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Living Blue in the Red States, edited by David Starkey “The red state/blue state divide, which has come to dominate poll projections, is not as well defined as election-eve pundits claim. . . . [David Starkey] shows that a sense of community often trumps politics, and the similarities between neighbors outnumber their differences.”—ForeWord
"[T]his fascinating story of gambling and corruption has not yet been told. Fortunately, John Christgau brings the title characters into light and sets the stage effectively. . . . [A] well-researched piece that recounts a great story of intrigue in a place filled with mystery."—True West
“Christgau is skilled at making memorable characters from his subjects. . . . [H]istory-minded handicappers will find much to appreciate.”—Publishers Weekly Web Exclusive
"One could almost think that this entertaining work by Christgau . . . is a novel if it weren't for the 40 pages of citations at the back. . . . Recommended . . . for those enjoying character-driven historical true crime."—Library Journal
Cowboy Girl: The Life of Caroline Lockhart “This lively biography of Caroline Lockhart reveals an intrepid, trailblazing woman who, as one of the first female journalists, traveled solo everywhere pursuing stories. . . . [A]n absorbing story of a talented but difficult woman always torn by her conflicting ambitions of fame, power, domestic bliss and a country life.”—Joan Hinkemeyer, Rocky Mountain News
“Mr. Clayton's grasp of his subject and her environment is masterful, and that is no mean feat. . . . [His] portrait of The Cowboy Girl is intimate, but doesn’t neglect Ms. Lockhart’s impact on the mythology of the American West.”—Jim Larson, The Billings Outpost
“The Wyoming legend, Caroline Lockhart, is immortalized in the new biography by Clayton.”—Holly Strother, The Casper Journal
“John Clayton’s thoroughly researched book . . . explores the life of one of the West’s greatest proponents, journalists, novelists and storytellers.”—Big Sky Journal
Today at the University of Nebraska Lincoln Libraries are celebrating their three millionth book today. This is how three million looks with zeros: 3,000,000. That's a lot of books. The celebration will include announcing what that three millionth book is (we do know it'll be a rare book, we just don't which one).
One of Ted Kooser's poems has been illustrated.
Lastly, there is a movie called In the Shadow of the Moon. There is also a recently released book called In the Shadow of the Moon. Here is a look at both, side by side.
That's all for this week. See you next week with more, themed based links. Oh, and by the way, did you see this on our website in red: "Coming Soon—A New Look and Enhanced Features for the UNP Web Site" and wondered, "Does that mean there will be changes to the blog, too?" Well, stay tuned and find out.
by Sam Moses
Once, when I was doing a book signing for the original Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots some 20 years ago, a young woman asked me if the book was about her ex-boyfriends. (Pause for laughter.)
The title brings smiles because it reaches real far. And within the book’s core audience, it clicks in an instant. It refers to the passionate if not always practical people who pursue amateur and semi-pro sports car racing. Every driver seems to belong in one of those three clubs. 
More than ironic, this might be Karmic: Here I am, the guy who wrote the book on Idiots (last time I
checked, rare hardcover copies were going for up to $200 on Amazon), seduced blind by speed, like the rest of them.
Today, the title is displayed on the hood of my Ninja-Ford racecar truck, currently sitting in limbo on its flatbed trailer in my garage. The words are splashed in canary yellow with a red outline, filling the glossy black hood that bulges to make breathing room for four carburetors. Out on the track, the words FAST GUYS, RICH GUYS, AND IDIOTS appear, um, bold.
The Ninja-Ford has a thin aluminum skin, a 3/4-scale replica of a Ford F-150 pickup truck. Under the hood lives a Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle engine, 1100 cubic centimeters. The chassis is a tube frame with a racing suspension, and it’s very light. It runs in the same races with Porsches, Camaros, Corvettes, Mustangs and BMWs.
I raced it for the first time, last weekend at Portland International Raceway. It was the final and biggest race of the year, run by the Cascade Sports Car Club and called the Doernbecher Dash, a fund-raiser for the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. There were 268 cars entered, most of which had been running all season. The Ninja-Ford had seen about 20 exploratory laps on the track in August, before suffering a disaster on the dynamometer (it’s like a treadmill for cars, to measure horsepower and torque curves), and retreating to the shop for a rebuild.
It’s easy to see the glass half full after the Doernbecher Dash, because I finished fourth in class out of nine starters and seven finishers in my race. But, predictably, the truck had teething problems that slowed it down and stressed me out. I’d had graphics made that said “Fast Guys Special,” but didn’t have the time to apply them, and I’m glad. I got passed by a lot of faster cars. I hate that. I’m a racer.
Still, the would-be Fast Guys Special ran flat-out for the full 30 minutes, looked cool and sounded fantastic—the Ninja engine shrieks to 11,000 rpm—and a lot of people came up and said so afterward.
But here’s the deal. The Ninja-Ford is going up for sale. It takes three skills to run your own racing car. You need to be a driver, mechanic, and team manager. All I want to do is drive. So that’s what I’ve learned. After all these years. I had to buy my own racecar and spend months and many dollars preparing it, to realize what I already knew. This is what it means to be an Idiot.
The cure is to go back a bit, to this release from three weeks ago:
Getting a head start on the September 26 paperback publication of his classic racing memoir, “Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots,” Sam Moses raced to fifth overall in a field of 40 powerful sports cars at the SCCA regional event at Portland International Raceway on August 26. Driving the sleek silver RTG Motorsports BMW M Coupe, the former Sports Illustrated writer finished behind three Porsche Turbos and one Camaro, and was running fourth until an overheating gearbox hampered his pace.
It was the first race for Moses as part of his campaign to promote “Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots,” published by Bison Books at the University of Nebraska Press, and named one of the five best books ever written about motorsports, by the Wall Street Journal Book Review.
The experiment with the Fast Guys Special Ninja-Ford ends. Book promotion moves back into the cockpit of the sleek silver BMW M Coupe on October 20, for a four-hour endurance race at Pacific Raceways near Seattle. The BMW is real fast. It can pass a lot of slower cars on the straightaways. Racers love driving a car like that.
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Sam Moses was on the motorsports beat at SI for seventeen years. Also, he was deputy editor at AutoWeek. His book, Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots: A Racing Odyssey on the Border of Obsession, is now available from Bison Books.
A Season in Purgatory: “John Feinstein has set the standard for these all-access, season-long-college-sports books, but Moss can play in his league. This is an intelligent, informative, and humane look inside a side of college football that fans seldom see.”—Booklist
“This year promises to be different for local readers. . . . Moss’s new book is all about the political issues of its subject matter. . . . There is a lot more going on in the world of football that makes for interesting reading than the usual annual fare.”—Gary Laney, Lake Charles (LA) American Press
“Villanova football fans . . . and anybody else with an interest in I-AA football or the local sports scene should pick up the just-published book A Season in Purgatory, subtitled Villanova and Life in College Football's Lower Class. Author Tony Moss, who spent the 2005 season with Andy Talley's team, has a good eye for the big picture and the telling detail.”—Mike Jensen, Philadelphia Inquirer
I think there is something about fall that makes people want to go out and talk about books and about writing. I think it's the cool, crisp evenings scented with dried leaves. Or, it could be the soundtrack of fall-- serious winds blowing ominously through trees and between buildings, and seeping through the cracks of windows with chilling whistles. These kinds of days create a desire of sitting down with a good book and hot apple cider. Or cocoa and marshmallows. Whatever the case may be, a lot of UNP authors will be out and about this week.
Dinah Lenney, actress and author of the memoir Bigger than Life, will be at the Santa Barbara Book and Author Festival on Saturday, September 29. On Sunday, September 30, she'll be at the West Hollywood Book Festival (Aaron Raz Link will be at this festival, too. Please see below).
John Clayton (The Cowboy Girl) will be a little further east, where the trees' leaves may change color, but probably not this soon. Clayton will be at the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association's
Fall Book Camp 2007 in Denver, CO on Friday, September 28.
Also on Friday, Peggy Shumaker will read from and sign copies of Just Breathe Normally at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, AZ.
Laurie Powers (Pulp Writer) will give a talk and a book signing Monday, October 1, 4:00 PM at Smith College's Wright Hall (Leo Weinstein Auditorium).
Poet and memoirist Allison Adelle Hedge Coke (she wrote the memoir Rock, Ghost, Willow, Deer) has quite a weekend ahead of her. She will be one of the keynote presenters at The Power of Words Conference Friday, September 28 - October 1. The conference will be held at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT.
On October 3-6, Allison Adelle Hedge Coke will be at the International Poetry Festival in Rosario, Argentina for readings.
Cindy Thomson and Scott Brown, authors of Three Finger: The Mordecai Brown Story, will be at the Indiana Baseball Hall of Fame Wednesday, October 3 at 5:30 PM.
And last, but definitely not least, co-author of What Becomes You Aaron Raz Link has a couple of engagements this week. On Sunday, September 30, he'll be at the West Hollywood Book Festival. He'll be serving on a panel called, "Who Am I?: On Writing the Memoir" He will also be signing afterwards.
Tuesday, October 2, at 7:30 PM, Aaron will be at A Different Light Bookstore for an appearance, reading, and signing.
For more information on these events, and for all upcoming author events, please visit our Author Events & Book Signings page.
“[W]e’re in the midst of a Verne renaissance brought on by new manuscripts, improved translations, and scholarly reassessments. . . . Thanks to efforts such as Mr. Butcher’s . . . it's now possible for the rest of us to see Verne more clearly than ever before.”—John J. Miller, Wall Street Journal
“Lighthouse at the End of the World might be best read under the covers, after bedtime, by flashlight. It is a wondrous, old-fashioned adventure story, likely to bring out the little boy, the castaway, the pirate and the lighthouse-keeper in every reader.”—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review
The Alice Stories by Jesse Lee Kercheval “Over the course of 10 beautifully shaped, deeply moving, funny, and utterly surprising linked stories, Kercheval, in prose as sparkling as snow in sunlight, considers how quickly things can stop making sense and how sustaining goodness truly is.”— Booklist
“I always seem to enjoy fiction from the University of Nebraska Press. . . . Add The Alice Stories to the list. It is well crafted, enjoyable storytelling that addresses thought provoking themes and serves as an often poignant reminder of the sometimes tragic, often fleeting, but still joyful nature of life.”—Kevin Holtsberry, CollectedMiscellany.com
“[A]n engaging approach to bistro cooking. . . . [T]his is a solid, intriguing cookbook that should please anyone comfortable with French cooking.”—Publishers Weekly
“Delacourcelle avidly mixes, matches, and blends cuisines in his cooking, all the while remaining a fiercely French cook. . . . Spiced offers an amazing collection of French bistro recipes nurtured with ‘Chef’s Comments.’”—ForeWord
Continue reading "Praise for Spiced: Recipes from Le Pré Verre" »
