December 11, 2012

New Book Tuesday: Space Exploration, The Banality of Modernity, and More!

Our weekly list of new titles: Mankind Beyond Earth: The History, Science, and Future of Human Space Exploration Claude A. Piantadosi Prose of the World: Modernism and the Banality of Empire Saikat Majumdar Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity...

December 7, 2012

Terry McDonell on the Importance of Long Form Journalism

We conclude our week-long feature on The Best American Magazine Writing 2012 where we probably should have started, namely Terry McDonell’s introduction. Terry McDonell has been an editor for many magazines and is currently editor of Time Inc. Sports. In...

December 7, 2012

University Press Roundup: Post-Sandy, Breastfeeding, Abraham Lincoln, & More!

After taking a brief hiatus, we return with our roundup of some of the great posts from our fellow university presses: What can New Yorkers learn from Gulf Coast residents as they rebuild from Hurricane Sandy? Tom Wooten, author of...

December 6, 2012

The Best American Magazine Writing 2012: "Joplin," by Luke Dittrich

“The windows spider. The windows explode. Lacey’s boys start screaming. It is a terrible sound.”—from “Joplin!,” by Luke Dittrich Continuing our week-long focus on The Best American Magazine Writing: 2012, we are featuring Luke Dittrich’s extraordinary Joplin!, which recounts the...

December 6, 2012

Mike Chasar and Jed Rasula on the Poetry Glut

“For me, the glut isn’t a glut so much as a fundamental condition of poetry in the long twentieth century … Realizing that means reassessing our histories of American poetry, the maps and guidebooks we produce about it, and the...

December 5, 2012

From The Best American Magazine Writing 2012: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests by Matt Taibbi

“People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world.”—Matt Taibbi One of the more inspiring and effective relief efforts to emerge in the wake of Hurricane Sandy has been...

December 5, 2012

Whitney Strub — The Politics of Porn 2012 (Part 1)

“That the conservative attack on birth control failed miserably, and set the stage for some Democratic congressional coups, hardly means porn won’t return to the table again; in fact, with the diminishing returns on the homophobia that the Right has...

December 4, 2012

Best American Magazine Writing 2012 — John Jeremiah Sullivan on David Foster Wallace

“Here’s a thing that is hard to imagine: being so inventive a writer that when you die, the language is impoverished. That’s what Wallace’s suicide did, two and a half years ago. It wasn’t just a sad thing, it was...

December 4, 2012

New Book Tuesday: A New Title from Roland Barthes and More

Our weekly list of new titles now available: How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces Roland Barthes Kiku’s Prayer: A Novel Endō Shūsaku; Translated by Van C. Gessel Trees Without Wind: A Novel Li Rui; Translated by...

December 3, 2012

Author Events for the Week of December 3: Action Movies, Drinks, China, and More!

From Dublin to Los Angeles and from action movies to the future of China, Columbia University Press authors will be discussing their works. Here’s a look at the who, when, and where of author events this week. (For a full...

November 30, 2012

Ross Melnick and Toby Talbot to Discuss the Jewish Experience in Film

On Sunday, December 2, (1 p.m.– 5 p.m), Columbia University Press is co-sponsoring the event “Exhibitors, Distributors and Showmen” at the American Jewish Historical Society as part of their Culture Brokers series. The program will include two Columbia University Press...

November 30, 2012

Test Your Knowledge of Food Finances!

We conclude our week-long feature on The Secret Financial Life of Food: From Commodities Markets to Supermarkets, by Kara Newman, with a quiz that tests your knowledge of the finances food (Click here for the answers): 1. Where is the...