La Prima guerra mondiale è finita ormai da tempo ma sia il maggiore Whittlesey sia il piccione viaggiatore Cher Ami non riescono a dimenticare i momenti tragici e le ore decisive che hanno cambiato per sempre le loro vite. Due vite diverse, per natura, una stessa missione, che li lega in modo inscindibile, in quell'ottobre del 1918, nei boschi delle Argonne, quando per il Battaglione perduto sembra non esserci più alcuna via di scampo. Circondato dai tedeschi, l'unica speranza che ha di chiedere aiuto è affidarsi ai piccioni viaggiatori, che il nemico abbatte uno dopo l'altro. Finché l'ultimo, nonostante le ferite riportate, quasi sentisse di essere la sola possibilità rimasta, arriverà alla meta decretando la salvezza di quei soldati. Due eroi, ognuno a modo proprio. Cher Ami porterà l'orgoglio per sempre alto dentro la sua teca, allo Smithsonian Institution, dove è posto in memoria dei suoi compagni; il maggiore nasconderà dietro le medaglie un orrore che non potrà mai dimenticare. E intanto le loro storie, scorrendo parallele, svelano verità nascoste, per errore o di proposito, paure e desideri, punti di forza e fragilità che li rendono eroi senza nazione e senza tempo.

Lillian Boxfish non è la classica ottantacinquenne, tutta casa, merletti e nipoti. Giunta a New York nel lontano 1930 ha trovato subito un impiego che le ha portato fama e prestigio: da semplice e inesperta copywriter per il colosso Macy's diviene in poco tempo il primo pubblicitario donna più pagato al mondo. Oggi è il 31 dicembre del 1984 e Lillian festeggia da sola questo ultimo giorno dell'anno. Le vacanze natalizie non sono andate come al solito, qualcosa sta cambiando. Rimanere a casa a rimuginare su ciò che non è stato? Non se ne parla nemmeno. Armata solo dell'inseparabile pelliccia di visone e di una buona dose di arguzia, Lillian decide che il Capodanno lo festeggerà per le strade dell'amata Grande Mela, dove ogni passo coincide con un ricordo della sua sorprendente vita. Con una lettera d'amore alla città di New York, Kathleen Rooney dipinge sulla tela di un'America in fermento il ritratto di un'intensa figura femminile, ispirato alla vera storia di Margaret Fishback e alla sua folgorante carriera nel mondo pubblicitario.

It’s late spring of 2008, and one of Illinois’ two Democratic senators is poised to become the next president of the United States. Colleen Dugan works for the other one—not on Capitol Hill, but in a Chicago skyscraper that overlooks Lake Michigan, among coworkers with little to do but field calls from angry constituents while the future of the nation gets decided elsewhere. In the coming weeks, Colleen will navigate the perils of costumed protestors, thuggish union reps, vacuous interns, trifling bureaucrats, dirty tricks by the senator’s Republican rival, and the unexpected discovery of a scandalous secret that will give her the power to change the course of the election and shape her own fate—though not necessarily for the better. A quarter-life crisis viewed from the ghostly perspective of the Founding Fathers, this is a hilarious and heartbreaking story about American politics and the difficult business of being a good citizen: walking the tricky line between self-sacrifice and self-sabotage, between doing your part and knowing your place.

Rooney, a poet and author, also has spent many years as a professional nude model. She has posed for classes, amateur artists, individual painters, sculptors and photographers. In this series of essays, some published elsewhere, she gives her insights into the work. She notes that, unlike other jobs, she rarely has to deal with sexual harassment. Muscle spasms, chills and boredom are more common problems. As she tells anecdotes of her life as a model, interspersed with examples from literature, film and art history, Rooney reminds the reader that, as the model in Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George said, "There's a person here...." When the person is nude and on display, this is often ignored. Rooney brings the humanity back into the object of the model. Annotation ©2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Oneiromance (an epithalamion) gives the marriage poem a case of vertigo, displacing while embracing the panoply of possibility when two people attempt to forge a life together. Kathleen Rooney creates a dream-state with fluid borders and a surreal set of laws that allow her to question inherited wisdom and perception, all the while converging on the altar from numerous (occasionally, numinous) angles. The romance persists between the narrator and the beloved - and crucially, between the author and language's opportunities to address the nuances and edges of commitment deemed inexplicable. These poems contain deep doubt and true sentiment, providing that pleasure-giving union of provocation and renewal.

Rooney a writer and publisher, was initially scornful of Oprah Winfrey's foray into book selection, because she was certain that the books would be lightweight popular fiction that would increase the gap between the intelligentsia and the rest of America. She has changed her mind. In this second edition of her study of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, Rooney discusses the intellectual snobbery that makes anything Oprah chooses automatically suspect. Rooney's conversion came through her realization that Oprah made no literary distinctions but chose books that said something to her and that she wanted to share. Her list includes respected writers such as Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates along with others not as well known. The book club has succeeded, because Oprah respects her audience and believes they will appreciate books that make one think, learn and change. This is what Rooney came to understand. Her subtitle, "the book club that changed America" is apt. Her evaluation of the phenomenon is filled with side notes about the authors, with a chapter on the James Frey "creative nonfiction" scandal. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Fiction. Edited by Abigail Beckel and Kathleen Rooney. Introduction by Ron Carlson.BREVITY & ECHO is an essential anthology of previously published short shorts by Emerson College alumni. BREVITY & ECHO broadens the scope of this rich and expanding genre with a wide range of flash fiction styles, and celebrates of the continuing legacy of Emerson's writing program. The anthology contains work by Don Lee, Denise Duhamel, Lee Harrington, and many more, as well as an introduction by Ron Carlson and an afterword by Pamela Painter. These tiny fictions—the longest weighing in at 1400 words and the shortest at just 55—appeared originally in the pages of such books and journals as McSweeney's, StoryQuarterly, Quick Fiction, What If?, Night Train, failbetter, and Best American Non-Required Reading.