ASU Book Group: ‘Call Him Mac’ by Gary L. Stuart

The ASU Book Group's January 2020 reading selection is "Call Him Mac: Ernest W. McFarland, the Arizona Years" by Gary L. Stuart. The book group is open to all in the ASU community and meets monthly from noon to 1 p.m. in the Piper Writers House on ASU's Tempe campus. Haven't read the book? Come anyway! Authors are always present. A no-host luncheon follows at the University Club. 

Synopsis:

This biography of Arizona Governor Ernest W. McFarland chronicles McFarland's career with an emphasis on how McFarland learned the basic ropes and skills of the law and politics during his Florence days.

Stuart reveals how Mac became an expert on water law and a visionary in Arizona's agricultural future. Using interviews with friends and family and extensive primary source research, Stuart spotlights Mac's unerring focus as a loving husband, father, and grandfather, even in times of great personal tragedy. Mac's commitments to his family mirrored his sense of fiduciary duty in public life. His enormous political successes were answers to how he dealt with threats to his own life in 1919, the loss of his first wife and three children in the 1930s, and a political loss in 1952 that no one saw coming.

The book is available from amazon.com.

Gary L. Stuart is a faculty associate in the Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law at ASU.

The ASU Book Group meetings and selections for 2019–2020 are:

• Sep. 18 – Rebecca Fish Ewan, “By the Forces of Gravity”
• Oct. 23 – Keith Miller and Renee Billups Baker, “My Life with Charles Billups and Martin Luther King”
• Nov. 20 – Eduardo Obregón Pagán, “Valley of the Guns”
• Dec. 11 – Shahla Talebi, “Ghosts of Revolution” (new date)
• Jan. 29 – Gary L. Stuart, “Call Him Mac” (new date)
• Feb. 26 – Adrienne Celt, “Invitation to a Bonfire”
• Mar. 25 – Joey Eschrich and Clark A. Miller, “The Weight of Light”
• Apr. 29 – Kelly deVos, “Fat Girl on a Plane”

The ASU Book Group is sponsored as a community outreach initiative by the Department of English and organized in partnership with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.