Mixed Media: UB Bookshelf

What We’re Writing

High Performance Vision: How to Improve Your Visual Acuity, Hone Your Motor Skills & Up Your Game.

Donald S. Teig (BA ’66)

Teig opens “High Performance Vision” by paraphrasing Muhammad Ali: “Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see!” Teig’s objective is to teach athletes to “see,” whether their ultimate goal is a better left hook or a straighter first shot off the tee. He stresses the difference between eyesight, which can be improved with corrective lenses or laser eye surgery, and vision, which can be honed through exercise. The text helps readers assess their athletic vision—determining a dominant eye, measuring depth perception and contrast sensitivity, and much more—and offers dozens of vision-improving exercises. (Square One Publishers, 2015)

Unanticipated Outcomes: A Medical Memoir.

Jerome P. Kassirer (MD ’57, BA ’53)

Kassirer—a Distinguished Professor at Tufts Medical School, UB Distinguished Alumnus and one of the medical profession’s foremost figures of principle—traces his improbable journey from a Depression-era hovel on Buffalo’s East Side, through medical school at UB, to the editor-in-chief’s chair at the New England Journal of Medicine. The memoir’s fulcrum is his forced departure from that esteemed position in 1999—he objected to the marketing of the journal’s name as a revenue-generating tool—and what he sees as the profit motive’s assault on the integrity of his profession. (Self-published, 2017)

Miss E.

Brian Herberger (BA ’95)

In this coming-of-age tale, Herberger brings to life the contentious political climate of the late 1960s via Bets, a 15-year-old army brat who develops an unlikely friendship with the town recluse, Miss E. As their friendship grows, questions arise about the true identity of Bets’ new friend, putting the young girl’s political beliefs to the test. Herberger creates a compelling story in his first novel, weaving together history and mystery while exploring the importance of relationships and civic engagement. (Birch Cove Books, 2016)

There It Is: New and Selected Poems.

Michael Casey (MA ’73)

Casey made waves with his 1972 collection, “Obscenities,” in which he detailed his Vietnam War experiences in raw, sardonic terms. Some of those poems are included here, along with many others in which Casey explores middle-class America, primarily through an excavation of regional dialects that brings out the murky undertones of everyday speech. The poems are deceptively frank, often using a kind of punchline humor that belies the complicated attitudes of his speakers toward colleagues, family members and women in general. (Loom Press, 2017)

Calling alumni authors

Send us your latest novel, mystery thriller, poetry collection or other published work! Last two years only, please. Mail a review copy to At Buffalo, 330 Crofts Hall, Buffalo, N.Y. 14260. Please note: Submissions are for consideration only. We do not guarantee publication and are unable to return review copies.