December 13, 2012

VIDEO: Interview with Andrew Nathan, author of China's Search for Security

The following video is an interview with Andrew Nathan coauthor (with Andrew Scobell) of China’s Search for Security. The interview was done with China File, a project of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society. (Apologies for the...

December 12, 2012

Interview with Jon Krampner, author of Creamy and Crunchy

The following is an interview with Jon Krampner, author of Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food. Question: Why did you write a book about the history of peanut butter? Jon Krampner: My first two...

December 12, 2012

The Future of University Presses

There are, to be sure, many challenges ahead for university presses but as a recent panel suggests, there are also many exciting opportunities to find new readers and disseminate important new ideas. The panel, which consisted of university press heads...

December 11, 2012

The New Yorker on Creamy and Crunchy

Books like Creamy and Crunchy: An Informal History of Peanut Butter, the All-American Food, by Jon Krampner, seem to invite a reviewer to insert their own opinion. The aptly named Steve Almond interviewed Krampner for The Nervous Breakdown and identifies...

December 11, 2012

Whitney Strub — The Politics of Porn, Part 2: The Culture (Non-) Wars

“For that matter, Christian Grey of the Fifty Shades trilogy would be hard to pick out from a lineup of the ‘Opportunity Society’ wing of the GOP; I picture him with Scott Brown abs, Paul Ryan vocal inflection, and Romney...

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...