Recent faculty books explore formidable issues

Dr. Todd Peppers, Henry H. and Trudye H. Fowler Professor of Public Affairs at Roanoke College, is concluding his trilogy of books on influential judges through the eyes of their clerks with his new book, “Of Courtiers and Princes.” It follows the 2013 book “In Chambers” and the 2015 release “Of Courtiers and Kings.” University of Virginia Press published all three books.

Drawing on contributions from former law clerks and judicial scholars — including an essay by the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg — “Of Courtiers and Princes” provides an inside look at the professional and personal bonds that form between lower court judges and their clerks. The book examines the law clerk’s role in lower federal and state courts. This is a different focus from the previous two books, which focus on Supreme Court law clerks and their justices, but Peppers said this examination of lower courts offers a crucial perspective on the inner workings of the American judicial system.

“While the Supreme Court is the most powerful court in the land, there are hundreds of lower federal court and state court judges,” Peppers said. “My hope is that there were interesting stories about clerking for these different types of judges, and I was delighted to find out that there were.”

Ginsburg, who died this past September, contributed an essay about her time as a clerk for Edmund Palmieri, a federal district court judge. Her inclusion stems from a relationship she and Peppers have formed over the years.

“I was privileged to get to know Justice Ginsburg over a decade ago, when I interviewed her for an essay that I was writing,” Peppers said. “After that interview, I periodically wrote her — and was always astonished when she had the time to write me back.”

The book is now available for purchase either in print or in eBook form.

In his new book, Schumann Professor of Lutheran Theology Dr. Ned Wisnefske asks some uncomfortable questions. He poses the principal one in the title: “Could God Fail? The Fate of the Universes and the Faith of Christians.”

While the questions in the book are daunting — including discussion on the universe expanding and becoming a formless void — Wisnefske takes a hopeful bent as well. In examining the fate of the universe, we can refocus our understanding of faith, hope and love, he writes.

This book, from Cascade Books, is Wisnefske’s fourth, following “A Proposal for Natural Theology” (1998), “God Hides: A Critique of Religion and a Primer for Faith” (2010), and “The Ought, by Prof. Wiz” (2014).

Dr. Robert Schultz, who was the John P. Fishwick Professor of English at Roanoke from 2004 to 2018, had a new collection of poetry published this past October. The collection, “Into the New World,” delves into themes of family, war, nature, love and more. The poems come in many forms, from free verse to quatrain to sonnet to villanelle to triolet.

This is Schultz’s fourth collection of poetry, following “Vein Along the Fault” (1979), “Winter in Eden” (1997) and “Ancestral Altars” (2015). He’s also written a novel, a nonfiction book and an art book.

Into the New World is published by Slant Books. You can read more about Schultz and his work on his website.