University of Nebraska Press

Another week, another cold Friday, and perhaps, another snowy Saturday, too. It’s becoming all too predictable here in the Midwest. Luckily, there is news in the world of the University of Nebraska Press.

First off, one of our authors is in New York this weekend, attending the Festival of New French Writing. Abdourahman Waberi, author of In the United States of Africa, will give a lecture this afternoon. The festival’s web site notes that In the United States of Africa was “unanimously hailed by critics” when it was published in French in 2006 (yay accolades!). The UNP’s English translation of the book comes out in March.

Second, NET Radio’s All About Books hosts Otis Young and Charles Stephen discussed UNL professor Joe Starita’s most recent book, I Am a Man, on their program yesterday, lavishing it with glowing praise. I Am a Man, about Standing Bear, isn’t a UNP title, but The Dull Knives of Pine Ridge – a Pulitzer Prize finalist – is, and it’s a book worth checking out.

And finally, some sad news: Shelf Awareness reported this morning that science fiction writer Philip Jose Farmer has died at the age of 91. Shelf Awareness quotes Farmer as having once said, “Imagination is like a muscle. I found out that the more I wrote, the bigger it got." He wrote more than 75 books during his lifetime, including UNP title Tarzan Alive. To read the full Shelf Awareness obituary, click here and scroll down a bit.

That’s it for today. Stay warm this weekend!

Linking in Lincoln: February 26, 2009

New from the University of Nebraska Press: Yellowstone Autumn: A Season of Discovery in a Wondrous Land by W.D. Wetherell.

Wetherell describes Yellowstone as “America’s least-known best-known place.” The author, arriving at the park on the eve of his fifty-fifth birthday, feels the need to examine where life’s mileage has brought him. In the encounter that follows, a writer entering late middle age confronts not only a magnificent corner of the vast American landscape but also the American experience itself.

Detailed in the wise, humorous, and lyrical language that has long distinguished W. D. Wetherell’s award-winning fiction, this introspective journey merges the fascinating story of Yellowstone’s history and geography with the author’s own story—of marriage and aging, of fatherhood, and of the solace to be found in the beauty of the natural world. Most of all it’s a loving tribute to Yellowstone in autumn, the season when the park and its glories are absolutely at their peak.

This edition of Linking in Lincoln is devoted to – what else – Yellowstone. Here we go.

1. Yellowstone park was named after the river bearing the same name, which is named after the French translation of the Minnetaree tribe’s word for the river: Rock Yellow River. Rock Yellow, Yellow Stone, Yellowstone….it’s all the same thing, right? Read a brief history of how the park came to be (and more details about where it got its name) on this page on the National Park Service web site.

2. Yellowstone is home of the largest volcanic caldera in the United States, Mexico and Canada. Violent volcanic eruptions occurred thousands of years ago; could they happen again? The U.S. Geological Survey has dedicated this page to answering all of your questions about the possibility of future volcanic activity at Yellowstone.

3. Yellowstone is a geographically volatile place. In addition to volcanoes, it’s also a hotbed for earthquakes, with thousands of small quakes occurring each year. In 1959, an earthquake clocking in at 7.3 on the Richter Scale rocked the park, killed 28 people, and has since gone down in history as the largest earthquake in Montana history. The USGS has information on that, too.

4. Enough about natural disasters. Yellowstone is well-known for its fly fishing – that’s part of what drew W.D. Wetherell there in the first place. As a result, there are entire web sites devoted to fly fishing at Yellowstone, like this one.

5. Of course, Yellowstone might be best known for its most famous geyser, Old Faithful, which, if you like, you can watch live via this webcam.

Curious about Yellowstone? Be sure to read Yellowstone Autumn by W.D. Wetherell. And see you back on the UNP blog tomorrow!

AAUP winners at the Sheldon, Camuto still on tour, and the NYT says nice things about the new Kindle

If you haven’t been to the Sheldon Museum of Art to check out the AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show, now’s the time to go. The show, featuring the best examples of design from university presses in the United States and Canada, will be at the Sheldon through Friday. Among the books in the show is the University of Nebraska Press title A Life in Letters.

In other news, Robert Camuto’s tour of Seattle, San Francisco and New York is nearly over. If you haven’t been following the author of Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country on his tour via his blog, I suggest you do so. I’ve learned tons about wine just reading his posts. Judging by the photos, it looks like the events are attracting a sophisticated crowd (undoubtedly made up of people with sophisticated palates). Plus we get to see a bit of Robert’s style (which includes orange pants.)

Last, the New York Times offers this review of the new Kindle. The headline – The Kindle: Good Before, Better Now – pretty much tells you the story.

Today's notes from the blogosphere

Donner party scholars, researchers and general enthusiasts are excited about Searching for Tamsen Donner by Gabrielle Burton! At least the blogger behind The Donner Blog is. Click the link to read Kristin Johnson's post about this spring University of Nebraska Press title.

Another of our spring authors, Kurt Caswell, netted a starred review in Publisher's Weekly for his essay collection An Inside Passage. PW writes:

In these luminous essays on wanderlust, Caswell, an assistant professor of creative writing at Texas Tech University, embraces travel writer Bruce Chatwin's contention that walking is a poetic act that can cure the world of its ills. While the power of perambulation remains to be seen, the author's walks along the Ganges and in Idaho, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Japan do salve his restless soul.

To read the full review, click here, and scroll down a bit.

Little Pancho and a NYT link

Good Monday morning!

How did you spend your weekend? I spent mine wishing it was warmer (what happened to the 50-degree Saturdays of earlier this month?) and, once I resigned myself to the temperature, I decided to stay inside and read most of Little Pancho: The Life of Tennis Legend Pancho Segura, by Caroline Seebohm. Prior to picking up the book, I had never heard of Segura, a poor kid from Ecuador who through a mixture of luck, charm and hard work became a tennis star who toured the world. Later, he was the tennis pro at an exclusive club in Beverly Hills, where he rubbed shoulders with movie stars and coached young players who would later become tennis legends themselves. Bonus: The chapters about Beverly Hills made for a nice escape from the chill of Lincoln. You can read more about Little Pancho here.

Moving on, an interesting article in the New York Times on Sunday: Is American poetry “about to run out of greatness”? Read the story for yourself to see if you agree.

That’s it for this morning. Hope your week is off to a great start!

Off the Shelf: The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas by Alan Jay Zaremba

As we gear up for March and basketball tournament season, this is the first of several mini-excerpts we'll offer from The Madness of March: Bonding and Betting with the Boys in Las Vegas by Alan Jay Zaremba. Read from the prologue:

"The first weekend of the NCAA basketball tournament brings a dedicated legion of basketball bettors to Las Vegas. From early Thursday morning until Sunday evening, men—and the crowd is overwhelmingly male—sit in rowdy smoky casinos watching up to forty-eight college basketball games. Who are these people? They pay to fly out to Las Vegas, spend money on lodging, sit for four days straight watching basketball games, and often lose hundreds of dollars on near misses and if onlys, and yet as they taxi to the airport on Sunday evening they are planning their betting strategy for the following year with undiminished passion.

Our blog, our authors' blogs, and a New York Times blog

As I wrote on Monday, University of Nebraska Press author Robert Camuto is visiting from France, stopping in cities on both coasts to read from his book Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country (he also brought with him some of the wines described in the book, and those who attend his talks will get a taste). Robert is blogging from the road, and you can read what he has to say (and view pictures) at his web site.

While we’re on the topic of UNP author blogs, Kurt Caswell, whose book An Inside Passage comes out in May, has been living in Seville, Spain, since January. He writes about the food, the people, the city, his occasional outings as a tourist, and about his life as a writer and teacher in a foreign country on his blog, which is also where the image at left is from.

One last blog note: We mentioned here yesterday that it was Wallace Stegner’s 100th birthday. Turns out, we were in good company. Timothy Egan of The New York Times also mentioned Stegner on his blog yesterday, and noted that the author is the subject of two recent biographies. One of those, Wallace Stegner: His Life and Work, by Jackson J. Benson, is a Bison paperback that comes out in May.

Joern on Des Moines community radio, happy birthday to Wallace Stegner, and goodbye to Silas the cat

There’s lots going on in the world of the University of Nebraska Press today. Let’s get right down to it.

First, what are you doing at 12:42 p.m. today? If you’re going to be at your computer, you can stream an interview with Pamela Carter Joern, author of The Floor of the Sky and The Plain Sense of Things.  Joern will be on Des Moines community radio station 99.1, visiting with John Busbee, host of The Culture Buzz.

Second, today is the 100th anniversary of Wallace Stegner’s birth. Stegner, whose novel Angle of Repose won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1972, passed away in 1993. His legacy, however, lives on. Many of his books are still in print (including these UNP titles), a biography about Stegner (also a UNP title) is coming out in paperback in May, and a symposium honoring his life, legacy and his contributions as both an author and a conservationist will be held in Salt Lake City March 6 and 7. Among the speakers at the symposium is his daughter-in-law, Lynn Stegner, author of the UNP title Because a Fire Was in My Head, which comes out in paperback in July.

Lastly, my fellow Lincoln residents will be saddened to learn of the death of a very visible member of our literary community. Silas, the feline resident of A Novel Idea Bookstore downtown, died earlier this week. He had lived in the store for 14 years. Cindy Lange-Kubick wrote this very nice tribute to Silas, which ran in today’s Journal Star.

Tuesday Trivia Answers

1. Bosnia
2. Nefertiti
3. Queen Victoria
4. Zero
5. Jadwiga
6. Japan
7. The Nine Days Queen
8. Portugal
9. Six days old
10. Maleficent

Tuesday Trivia: February 17, 2009

New from the University of Nebraska Press: Queens and Power in Medieval and Early Modern England, edited by Carole Levin and Robert Bucholz.

Queens and Power provides a forum for the underexamined, anomalous reigns of queens in history. These regimes, primarily regarded as interruptions to the “normal” male monarchy, have been examined largely as isolated cases. This interdisciplinary study of queens throughout history examines their connections to one another, their constituents’ perceptions of them, and the fallacies of their historical reputations.

You’ve probably already guessed the topic of this week’s Tuesday Trivia....queens.  Our focus is a bit broader than just those of medieval and early modern England. Ready?

1. Helen the Tough ruled which country from 1395, after her husband’s death, to 1398, when she ceded power to her stepson? Hint: She was the only queen to rule this country.

2. Which ancient Egyptian queen is best known for her iconic bust, which is currently on display at Egyptian Museum of Berlin?

3. Which U.K. queen became known as the Grandmother of Europe after arranging marriages for her children and grandchildren with other young royals from throughout the continent?

4. Queen Elizabeth ruled Russia from 1741 to 1762. Her reign was unique, in part, for the number of executions during her tenure as queen. How many executions were there?

5. Which queen, who ruled Poland from 1384, when she was just 12, until she died of complications from childbirth in 1399 is the patron saint of queens?

6. Empress Go-Sakuramachi, who ruled from 1762 to 1771, is the most recent reigning queen of which country?

7. Lady Jane Grey ruled England and Ireland for just nine days in 1554, when she was not yet 20 years old. The brevity of her reign led to Grey being known as what?

8. Queen Maria, was also known as Maria the Pious, Maria the Mad because of her intense religious beliefs and her struggle with melancholia. What country did she rule?

9. How old was Mary, Queen of Scots, when she became queen?

10. Bonus question: What is the name of the evil queen in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty?

Do you know as much about queens as you thought you did? Check back tomorrow for the answers, and be sure to check out Queens and Power for a more in-depth look at some of England’s most influential women leaders.