University of Nebraska Press

Another day, another UNP author on NPR

What are you doing at 7 a.m. this Saturday? If you’re awake and live in Nebraska, be sure to check tune into 91.1 FM to hear John Christgau talk to Only a Game host Bill Littlefield about his new book, Kokomo Joe. Kokomo Joe, by the way, is about Yoshio Kobuki, the first Japanese-American Jockey. Kobuki rose to fame in the world of horse racing just as World War II was beginning – an era filled with racism, discrimination and far worse for Japanese Americans. Through Kobuki’s story, Christgau tells a larger story about what it meant to be Japanese-American during WWII. And there’s plenty about Kobuki’s career, too.

If you can’t tune in on Saturday, I’ll post a link to the show after it airs, and you can listen online.

Also on Saturday, comic book stores across the country are participating in Free Comic Book Day, according to Publisher’s Weekly. Today’s PW morning report includes a link with more information about the day. 

A whole lotta NYT; also a whole lotta quilts

I begin today’s blog post with Google news: You may have heard about Google Book Search, which basically provides scans of books online for free, and the full text of certain books and collections for a fee. Some authors feel this violates copyright laws, and filed a class action suit against Google in 2005. And today, the Justice Department granted those authors opposed to Google Book Search a four-month extension to decide whether to opt out of Google Books Search, which some say means the Justice Department is taking the authors’ concerns seriously. New York Times story is here, and some background information on the issue, also from the NYT is here.

In semi-related news, the Internet (including, presumably, Google), has allowed two authors to turn their vacation cottage in Ireland to their full-time home/office (oh to be so lucky). Story, again, from the New York Times, is here.

And in University of Nebraska Press news, yesterday marked the official publication date of our book Quilts in the Modern Age: 1870-1940. This book is two things: a comprehensive history and analysis of American quilts from that era, and also a very beautiful picture book of many quilts that defined the era (some of which are located right here in Lincoln, at the International Quilt Study Center & Museum, with whom we collaborated on this book). An exhibition of these quilts is coming up, so stay tuned for details. But in the meantime, you can view a few sample photos here.

This Day in History

It’s been a while since I incorporated any historical milestones into this blog, and I felt it was high time. Hence today’s post.

According to the History Channel Web site, on this day in history in 1967, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight title after he refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army. Ali cited his Muslim beliefs as reason for his refusal.

The University of Nebraska Press is the publisher of Ali’s biography, Sting Like a Bee: The Muhammad Ali Story, by Jose Torres. Torres himself was a famous boxer; he won an Olympic Silver Medal in 1956 – four years before Ali won an Olympic Gold Medal.

LA Times and New York Times

This weekend was the L.A. Times Book Festival, which featured dozens of panels, hundreds of authors and the University of Nebraska Press’s own Gabrielle Burton, author of Searching for Tamsen Donner. Burton was on a panel titled Memory: The Bigger Picture, an appropriate topic as Searching for Tamsen Donner recalls a life-changing trip Burton took with her husband and five daughters more than 30 years ago, during which they retraced the route of the Donner Party. The LA Times has a rundown on many of the other panels at the event, which included discussions about writerly guilt, the writer’s ear and regional fiction, on its blog.

Here in Nebraska, the weather wasn’t nearly as nice as it reportedly was for the LA Times Book Festival. I spent a lot of the weekend indoors, wrapped up in a blanket, reading, and that’s what I was doing when I stumbled across this article in the New York Times. The story asks whether the Kindle is off-putting to literary super snobs because there’s no book cover, and therefore, no one is going to know what very important, very inaccessible text the reader is reading (except, of course, for the reader himself). The Times points out that people who drop hundreds of dollars on an e-reader probably didn’t buy it just for, say, the Twilight series, and that those who observe someone with a Kindle one the subway probably realize that.

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

Off the Shelf: An Inside Passage by Kurt Caswell

Read a portion of "California Rental" from An Inside Passage by Kurt Caswell:

"Late summer blackberries are gone now. The vines have drawn their juices in. And the sunburned grass is oak-leaf strewn, brittle to my every step. Yellow jackets (people here call them “meat bees”) cluster like crabs between the window and the screen. And in this stillness waiting, it rains the first rain in weeks on the hour of the equinox.

I walk outside my rented house in the southern Cascade Mountains of northern California, inspecting the ground for black bear tracks near the woodpile; I thought I heard footsteps in the night. I find no bear sign in the rained-fresh earth but there, where reflected light redirects my eye, a small red toy car. I pick it up. It is dense and boxy, foreign and artificial. Who was the child who dropped this here? How long ago? Mother calling? Or haphazardly in pursuit of something else? What life passed through this place in a time just beyond my reach?

Need for the Bike

Happy Friday! If you live in Nebraska, I hope you’re enjoying the beautiful day as much as I am. And if you’re in the Boston area next week, you can attend one of two lectures by Nobel Prize winner and University of Nebraska Press author J. M. G. Le Clézio for free.

On Tuesday, April 28th, he’ll give a talk and reading in English at MIT, 32 Vassar Street, in Cambridge. The talk begins at 6 p.m.

Or, if you’d prefer to hear him speak in his native language, you can attend a lecture in French on Wednesday, April 29th, at 6:15 on the Harvard campus.

There are no Nobel Prize winners coming to Lincoln this weekend, unfortunately, but there are plenty of other things to do. I plan to spend some time riding my bike, and one of my coworkers here who is an avid cyclist told me about the UNP title, Need for the Bike, which she said has become a must-have book in the cycling world, and which was published in 2003. Here’s a brief description:

Paul Fournel’s Need for the Bike conducts readers into a very personal world of communication and connection whose center is the bicycle, and where all people and things pass by way of the bike. In compact and suggestive prose, Fournel conveys the experience of cycling—from the initial charm of early outings to the dramas of the devoted cyclist.

I plan on reading this over the weekend. I need some motivation to park my car now that it’s nice outside and do as much of my commuting as possible via bicycle.

Also, don't forget about our Hurt Book Sale tonight! Lots of cheap books, and a great night to walk down the street to one of the Haymarket's many coffee shops to read for a bit. Sale's from 5-8 p.m. at our warehouse.

Have a great weekend!

Book bargains galore!

Attention book lovers and bargain hunters: Our hurt book sale is tomorrow! Visit our warehouse (in the Haymarket) for lots and lots of cheap books -- $4 for hardcovers, $2 for paperbacks, or fill a bag for a mere $12. There’s lots of good stuff, including Kooser titles, sports history books, and, naturally, lots and lots of stuff about the American West. Exciting stuff!

In other event news, Hilda Raz will read from her recent work tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Great Plains Art Gallery, 12th and Q streets. Among Raz’s recent work is What Happens, a poetry collection that is new this spring from the University of Nebraska Press. In What Happens readers will find two separate books by poet Hilda Raz, originally published as The Bone Dish and What Is Good, brought together for the first time as the author intended. These musically wrought and emotionally candid poems explore the pleasure and pain of family relationships, the complicated joy of being a woman, and the unconventional beauty of the Great Plains. Readers will meet Raz’s son, Aaron, and find themselves drawn to fundamental questions about identity and belonging.

Also, I really like the cover of this book. I have no idea where the photograph of the bridge on the cover was taken, but it reminds me of a bridge I used to ride my bike across when I was a kid. I know, I know, you’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover (that’s probably especially true for those of us in the publishing business) but the cover of this book drew me in before I even knew what the book was about. What’s on the other side of that bridge? Perhaps Raz can answer that question during the discussing/signing following the reading.

Holocaust Remembrance Day, honoring Holocaust Survivor Hédi Fried, UNP author and subject of new documentary

Today marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day set aside to remember those who suffered more than 60 years ago. Hédi Fried, a Holocaust survivor, is the author of the autobiography, The Road to Auschwitz: Fragments of a Life, edited and translated by Michael Meyer and published by the University of Nebraska Press. Fried commented, "It took me forty years to realize that I am a witness and that it is my task to tell what I experienced." Read more about Hédi on her blog entry at the Huffington Post.

Hédi is featured in the documentary, The Last Survivor, presented by Righteous Pictures. The documentary focuses on genocide awareness, prevention, and survivor advocacy and is working in efforts with the Genocide Prevention Project to promote April as Genocide Prevention month.

Pulitzers, UNP in Publishers Weekly, and three titles up for awards

The 2008 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced yesterday. You can view the full list of this year’s winners and finalists in poetry, literature, and various categories of news reporting here.

No University of Nebraska Press titles won Pulitzers this year, but today does bring news from our Nobel Prize-winning author, J. M. G. Le Clezio. The University of Nebraska Press has obtained rights to publish an English translation of Le Clezio’s short story collection Mondo and Other Stories. The collection is slated for publication in spring 2011. Even Publishers Weekly took notice.

In other award news, The Great Plains during World War II, by Douglas Hurt, has been named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2008, and Bicycling Beyond the Divide: Two Journeys into the West, by Daryl Farmer, and Pioneer Cemeteries: Sculpture Gardens of the Old West, by Annette Stotto, have been selected as a Finalist for the 2009 Colorado Book Award. Fantastic news for three fantastic books!

 

University of Nebraska Press in the Omaha World-Herald

Are you finding yourself drawn to books that describe the place where you live in these tough economic times? According to a story in Saturday’s Omaha World-Herald, you’re not alone. Bookstores are noticing a trend toward regional-interest books, particularly non-fiction, as readers seek out books depicting people, places and events that are familiar to them. Call it comfort reading. As University of Nebraska Press Marketing Manager Rhonda Winchell, who was quoted in the story, says “Everyone is looking for the book form of macaroni and cheese in a blue box.” The full story is here.

Along those lines, wouldn’t some of those comforting regional titles make a nice Mother’s Day gift? You’re in luck. A variety of UNP titles, including A Lantern In Her Hand and The Plain Sense of Things, are on sale, just in time for Mother’s Day.