Books

The House in Prague: How a Stolen House Helped an Immigrant Girl Find Her Way Home

by Anna Nessy Perlberg ’50

Perlberg’s memoir begins in Prague
in 1939, as the Nazis are invading Czechoslovakia. Her successful and artistic parents—her mother is an opera singer and her father is a prominent lawyer, with a circle of friends that includes Albert Schweitzer and Czech president Thomas Masaryk—are torn from their world of privilege. They flee their home and arrive at Ellis Island, where Perlberg begins her transformation into an American girl. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, her family embarks on a long journey of reclamation when they sue for the return of their house in Prague.

Fungible Life: Experiment in the Asian City of Life

by Aihwa Ong ’74
Our modern approach to the dynamic world of cutting-edge bioscience research is examined in Fungible Life, written by Ong, an anthropology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who spent a decade doing research at Singapore’s Biopolis research center. Working with biomedical scientists who compile data on how genomes can improve a person’s health, Ong walks the reader through the complex science around DNA. Drawing from her Asian background and family history of cancer, Ong offers a unique look at the intersection of biology and technology and how that interplay can benefit patients and medical professionals.