August 30, 2010

The Velvet Lounge – Great Chicago Jazz Reads

The Chicago Tribune book blog Printers Row recently posted a round-up of the greatest books about the Chicago jazz scene. Printers Row called out for its jazz-like prose Gerald Majer’s The Velvet Lounge: On Late Chicago Jazz. The book is...

August 27, 2010

India's Forced Labor — Siddharth Kara

Siddharth Kara, author of Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery, continues his extraordinary series on CNN.com with a look at forced labor in India. Kara has been traveling in South Asia researching bonded labor and in his latest...

August 26, 2010

Avner Cohen — Bringing Israel's Bomb Out of the Basement

In an op-ed from yesterday’s New York Times Avner Cohen, author of the forthcoming book The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb, and Marvin Miller argue for Israel to end its policy of opacity regarding its possession of nuclear...

August 25, 2010

Back to School — A Questionnaire from What to Do When College Is Not the Best Time of Your Life

David Leibow’s new book What to Do When College Is Not the Best Time of Your Life comes just in time for those returning to school, particularly for those whose experience has been disappointing. At the beginning of his book,...

August 24, 2010

Interview with James Fleming, Author of Fixing the Sky

In an interview earlier this year with SciCom, James Rodger Fleming, author of Fixing the Sky: The Checkered History of Weather and Climate Control, discussed his new book and some of the history and science associated with weather and climate...

August 23, 2010

Huffington Post on the 17 Most Innovative University Presses

The Huffington Post recently highlighted university presses, their distinctive lists, and what separates them from trade publishers. Though the list of selected presses is somewhat idiosyncratic (some great presses were not included), the piece by Anis Shivani does nicely summarize...

August 20, 2010

The Late Age of Print Coming to a Syllabus Near You

The Atlantic recently posted C. W. Anderson’s syllabus for his class at CUNY on the history of print culture. Anderson, who is also a a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and a Knight Media Policy Fellow...

August 19, 2010

The Rise of the Tomato — An Interview with David Gentilcore

While some might say “tomato,” and others “tomahtoe,” the Italians say “Pomodoro!” The tomato is, of course, a staple in Italian food but it was not always that way. As David Gentilcore explains in a recent Boston Globe interview regarding...

August 18, 2010

Hiroshima After Iraq — Rosalyn Deutsche on Political Art

In Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War, Rosalyn Deutsche begins by citing a 2008 article in October that polled a group of “art world intellectuals” about artistic critiques of about the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq....

August 17, 2010

Jonathan Soffer on Ed Koch's Effort to Fight Corruption

Yesterday’s New York Times blog, the City Room, quoted Jonathan Soffer, author of the forthcoming Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, about Koch’s newly established organization New York Uprising. The group is dedicated to “to shame politicians...

August 16, 2010

Charli Carpenter on WikiLeaks

In a recent Foreign Policy article on the recent release by WikiLeaks of documents pertaining to the U.S. war in Afghanistan , Charli Carpenter, author of Forgetting Children Born of War: Setting the Human Rights Agenda in Bosnia and Beyond,...

August 13, 2010

Test Your Knowledge of Herve This's Kitchen Mysteries

From the past to the cutting edge. Earlier this week we tested readers on the history of food with a quiz based on Cheese, Pears, and History in a Proverb. Today we offer a quiz based on Herve This’s: Kitchen...