Human Goodness

In Death of a Department Chair, protagonist Miriam Held recounts the events of the previous fall when she was suspected of killing Isabel Vittorio, the chair of her department and her former lover. The controversial and contrary Vittorio was, at the time of her death, attempting to block the hire of a brilliant African American female professor. Already under siege for her attempts to increase diversity on campus, Miriam is forced to defend her reputation and her life. As she searches for the truth, Miriam amasses evidence that leaves few friends and colleagues free from suspicion. Both a classic whodunit and a witty satire, Death of a Department Chair dramatizes how communities can create the very climate of mistrust and paranoia that victimizes them.

Author: Yi-Fu Tuan
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 08/31/2006
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.78lbs
Size: 7.43h x 5.97w x 0.81d
ISBN: 9780299226701

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 03/24/2008 pg. 61
Foreword 04/14/2008

About the Author
Yi-Fu Tuan is the author of more than two dozen critically acclaimed books, including Space and Place, Topophilia, Escapism, Coming Home to China, and Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets. His previous books published by the University of Wisconsin Press are The Good Life, Morality and Imagination, and the autobiography Who Am I? Tuan is theJ. K. Wright and Vilas Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin Madison and has been honored with the Cullum Medal of the American Geographical Society, the Laureat d'Honneur of the International Geographical Union, and the Charles Homer Haskins Lectureship of the American Council of Learned Societies."