University Press Roundup: Ferguson, Unshark Week, Fighting Inequality and More!

Welcome to our weekly roundup of the best articles from the blogs of academic publishers! As always, if you particularly enjoy something or think that we missed an important post, please let us know in the comments.

We Americans, or at least this American, tend not to think of Canada as a bellicose nation but as the University of Toronto Press Publishing Blog points out, the Canadian Army did join forces with the rest of the British Empire during World War I.

The decline of the Protestant establishment in Philadelphia is discussed on North Philly Notes (Temple University Press) in their interview with Dan Rottenberg, author of The Outsider: Albert M. Greenfield and the Fall of the Protestant Establishment.

David Grusky takes a closer look at the inequality research machine on the Stanford University Press blog.

Sure, shark week gets all the attention but there is also unshark week. Never heard of it? Well, head over to the Princeton University Press blog and let Steve and Tony Palumbi, authors of The Extreme Life of the Sea explain.

In her essay “Externalizing Internal Explosions” on the University of Pennsylvania Press blog, Cathy Lisa Schneider, author of Police Power and Race Riots: Urban Unrest in Paris and New York, examines recent events in Ferguson, Missouri.

What are the role of families in fighting poverty? In this excellent video, Clare Huntington, author of Failure to Flourish published by Oxford University Press, discusses the importance of investing in families as a strategy for fighting poverty.

Colum Kenny explains how he came to write An Irish-American Odyssey: The Remarkable Rise of the O’Shaughnessy Brothers, just published by the University of Missouri Press.

On the University of Minnesota Press blog, David Naguib Pellow, author of Total Liberation: The Power and Promise of Animal Rights and the Radical Earth Movement
, examines the concept that all oppression is linked.

More Canada!. Derek Burney and Fen Hampson, authors of Brave New Canada identify the five key challenges facing Canada in a changing world via McGill-Queen’s University Press.

They might not be listening to Ty Segall or Shabazz Palaces but the Amish do like their music. D. Rose Elder, author of Why the Amish Sing: Songs of Solidarity and Identity, explains on the Johns Hopkins University Press blog.

Mind your own business. John Lachs, author of Meddling: On the Virtue of Leaving Others Alone, explains why we’d all be better off if we minded our own business and let others lead their lives as they see fit via the Indiana University Press blog.

What have been the consequences on our obsession with home ownership? Roberta Gold, author of When Tenants Claimed the City: The Struggle for Citizenship in New York City Housing examines how the desire for home ownership often leads to inequality on the University of Illinois Press blog.

Kenneth Daigler discusses how spies helped the Americans defeat the British during the Revolutionary War in a video from the Georgetown University Press blog.

100 years after it was built, the Panama Canal still shapes American foreign policy, says Michael E. Donoghue, author of Borderland on the Isthmus: Race, Culture, and the Struggle for the Canal Zone published by Duke University Press.

Tom Koch, author of Disease Maps: Epidemics on the Ground examines Ebola and the “new” epidemic on the University of Chicago Press blog.

Paul Bernal, the author of Internet Privacy Rights (Cambridge University Press), breaks down the brave new world of the right to privacy in an online age.

Are flowers feminine and lawn masculine? At the University of California Press blog, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, author of Paradise Transplanted examines the gendering of the garden.

Marcus Rediker explores the wonderful art of eminent Haitian artist Frantz Zéphirin on the Beacon Broadside.