Candid Camelot

Comparisons between the charismatic, change-inspiring styles of young Democratic presidents Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy (some even refer to First Lady Michelle Obama as “Mickey O”) make this an opportune time to revisit the Camelot era. Doing just that is The Kennedy Family Album (Running Press, 2008), by Linda (Van Beuren) Corley, A.B. '82, featuring images by late Associated Press photographer Bob Davidoff, resident shutterbug for the family’s Palm Beach estate. Corley, an Emmy Award-winning senior producer and reporter at WPBT Channel 2, puts Davidoff’s personal portraits and candid shots in context, including exchanges that took place between members of the Kennedy clan and their photographer, whose memories and stories of those decades Corley recorded before Davidoff’s death in 2004. Senator Edward Kennedy penned the book’s foreword.

Miami’s Bloody Valentine

What is it with lawyers and their yen for mystery novels? Barbara Levenson, J.D. ’81, is the latest in a long line of legal eagles to debut a deadly thriller. And her Fatal February (Oceanview Publishing, 2009) makes a well-timed anti-Valentine. In it, the county where Levenson has lived and worked for the past three decades, currently serving as a senior judge in the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court, plays a starring role. The story follows criminal defense attorney Mary Magruder Katz, who dumps her fiancé and lands a client who is the prime suspect in a high-profile Miami murder case.