Briefly Noted    

Alumni/ae are urged to advise the Exonians in Review editor of their own publications, recordings, films, etc., in any field, and those of classmates. Whenever possible, authors and composers are encouraged to send one copy of their books and original copies of articles to Edouard Desrochers '45 (Hon.), the Editor of Exonians in Review, Phillips Exeter Academy, 20 Main Street, Exeter, NH 03833. Alumni/ae interested in reviewing works by fellow Exonians are also encouraged to contact the editor at the same address, or by email at edesrochers@exeter.edu.

Alumni/ae     

1937–George M. Prince with Kathleen Logan-Prince. Your Life Is a Series of Meetings . . . Get Good at Life. (1st Books Library, 2002)

1939–Gilbert Hahn Jr. The Notebook of an Amateur Politician (And How He Began the D.C. Subway). (Lexington Books, 2002)

1954–R. Rennie McQuilkin. Counting to Christmas: A Calendar of Seasonal Poems. (Antrim House, 2002)

1955–Gifford David Pierce [published posthumously]. An Architecture Primer. Edited by Thomas David Riney. (Patriarch Publications, 2002)

1955–Brian Kevin Beck. "Poison-Pen" Personnel Portrait-Portfolio. (Wonderside Productions, 2002)

1957–Carl Pickhardt. Wild Birds: Field Notes of a Wildlife Psychologist. (Xlibris Corporation, 2002)

1959–Hayford Peirce. The Spark of Life. (Wildside Press, 2001) –Sam Ferron, Time Scanner. (Wildside Press, 2001) –Flickerman. (Wildside Press, 2001) –Phylum Monsters. (Wildside Press, 2001)

1961–Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and others. Rembrandt Creates Rembrandt: Art and Ambition in Leiden 1629-1631. (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum/Waanders Publishers, 2001)

1964–Robert Dôle. Mon Allemagne. (Leméac, 2002)

1968–Edward M. Hallowell. The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness: Five Steps to Help Create and Sustain Lifelong Joy. (Ballantine, 2002)

1971–David Stuart Dunbar. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. (Columbia University, 2002)

1971–Roland Merullo. In Revere, in Those Days. (Crown Publishers, 2002)

1979–Matthew S. Wolf. Sam Mendes at the Donmar: Stepping into Freedom. (London: Hern Books, 2002; Limelight Press, 2003)

1980–Peter Josephson. The Great Art of Government: Locke's Use of Consent. (University Press of Kansas, 2002)

Briefly Noted     

1957–Clifton W. Pannell. "China's Continuing Urban Transition." IN Environment and Planning (v. 34, 2002).

1968–Richard L. Wise and John J. Whyte. "Empowering the Watchdog: Who Is Your Company's Ultimate Guardian of Investor Interest and Corporate Accountability?" IN U.S. Business Review (August 2002).

1972–Juliet P. Kostritsky. "The Rise and Fall of Promissory Estoppel, or Is Promissory Estoppel Really as Unsuccessful as Scholars Say It Is: A New Look at the Data." IN Wake Forest Law Review (v. 37, no. 2, Summer 2002).

1973–Thomas W. Smith. "Standard & Poor's Industry Surveys Semiconductors." (Standard & Poor's/McGraw Hill, v. 170, no. 29, section 1, July 18, 2002)

1989–Benjamin D. Hill. "Locke's Refutation of Innatism: Essay 1.11" IN Southwest Philosophy Review (v. 18, no. 1, January 2002).

1996–Jasmine Dreame Wagner. "Paradelle for a girl in a coma" [poem]. IN The North American Review. (v. 287, no. 5, September/October 2002).

This gorgeous book, Joel White: Boatbuilder / Designer / Sailor (Noah Publications, 2002), is more a memorial than a true biography. Authors Bill Mayher and Maynard Bray, photographer Benjamin Mendlowitz and illustrator Kathy Bray were all close cruising friends and associates of Joel White, who graduated from the Academy in 1947. Their deepest respect and affection for him is obvious and touching. Sailing together, like climbing mountains together, opens up the essential being of your partners. This book is a revelation of Joel White's essence through their eyes.

Joel White was at the heart of the resurgence in the interest in wooden boats that took place during the last quarter of the 20th century. Part romanticism, part rejection of the technology and toxicity of fiberglass, and part celebration of the use of hands and craftsmanship, the wooden boat revival had several geographic centers in America: Mystic, CT; Seattle; South Dartmouth, MA; Dover Point and Kensington, NH; and Brooklin, ME, all played a part. Of these, arguably, Brooklin was and is the most important.

White grew up spending his summers in Brooklin, where his parents-E.B. White, the famous essayist and children's book author, and Katherine White, the fiction editor at The New Yorker-had a summer house, and where the family later moved. The reader is given a bare-bones outline of what must have been an idyllic and privileged childhood and youth. Building a simple, flat-bottomed rowing boat with his father at 10; sailing his own Herreshoff 12 1¼2 at 15; attending Phillips Exeter, Cornell and MIT; and serving in the Army in Germany all pass by in the matter of a few paragraphs. They leave the reader wishing for more detail and more emotional substance. But it is obvious that the authors want to move on quickly to what they consider their real topic: Joel White and his boats.

White returned to Brooklin to live full time in early 1960s, and after a short time lobstering, began to work for Arno Day, a legendary builder of lobsterboats who owned the Brooklin Boat Yard. The second boat they built together in 1962 was Kishti, a 34-foot power cruiser designed by White himself. Tenders, lobsterboats and cruising sailboats followed, most often drawn by other designers. By the end of the decade, White had first become a partner in the yard and then sole proprietor. A brilliant craftsman, he worked with a small crew as well as dealing with all the financial and client details that kept the operation marginally profitable. Two events, however, were to change all this and propel him into the forefront of wooden boatbuilding and design.

The first was an invitation to sail from Lisbon to the Caribbean aboard Integrity, a schooner designed and built by Waldo Howland and Pete Culler in the Concordia Yard in South Dartmouth. Heavily built from local timber, rigged with manila rope lines and stays, and flying a suit of flax sails, Integrity was a beautiful piece of nostalgia for the late 19th-century fishing schooner. Excerpts from White's diary kept on the largely uneventful crossing are quoted in this book and the overall theme is constant: Integrity was handsome, comfortable and slow. After this trip, Joel White's designs would never substitute tradition for speed.

The second event that shaped Joel White's career came in 1977 when WoodenBoat's offices in nearby Brooksville burned. Launched three years earlier by publisher Jon Wilson, WoodenBoat magazine had rapidly become the most influential forum for wooden-boat design, construction and history in North America. The magazine's offices moved to Brooklin and a relationship was forged in which White would supply designs, line drawings for amateur builders and written commentary on other designers' work. In return, the magazine became a showcase for his designs and completed boats and brought White his well-deserved fame. By 1981, when the influential WoodenBoat School opened with White as one of its instructors, Brooklin had become a wooden-boat mecca.

White was not a zealot when it came to construction and design. Although many of his boats were plank on frame, the yard finished bare fiberglass hulls and he even designed the fiberglass Bridges Point 24 for himself and a neighboring builder. He never built fiberglass hulls himself, but he was not above recognizing their utility and mass-production possibilities. White was a visionary, but he was also a pragmatist.

More than half the book's pages are given over to 30 of his 55 designs. In many ways, these are the real tribute to Joel White's legacy. His meticulous drawings are complemented by Benjamin Mendlowitz's superb photographs of the finished boats, Kathy Bray's vibrant watercolors of those not available to be photographed and, above all, by Maynard Bray's discerning and informative commentaries. It is here that White's genius for graceful sheer-lines, simple but elegant sail-plans and pure practicality can be fully appreciated. From the 7-foot, 7-inch Nutshell pram (more than 2,000 of which have been built around the world) to Lady Jeanne, a 42-foot cruising powerboat, to Sweet Olive, an exquisite 43-foot cutter, to his final work, the W-Class 76-foot racing sloops White Horses and White Wings, White's fertile imagination and its masterful translation to reality is self-evident.

Joel White died in 1997, before seeing White Horses completed. But he must have had that pleasure of all great designers, of visualizing, even sailing, the finished vessel in his mind's eye. Joel White: Boatbuilder / Designer / Sailor brings us as close to sharing that experience as is possible. Like his boats, the book is both beautiful to behold and to hold, to dream about and to touch.