University of Denver Spring/Summer 2023

New titles—fiction and nonfiction—offer engaging stories and sharp analysis BOOKS By Tamara Chapman

Toward a better supply chain and a revitalized America Most people give little, if any, thought to the supply chain. Until it fails. And with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020, it did fail—frequently and sometimes spectacularly. Factories closed. Stores and restaurants shut tered. Container ships idled offshore for weeks, awaiting a berth at their

creative fixes and demonstrates how a retooled supply chain can lead to the revitalization of American communities. Among his proposed fixes: a move away from what he calls a “long-tailed global supply chain” to more of a commu nity-based, peer-to-peer supply chain. The latter, Buffington argues, will lead to “a greater balance between supply and demand and a movement away from price to value.”

Debut children’s book cultivates curiosity in young girls As the mother of a young, perspi cacious girl, alumna Jodie Antypas (MBA ’05) delighted in her daughter’s curiosity. That others weren’t equally delighted came as something of a shock. “When my daughter was just 6

destination port. Meanwhile, driver shortages slowed the trucking of essential goods. Making the quandary more complex, consumer demands shifted as Americans spent more time at home. In “Reinventing the Supply Chain: A 21st-Century Covenant With America” (Georgetown University Press, 2023), Jack Buffington, academic director of DU’s supply chain management program, argues that the pandemic

years old, she came home from school and said that someone told her she was too curious,” she says. “It broke my heart. I needed her to see what I see—her curiosity is a gift.” To help her daughter make that connection, Antypas, a marketing executive at a Bay Area tech company, wrote “Just Like an Astronaut” (Mascot Books, 2022), a children’s book that introduces readers to curious Grace, a girl who loves learning about outer space. “‘Grace’ was invented to help [girls celebrate their curiosity]. The curiosity in my daughter—in all our kids—is magical and will lead us all into a better world,” she explains. “Just Like an Astronaut” tackles two of the major “blockers”

itself did not break the supply chain. Rather, it exposed problems that were festering for decades and that were readily apparent in deindustrialized cities and depopulated rural areas. In assessing the situation, Buffington puts the global supply chain under the microscope to identify just where and when the system went wrong. Finally, and optimistically, he proposes several

16 | UNIVERSITY of DENVER MAGAZINE • SPRING/SUMMER 2023