New Books from ASC Alumni
Here we present a selection of the books our alumni published over the last year.
1. “Overcome AD-versity: How to Put Persuasion Power in Advertising”
Barry Milavsky (M.A.C. '72)
Barry Milavsky teaches advertisers to improve their work through a deeper understanding of their target audience. He takes readers through the elements of persuasive advertising, with fascinating real-life examples using well-known brands, to understand practical applications of psychological ideas.
2. “Expect Great Things! How the Katharine Gibbs School Revolutionized the American Workplace for Women”
Vanda Krefft (M.A.C. '01)
Vanda Krefft details the success of the Katharine Gibbs School, which, from the 1910s to the 1960s, trained women for executive secretary positions while helping them ascend to leadership themselves and achieve lifelong financial independence.
3. “Experiencing the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: Children, Peace Communication and Socialization”
Yael Warshel (M.A.C. '00)
Yael Warshel critically determines the efficacy of peace communication interventions in managing political conflicts, tracing the socialization of Palestinian and Israeli children amid conflict zones at a granular level. Her book received the 2025 ICA Mass Communication Innovation Award in Methods for the scope and depth of her multi-method approach to comparative research, which was defined as “innovative.”
4. “It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here: A Novel”
Masaki Hidaka (Ph.D. '05)
In her debut novel, Masaki Hidaka, under the pseudonym Emma Sasaki, writes a witty take-down of racial inequality at prep schools. The novel explores the growing tensions between generations with different ideas of how to fight for what one believes in.
5. “Misinformation & Society”
Yotam Ophir (Ph.D. '18)
University of Buffalo associate professor Yotam Ophir gives in-depth case studies of high-profile events such as Brexit and COVID-19 to demonstrate how misinformation has shaped public discourse.
6. “Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist Imaginaries and the Politics of Digital Technologies”
Elisabetta Ferrari (Ph.D. '19)
Elisabetta Ferrari explores the fraught relationship between social movements and digital media, looking into how three leftist activist groups reckon with online spaces that do not always reflect their politics. Ferrari examines social movements in three countries: the Italian student collective LUMe (Laboratorio Universitario Metropolitano), the 2014 Hungarian internet tax protests and the U.S.-based Philly Socialists.
7. “The American Mirage: How Reality TV Upholds the Myth of Meritocracy”
Eunji Kim (Ph.D. '19)
Eunji Kim shows that amid a dazzling array of media choices, many Americans simply are not consuming the news. Instead, millions flock to entertainment programs that showcase real-life success stories, such as “American Idol,” “Shark Tank,” and “MasterChef.” Kim examines how shows like these leave viewers confoundingly optimistic about the prospects of upward mobility.
8. “Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power”
Hanna E. Morris (Ph.D. '21)
Hanna Morris analyzes the ways that journalists have framed and communicated the climate crisis since the 2016 election of Donald Trump and its impact on public perceptions of the crisis and political action.
She says that there were a lot of clear anti-democratic trends emerging at the time of Trump’s first election, and at the same time, really pronounced visible threats of climate change. These threats were combined and interpreted by journalists as a ‘total crisis.’ “What I found was that by framing these threats together as a total crisis, journalists avoided analyzing how we got here to begin with,” Morris said.
Send your updates and information about your new book to news@asc.upenn.edu.
