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������Ƶ faculty and alumni have recently published books on everything from bears to Beethoven, along with poetry collections and novels. Here is a sampling. 

Arts and letters

by Gary Snyder (Counterpoint, $24, 96 pages). In his first collection of new poems in a decade, distinguished professor emeritus of English Snyder creates a poetic map that travels — as he has — from the Dolomites to Lake Tahoe to the shrine at Delphi.

by Joshua Clover (AK Press/Commune Editions, $16, 84 pages). In his newest poetry collection, Clover, an English professor and author of the acclaimed book “1989: Bob Dylan Didn’t Have This to Sing About,” invents a volatile poetry for a world on fire, written to illuminate the wreckage of the most recent gilded age.

by Christopher Alan Reynolds (UC Press, $65, 232 pages). Music professor Reynolds examines the influence of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on composers Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann.

by Thomas A. Cahill (EditPros, $17.95, 236 pages). In the last volume of his trilogy, the physics professor tells the story of a band of Californians who survive the collision of a large asteroid with the Earth.

by Mark Wisniewski (Penguin Random House Putnam, $26.95 cloth, $16 paperback, 320 pages). In this new novel by Wisniewski, who holds a master’s degree in creative writing from ������Ƶ, the main character earns a hard, but honest living hauling junk. When he finds a body in a salvaged oil drum, he becomes a murder suspect.

 by Stacey Lee (Putnam, $16.99, 384 pages). In this story for young readers set in the 19th century, a Chinese-American girl runs away with the help of a slave girl, both seeking freedom on the Oregon Trail. Lee is a graduate of the School of Law.

by (New York University Press, $24, 248 pages). Mark Twain is well known for his critiques of race involving African-Americans, but in this book Hsu, an associate professor of English, uncovers his lesser known writing about Asians and the relationship of the U.S. to China and the Philippines.

by Ralph Shanks (University of Washington Press, $39.95, 168 pages). The book gives the history and tradition of basket making by a dozen tribes with 200 previously unpublished images of works from museums and private collections in the U.S. and Europe. Shanks is an anthropology department research associate.

(University of Chicago Press, $30, 320 pages). Kircher was one of Europe’s most inventive scholars in the 1600s, infamous for his quixotic attempt to decipher the Egyptian hieroglyphs. Stolzenberg, an associate professor of history, presents a new interpretation of Kircher’s hieroglyphic studies, placing them in the context of 17th-century scholarship on paganism and Oriental languages.

Nature and the environment

by Alexander H. Harcourt (Pegasus, $27.95, 368 pages). A professor emeritus in anthropology, Harcourt looks at how the evolution of the human species has been shaped by the world around us, from anatomy and physiology, to cultural diversity and population density.

by Audrey DeLella Benedict and Joseph K. Gaydos ($24.95, 160 pages). This journey through the Salish Sea, located on the western border of the U.S. and Canada, combines a scientist’s inquiring mind, beautiful photographs and a lively narrative about this intricate marine ecosystem. Gaydos is a wildlife veterinarian with the School of Veterinary Medicine and director of the SeaDoc Society, which conducts research in the Salish Sea.

by Rachel Mazur (Globe Pequot Press/Falcon Guides, $18.95, 272 pages). Mazur, who earned her doctorate in ecology from ������Ƶ, examines how national parks in California created a human-bear problem so bad that there were 2,000 incidents in a single year, and how park employees used trial-and-error, conducted research, invented devices and found funding to get the crisis under control.

by Marni Fylling (Heyday, $15, 96 pages). This scientifically accurate and charmingly illustrated field guide to the Pacific coast intertidal zone introduces readers to a world populated by spectacular wildlife. Fylling, a science illustrator, writer and educator, holds a bachelor’s degree in zoology from ������Ƶ.

Social sciences

by Keith David Watenpaugh (UC Press, $34.95, 272 pages). Watenpaugh, an associate professor in religious studies, analyzes genocide and mass violence, human trafficking and the forced displacement of millions in the Eastern Mediterranean as the background for this exploration of humanitarianism’s role in the history of human rights.

by Andrew Hargadon (Stanford University Press, $35, 248 pages.) The professor in the Graduate School of Management shows why the development of financially viable products that support a healthy environment and communities are so difficult to achieve when compared to creating the next Internet ventures or mobile apps.

 by Humberto Llavador, John E. Roemer and Joaquim Silvestre (Harvard University Press, $45, 336 pages). Silvestre, a professor of economics, and his co-authors propose fair ways to share resources made scarce by global warming.

by Smriti Srinivas (University of Washington Press, $45, 224 pages). Srinivas, a professor of anthropology, explores designs for utopian living around the world during the past century.