandal
in the White House and throws the presidential election
campaign into disarray. Set in Washington and rural Kentucky,
the book provides a vivid portrayal of characters in both
places.
Neikirk is an award-winning journalist with more than 40
years’ experience as a Washington correspondent, columnist
and editor. His numerous awards include the Merriman Smith
Award for presidential reporting. He was chief economics
correspondent, White House correspondent for the Chicago
Tribune in the ’70s and early ’80s.
William Neikirk
www.williamneikirk.com

Erik A. Reece ’89 ’92 AS has
written “Utopia Drive: A Road Trip
Through America’s Most Radical
Idea,” a book that was conceived
because the author was haunted by
a sense that the world — or more
specifically, his country — could
be better. He couldn’t ignore
his conviction that, in fact, the
good ol’ USA was in the midst
of great social, environmental,
and political crises and that for
the first time in our history,
we were being swept into a
future that had no future. Where
did we, in the land of Jeffersonian optimism and
better tomorrows, go wrong?
Rather than despair, Reece turned to those who had dared to
imagine radically different futures for America. What followed
was a giant road trip and research adventure through the
sites of America’s utopian communities, both historical and
contemporary, known and unknown, successful and catastrophic.
What he uncovered was not just a series of lost histories and
broken visionaries but also a continuing and vital but hidden
idealistic tradition in American intellectual history. “Utopia Drive”
is a definitive reconstruction of that tradition. It is also, perhaps,
a new framework to help us find a genuinely sustainable way
forward.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
www.fsgbooks.com

Rebecca Adkins Fletcher
’03 ’09 ’11 AS is one of
the editors of “Appalachia
Revisited: New Perspectives
on Place, Tradition, and
Progress,” which explores how
Appalachia has changed.

James C. Nicholson ’01
ED, ’04 ’10 AS, ’08 LAW is
the author of “The Notorious
John Morrissey: How a BareKnuckle Brawler Became a
Congressman and Founded
Saratoga Race Course.

Foster Ockerman Jr. ’77
LAW wrote “Historic Lexington: Heart of the Bluegrass,”
illustrating the history of the
city from its founding on
Town Branch to present day,
with over 100 images.

John David Smith ’73 ’77
AS is the editor of “Interpreting
American History: Reconstruction,” a primer on the often-contentious historical literature on Reconstruction, the period in American history from 1865 to 1877.

University Press of Kentucky
www.kentuckypress.com

University Press of Kentucky
www.kentuckypress.com

Lexington History Museum
www.LexHistory.org

Kent State University Press
www.kentstateuniversitypress.com

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