Illinois Press Book Blog

It’s great when I learn something about one of our recent books from a blog via a Google alert.

From littlegyroscopes:
Class: The origami pictures were pretty
Poet: They are poems
Class: But how can you read them?
Poet: What would you have to do to read them?
Class: (silence) I guess you’d have to unfold them
Poet: Right. And how are you going to unfold them?
Class: (silence) Would you make the origami yourself?
Poet: Right! Yes! And then?
Class: Write the letters on the bird the way it shows in the pictures?
Poet: Right! And then?
Class: And then you’d unfold it and read the poem
Poet: Exactly! My point with the origami poems was, in part, that as a reader, you only get a limited part of the poem, only the surface level of any text is available if you don’t engage with it, turn it over and touch it.  You have to be curious enough about the poems to take the effort to physically make the shape, copy down the writing, unfold it and read it.  But once you do that, it’s like you’ve found your own secret little hidden poem. It’s almost like you wrote it yourself, but in a language you didn’t quite understand until you’d finished.  Art is supposed to be interacted with, touched, poked, folded…sometimes you have to get in and do it yourself or it won’t make any sense at all.”

What impact has the current recession had on golf at country clubs and at public daily fee and municipal courses? What lessons might we learn from the experience of golfers who patronized private clubs or public links during the Great Depression? The Boston Globe recently reported that the Golf Club of Cape Cod in Falmouth, Massachusetts, and other upscale associations have responded to declining membership by waiving their pricey admission fees for new members. Other clubs have offered trial one-year memberships or delayed or extended payment of dues.  If the hard times continue, many country clubs will have to resort to other remedies applied during the 1930s, including admitting classes of people who would have been denied entrance during more flush times and creating less expensive “house” or “associate” categories of membership. Officers will also be hard pressed to maintain balanced budgets.

During the 1930s thousands of golfers who could no longer afford club dues patronized semiprivate and public facilities, which were generally in a sorry state of neglect. Today’s municipal courses are in better shape, but some could use sprucing up. It remains to be seen whether the Obama administration will include funds for renovation of municipal links in its proposed public works legislation. Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, during its first two years (1935-37) the Works Progress Administration spent more than ten million dollars on 368 public courses nationwide, including sixty-two new facilities. This year, infrastructure projects such as bridges, tunnels, highways, and mass transit as well as schools and other worthy construction projects deserve priority over recreational facilities. But a modest sum might still be allocated for parks and public golf courses. After all, spending a few hours on a well maintained, beautiful, and relatively inexpensive public course might provide a welcome diversion for unemployed golfers. 

*****

George B. Kirsch is professor of history at Manhattan College and author of the new book Golf in America.  More information on the topic above can be found in chapter 6, “Depression and War.”

The January 5, 2009, issue of The Nation features David Schiff’s lengthy review of Gayle Sherwood Magee’s new book Charles Ives Reconsidered.

“Magee’s book is a model of contemporary musicology, sympathetically sober in its judgments and interdisciplinary in its methods.”

Today’s Shelf Awareness newsletter points to a New York Times piece on the new austerity in book publishing.

“Venerable houses including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Penguin Group, Random House and Simon & Schuster have all announced salary freezes or layoffs, or both. Simon & Schuster canceled its annual holiday party, held for the last few years at Tavern on the Green and scheduled in 2008 for Guastavino’s, a splashy banquet hall in Manhattan. One division of Random House had pizza, beer and wine in a room off the cafeteria for its holiday lunch instead of going out for pricey cocktails. Across the city, editors with Four Seasons taste are being asked to scale back on their lunch tabs.”

Willis Regier, Director
Favorite Book: Julian Barnes - Nothing to Be Frightened Of
Barnes’s book looks at old questions about how to live with death and dying.  He has short narratives on the deaths of the famous and forgotten, with thoughts about the various stances religion and philosophy have taken about death.   Barnes accepts death as final, thus more serious than it would be for those who think it is a door to an afterlife.

Favorite CD: David Byrne and Brian Eno - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
I was pleased by Blitzen Trapper’s Furr, Lucinda’s Little Honey,  and (thanks to Steve Lehmann) Christian Tetzlaff’s re-release of Bach, Sonatas & Partitas.   But after all, Everything that Happens Will Happen Today is brand new and got the most play at my place.  It is Byrne’s best since Stop Making Sense (way back in 1984), and makes me think better of Eno.  The CD is smart, brisk, tuneful, and full of homages to gospel in all its varied splendor.

Favorite Movie: Ironman
I expected The Dark Knight or Quantum of Solace would triumph, but both disappointed me.  Three demerits for The Dark Knight :  the casting of Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes; the somnambulist performance of Christian Bale; and the stupid twist of the story line at the end, announcing that Batman must be perceived as a villain in order to do good.  I’ve nothing to add to criticisms of Quantum of Solace :  good but not great.  Ironman wins for plot, dialogue, special effects, and wit.  No other movie was as well balanced as this was.

Favorite TV Show: The Daily Show
Honestly the best.  So good when it’s good that its many mediocrities don’t matter.

Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: MET Live, performing Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust, via satellite, Savoy Theaters.

Robert Lepage’s production is visually stunning, not only because every scene shouts “I AM EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE.”   It featured a passable Faust (Marcello Giordani), but superb Marguerite (Susan Graham), and Mephistopheles (John Relyea).

Lisa Savage, Journals Production Editor
Favorite Book: Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth
Favorite CD: The Watson Twins, Fire Songs; Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
Favorite Movie: The Dark Knight; Young@Heart
Favorite TV Show: 30 Rock, The Office, Mad Men, The Daily Show, Flight of the Conchords, Top Chef
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Wicked, Oriental Theatre, Chicago
Favorite local event: The Esquire’s “12 Beers of Christmas”
Favorite moment of the 2008 presidential election: Tina Fey’s brilliant impression of Sarah Palin. “Are we not doing the talent portion?”
Person I most wish would disappear into oblivion in 2009: A certain former beauty queen from Alaska.

Cope Cumpston, Art Director
Favorite Book: Elizabeth Hay - Late Nights on Air
Favorite CD: Nellie McKay - Hungry Mouse
Favorite Movie: The Fall
2nd Favorite Movie: Man on Wire - I saw both of these movies twice in one week, which is first in a lifetime for me . . .
Favorite live performance - Dottie and the Rails (local country band, Angela Burton’s husband plays guitar, the age span is something like 30 - 75)

Clydette Wantland, Journals Manager
Favorite TV Shows: Project Runway, Criminal Minds
Favorite Sport to Watch:  NCAA Basketball
Favorite College Basketball Team: Duke
All Time Favorite Movie:  A Star is Born (Streisand version)
Favorite Live Performance: REO Speedwagon (all 7 times!)

Will Ridenour, Programmer, Electronic Publications
Favorite Book: Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks
Favorite CD: Four Vagabonds, Vol. 1: 1941-1951
Favorite Movie: The Visitor
Favorite TV Show: Boston Legal
Favorite Live Performance: The Lieutenant of Inishmore at Urbana’s Station Theatre

Jim Proefrock, Media/Communications Specialist (Stealth Mode)
Favorite Book(s): J. Maarten Troost - The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific (2004) and Getting Stoned with Savages: A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu (2006). These are best enjoyed back-to-back. I don’t read much, so I feel fortunate to even be able to respond to this category.

Favorite UIP Book: Steven K. Ashby and C.J. Hawking - Staley: The Fight for a New American Labor Movement (2009). I’m certainly not in the habit of reading books while in the process of typesetting them, but this one kept pulling me in. Fascinating. I hope it does well for us outside of Decatur.

Favorite CD: I haven’t bought a CD since iTunes was invented. In lieu, some favorite singles: The Ting Tings - “Great DJ”; Santogold - “Lights Out”; Heiruspecs - “Get Up.” No, wait, these are my 8-year-old’s favorite songs! Ok, ok, they’re mine, too.

Favorite TV Show: Chuck

Favorite Live Performance: X at the Cabooze in Minneapolis. This was called the “13-31 Tour,” but a better name would have been the “401k Tour.” These oldsters can still bring it. Truly inspiring.

Favorite Fishin’ Hole: Little Falls Lake, Willow River State Park, Hudson Wisconsin.

Barbara Evans, Assistant Production Manager
Author: Ken Bruen
CD: The Bach Cello Suites, Pablo Casals (perennial favorite)
Live Performance: Preservation Hall Jazz Band (KCPA); Hot Club of Cowtown (Shady Nook)

Rohn Koester, Journals Production Editor
Favorite thing I read: Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day
Favorite music podcast: Tom Waits’ Glitter and Doom concert
Favorite movie: Tarsem Singh’s The Fall
Favorite documentary: Errol Morris’ Standard Operating Procedure
Favorite PSA: Errol Morris’ Standing Up to Cancer
Favorite lecture: Jill Bolte Taylor’s My Stroke of Insight
Favorite story: Edgar Oliver’s “Revisiting Savannah”
Another favorite story: Jonathan Mitchell’s “City X”
Favorite Radiohead covers: “Creep” by Scala and the Kolacny Brothers; “15 Stepz” by AmpLive featuring Codany Holiday; and “Nude (Popularity Contest Remake)” by Son Lux

Roberta Sparenberg, Sales & Marketing Assistant
Favorite Book:  Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (haven’t finished it yet, but loaned to me by Heather)
Favorite CD: On Fire, David Syme, Piano   
Favorite Movie:  Get Smart
Favorite TV Show:  Monk, Psych and Burn Notice
Favorite Live Performance:  Wasn’t able to attend anything live this year, except life itself, and sometimes it’s is pretty dramatic.

Margo Chaney, Exhibits Manager
Favorite Book:  Barbara Kingsolver — Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Favorite Movie:  toss-up between Young at Heart and Mama Mia
Favorite TV Show:  Brothers & Sisters
Favorite news story:  Election Night coverage!!
Favorite live performance:  Amasong December concert

Breanne Ertmer, Assistant Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Firoozeh Dumas – Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
Favorite Movie: Burn After Reading
Favorite TV Shows: 30 Rock and My House Is Worth What?
Favorite Live Performance: Pink Martini at The Chicago Theatre 

Rebecca McNulty, Assistant Editor, Acquisitions
Favorite Book: Property, Valerie Martin
Favorite CD: Tift Merritt, Another Country
Favorite Movie: Wall-E
Favorite TV Show: Top Chef, (special) A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All
Favorite knitting project: Devil Baby Blanket from Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair by Laurie Perry

Lisa Bayer, Marketing Director
Favorite Book: fiction: Joseph O’Neill, Netherland; nonfiction: Rose George, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters
Favorite CD: Michael Roux’s iTunes library
Favorite Movie: Quantum of Solace
Favorite TV Show: Mad Men, Meet the Press, The Rachel Maddow Show (and, yes, Stewart and Colbert)
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Yo La Tengo, Pygmalion Music Festival

Leslie DeLucia, Database Coordinator
Favorite CD: Beck, Modern Guilt
Favorite TV Show: Sons of Anarchy, Fringe, Lipstick Jungle
Favorite Young Adult Book: OK, I ‘ll admit it. I enjoyed Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series.
Worst Movie: Twilight

Heather Munson, Journals Production Editor
Favorite book: Mark Sarvas - Harry, Revised
Favorite album/CD: Gary Louris - Vagabonds
Favorite movie: Young at Heart (a 2007 release that didn’t make it to C-U till May 2008)
Favorite live music performance: Bottle Rockets 15th anniversary show at the High Dive, with opening performance by Otis Gibbs
Favorite tv show that’s been cancelled: Dirty Sexy Money

Angela Burton, Assistant Managing Editor
Favorite Book: David S. Reynolds, Walt Whitman’s America: A Cultural Biography–I was in the mood for biography this year, and this book has it all. Great writing, great research, great method, and a great subject.

Favorite CD: TV on the Radio, Dear Science

Favorite Movie: Ironman. I’ll see Robert Downey Jr. in anything. If you haven’t seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, do so. Downey is sublime in it.

Favorite TV Show: Burn Notice, Life

Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc. – Angie Heaton, Dottie and the ‘Rail, and the Hathaways at Mike ‘n Molly’s in the beer garden. It rained in the middle, but everybody covered up the equipment and then when the rain passed, the musicians came back and played. Fun night.

Tamara Shidlauski, Production Coordinator
Favorite Book: a three way tie: The Thirteenth Tale - Diane Setterfield; The
Painter of Battles - Arturo Pérez-Reverte; The Somnabulist - Jonathan Barnes
Favorite CD: Project Jenny, Project Jan - Xoxoxoxoxo (although this year
I’ve been more of a singles girl than an album girl, which leads to . . .)
Favorite Singles: “Sour Cherry” - The Kills;  “Kid On My Shoulders” - White
Rabbits
Favorite Movie: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day
Favorite TV Show: a two way tie: Supernatural; Lost
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Flogging Molly (even though I had to endure the awfulness of the House of Blues in Chicago to see them)
Favorite Character in a TV Show Watched Only By Me: Chuck Bass - Gossip Girl

Kathleen Kornell, Rights & Permissions Manager
Favorite Book: John Gregory Dunne – Vegas: A Memoir of a Dark Season
Favorite CD: The Kills – Midnight Boom
Favorite Movies: Wall-E, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
Favorite TV Shows: Pushing Daisies, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother, Top Chef, Mad Men
Favorite Restaurants: Saigon in Savoy, Pink’s Famous Hot Dogs (Los Angeles), Fast Eddie’s in Alton, IL

Kendra Boileau, Senior Acquisitions Editor
Favorite Book: Jonathan Rosen, The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature
Favorite CD: Soundtrack to the Movie Once
Favorite Movie: Once
Favorite TV Show: House
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc. – Massenet’s Manon at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, featuring Natalie Dessay and Jonas Kaufmann, October 31, 2008

Laura Asbury, Marketing Assistant
Favorite Film: Thus far, The Dark Knight.  However, most of the best films of 2008 will not be in theaters until late December. 
Projected Favorite Film: Revolutionary Road, Doubt
Favorite Book: David Sedaris - When You Are Engulfed in Flames
Favorite Website Discovery: InContention.com
Favorite Television Program: The Office, Project Runway
Favorite Song: Adele - “Chasing Pavements”
Favorite Live Performance: RENT, Spring Awakening, and In The Heights on Broadway

Michael Roux, Publicity Manager
Favorite Book: David Servan-Schreiber - Anticancer: A New Way of Life
Favorite CD: The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age of the Understatement, Beaujolais – Love at Thirty (a harrowing “breakup” album)
Favorite Movie: The Visitor
Favorite TV Show: The Unit, 30 Rock, Countdown, Daily Show, Colbert Report
Favorite live performance, theater/music/comedy/etc.: Beaujolais at Mike ‘n’ Molly’s, Champaign, IL

Paula Kaufman, Dean of the University of Illinois Libraries, measures the ROI of the University of Illinois libraries based on grants received by the University written with references to university library resources (to paraphrase the academic paper).

And I thought the correct response was, “They’re invaluable!”

Today’s San Francisco Chronicle includes Benjamin Ivry’s review of the new English translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s Wartime Diary.

“In 1991, Such a Sweet Occupation by Gilbert Joseph pointed out that Beauvoir and Sartre, far from deserving the reputation they were granted as heroic wartime resisters, were exclusively concerned with the advance of their own literary careers. Wartime Diary confirms this (if we add sex and food as other obsessions), in a fluent translation by Anne Deing Cordero, professor emerita of French at George Mason University.”

Wartime Diary is the third in our Beauvoir Series following Philosophical Writings (University of Illinois Press, 2004) and Diary of a Philosophy Student: Volume 1, 1926-27 (University of Illinois Press, 2006).

Most mainstream newspapers and journalists are comfortable drawing connections between today’s financial crisis and the one we call the Great Depression. They also like to comment on the similarities between Obama’s “pragmatism” (and that of his cabinet picks) and the pragmatic economic policies and picks of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  With the release of Red Chicago in paperback, I too am thinking about comparisons between the 1930s and today.  Unlike those who are absorbed with presidential politics and questionable Wall Street bailouts, I am closely following workers’ reaction to our troubling times.
 
Crisis in the auto industry and the closing of Chicago’s Republic Windows and Doors have been my two recent obsessions. In considering an auto bailout, several southern senators went on a full-on frontal assault against the UAW and organized labor, in essence blaming the unions for the industry’s current plight.  In Chicago, Republic Windows and Doors employers thought they’d be able to close their plant without providing their unionized UE workers adequate notice or their appropriate and negotiated severance. Rather than take these knocks quietly, the UAW and Republic’s UE workers pushed back.  UAW leaders are standing up to union bashing and the threat of give backs and UE workers skillfully and peacefully accomplished a sit in. While the auto situation is still in flux, Republic workers won their demands. 

In light of these developments, we may have more to compare between today and the 1930s. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies and speeches convinced working people that they had the federal government’s support to organize labor unions. A flurry of labor activity and activism in industry throughout the country resulted. Of course, today’s times are different. Whereas Obama publicly supported Republic workers’ rights to what they had been promised, Republic workers fought over the conditions of their severance – not union recognition as workers had in the1930s. Today our manufacturing sector has been gutted and public unions are decidedly on the defensive. Yet these two signs of life among organized workers begs a larger question. Will the promise of Obama’s support for labor result in a resurgence of labor militancy?  I for one, certainly hope so.

*****

Randi Storch is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York College at Cortland and author of the newly available paperback Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-35.

(Thank you to SUNY Cortland for the author image.-Ed.)

I am pleased that there is enough interest in Strange Haven: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Shanghai to publish a paperback version.  Frankly, I’m also a little surprised by the positive reaction to the book.  After its publication (1999) I was invited to speak about the book and the Shanghai Jewish refugee community many times both locally and in other parts of the country, and speaking requests continue to dribble in to this day.  Partially as a result of writing the book I was asked to participate in two films. The first, Shanghai Ghetto, came out in 2002 and played in both New York and Los Angeles for a month and had shorter runs elsewhere.  CDs of the film are available from commercial lending outlets.  The documentary’s reception was surprising for a very low budget film filled mainly with talking heads, backed up by archival photographs and film clips.  I received a new round of speaking invitations about the Jewish refugee community in Shanghai during the Second World War as a result of Shanghai Ghetto’s release.

The second film, The Last Refuge—The Story of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai did not attain wide distribution.  However, an interesting sidelight of this documentary was Rabbi Morris Gordon’s appearance as an interviewee.  He had been a Chaplain, with the rank of Captain, in the U.S. army and, as described at length in the book, surprised us by showing up unexpectedly at my Bar Mitzvah in Shanghai after the War’s end in 1945.  Rabbi Gordon’s interview in The Last Refuge revolves mainly about having accidentally stumbled on my Bar Mitzvah during his brief stay in Shanghai prior to being repatriated to the U.S.  The student filmmakers were unaware that he was speaking about my Bar Mitzvah, one of his fellow interviews in the film.  Once I told them about the coincidence, the film could no longer be altered to include that information. (more…)