University of Nebraska Press

Mountains of praise

Earlier this week, Mountains of Light was given a rave review by Blog Critics.

In the book, author R. Mark Liebenow takes a journey deep into the heart of Yosemite National Park, introducing us to its grand and subtle marvels—and to the observations, reflections, and insights its scenery evokes.

Blog Critics said, “I repeat, Mountains of Light is a stunning book. I keep wanting to call it a ‘future’ classic. It deserves to stand with the great books of the iconic authors of this genre—Muir, Aldo Leopold, Sig Olson, Terry and Renny Russell. This is a book that cries out for wide availability. It is a book to be read and re-read.”

Read the full review here.

Cincinnati roots

A interview with Twelfth and Race author Eric Goodman posted on Cincinnati.com yesterday, and the setting of the book likely will sound familiar to most Cincinnatians.

Goodman takes  familiar “events that form the backdrop for the interracial love story at the heart of it – riots that erupt after the police shooting of a young African-American man in April 2001– and many of the names of people and places” to explore the complicated emotions about racism.

Lauren Bishop of Cincinnati.com spoke with Goodman about the novel's setting, which is a fictional city with elements of both Cincinnati and Kansas City called Calhoun City, Mo.

Goodman told Bishop that “somehow, taking it out of Cincinnati and moving it gave me a little more imaginative space to create a world that brought the issues I was trying to write about completely to the foreground.”

Read the full article here.

And if you are in Cincinnati tonight, Goodman will be at the Mercantile Library for a reading and signing at 6 p.m.  

Friday round up

This Sunday at the 84th Academy Awards, Omaha’s very own Alexander Payne is nominated for Best Picture, Directing and Writing (adapted screenplay) for his movie, The Descendents.

On a local level, Payne is the narrator of a video about the new book Drawn to Fashion by Mary Mitchell. The video is showing at the Durham Museum in Omaha in conjunction with an exhibit of Mitchell's fashion illustrations.

And earlier this week, UNP author Matthew Gavin Frank was interviewed via email by John Warner from Inside Higher Ed about his new book Pot Farm.

Warner called Pot Farm a ”…simultaneously beautiful, dark and life-affirming story.”

Click here to read Frank’s personal views of what Pot Farm is all about.

Last Sunday, Cincinnati's NPR affiliated featured an interview with Eric Goodman about his new book, Twelfth and Race.  Listen here.

And next Thursday, the poem “Looking Back” from James Crews’ The Book of What Stays will be featured on Poetry Daily.

March sale

In honor of the Jewish holiday, Purim, you can save 25 percent on selected titles like The JPS Bible Commentary: Esther by Adele Berlin and Trees, Earth and Torah: A Tu B'Shvat Anthology edited by Ari Elon, Arthur Waskow, and Naomi Mara Hyman.

Purim, which comes from the Book of Esther and celebrates the deliverance of the Jewish people in ancient Persia, is March 7 and 8.

Click here for more books on sale and the promotion code.

Offer expires March 10, 2012.  

UNP author unplugged

Earlier this week on the Dzanc Books blog, The Collagist, author Matthew Gavin Frank answered interview questions in the form of excerpts.
 
Frank is the author of upcoming book, Pot Farm, which details the strange, sublime, and sometimes dangerous goings-on at Weckman Farm, a place with hidden politics and social hierarchies, populated by recovering drug addicts, alternative healers, pseudo-hippie kids, and medical marijuana users looking to give back.
 
Click here for insight into what Frank thinks about writing and why he does it in the interview titled “There is a Glossary of Terms for the Lives We are Leading Together.”

Off the Shelf: Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in Yosemite by R. Mark Liebenow

Read the beginning of Mountains of Light: Seasons of Reflection in Yosemite by R. Mark Liebenow:

"In the middle of the night something pushes on my toes. Half asleep, I think a nocturnal squirrel is rooting around at the bottom of my tent. There is scuffling and the animal bumps hard against the hollows of my feet. That’s no squirrel. It’s larger, perhaps a raccoon. Then I hear a low guttural snort and National Geographic images rush into my head-grizzlies mauling their helpless prey, wolves tearing elk apart with their long savage teeth.

With my heart pounding, I lie as still as a mummy.

When I hear the creature shuffle away, I risk sitting up, making as little noise as possible, and peek out the tent’s opening. I detect a sour musky scent but the darkness is so thick that at first I don’t see anything. Then the animal moves into the slight moonlight hovering between trees a dozen feet away and I’m able to make out a back that is big, black, and shaggy.

Bears unsettle me when they are this close. They are strong enough to rip the doors off cars when hungry, can flatten a tent in one leap, and have claws that can shred the bark of trees. My shelter’s thin nylon skin wouldn’t stop a chipmunk determined to get in. It’s January and this bear is supposed to be hibernating, not roaming around.

Pulling my head back in, I zip up the tent and force myself to lie down. I listen to the sounds of the wilderness for a long time, hear the twitching of branches and the rustling of dry leaves. I do not sleep well."

Mark Liebenow has won the Chautauqua Nonfiction Prize, among other awards. His work has been published in such journals as the Colorado Review, the Spoon River Poetry Review, and the Clackamas Literary Review.

 

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Moutnains of Light, visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Mountains-of-Light,674967.aspx.

An environmentalist and the future of the electric car

Earlier this week Ozzie Zehner, author of Green Illusions, voiced his opinion about the new electric Tesla SUV in the Christian Science Monitor. His belief:  Electric cars don’t make future environmental problems simply disappear.

Lloyd Alter from Treehugger agrees with Zehner in his new article and survey “Should Environmentalists Cheer for Electric Cars?”  

Alter talks about Zehner’s new book in his op-ed piece that was published on Feb. 13.

Click here to read the story, take the survey and see the results!

Great Plains in spotlight

Today in the Omaha World-Herald, two new UNP books were reviewed.

Bound to Have Blood: Frontier Newspapers and the Plains Indian Wars by Hugh J. Reilly, and Eyewitness at Wounded Knee by Richard E. Jensen, R. Eli Paul and John E. Carter were called two historical studies that “…do an outstanding job of deepening the knowledge of Plains history.”

Bound to Have Blood takes readers back to the late nineteenth century to show how newspaper reporting influenced attitudes about the conflict between the United States and Native Americans.

Eyewitness at Wounded Knee brings together and assesses for the first time some 150 photographs that were made before and immediately after the massacre.

Click here to read the editorial about both books.

 

And out of 300 jacket and cover design entries at the AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal show, just 30 were chosen as the best examples from the pool.

UNP’s My Nebraska: The Good, the Bad and the Husker by Roger Welsch was among those selected.

The 2012 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show will premiere at the AAUP Annual Meeting in Chicago, June 18-20, 2012.

Congrats to designer, Nathan and the production coordinator Alison!

To see the full list of selected entries, click here.

Electric car solution or problem

Are hybrid and electric cars really better for the environment?

Ozzie Zehner used to think so; he used to be enthusiastic about electric cars. But he says he was wrong.

In his new book, Green Illusions: The Dirty Secrets of Clean Energy and the Future of Environmentalism, he argues that we don’t have an energy crisis, we have a consumption crisis. He persuasively argues for a change of perspective.

Zehner recently published an op-ed piece in The Christian Science Monitor about his conclusions using the recent release of the Tesla SUV as a springboard to talk about how electric cars won’t solve the problems of vehicular travel.

“They simply move the problems elsewhere – often to contexts where they become more opaque and difficult to address,” Zehner says.

Read the full article “Telsa SUV with wings or not, we should kill the electric car” here.

UNP author named state’s poet laureate

Kathleen Flenniken, author of Famous (2006) is now the Washington state poet laureate for 2012-2014.

In a news release from Humanities Washington and the Washington State Arts Commission Flenniken said, “This is a dream job — speaking in support of the arts and humanities, and of poetry in particular, getting a chance to organize poetry events around the state, visit schools, reach kids and teachers and remote communities.”

Click here to read the full story from The Seattle Times.

Famous is a winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry, and was widely praised.

Barbara McMichael from the Olympian (Olympia, WA) said “[Flenniken’s] own poems pluck out the most ordinary moments of everyday life and probe for the extraordinary.”