Last week Alberto Manguel—whose own work as a translator and editor makes him quite a qualified critic—wrote a review for the Spectator of Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Selected Writings. Translated by Joel Agee, the Selected Writings collects in three volumes the best of Dürrenmatt's plays, fictions, and essays—and as Manguel acknowledges—captures the essence of the author's work. Manguel writes:

I'd like to congratulate the University of Chicago Press for allowing us once again to read Friedrich Dürrenmatt in English, thereby restoring to the English-speaking public one of the most important writers of the 20th century … Dürrenmatt's best writing has been included, and almost any of these pieces is an astonishing example of a writer's power to portray and explain experience, and then subvert the whole procedure by opening up his arguments to unanswerable questions. Reading Dürrenmatt's work leaves us with the impression of having witnessed the creation and then the explosion of a small galaxy. The light continues to reach us long after closing his books.

We created a Friedrich Dürrenmatt website where you can peruse a fascinating collection of excerpts and essays, including an interview with Dürrenmatt .

Archived in Fiction | Literature | Reviews
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The reviews keep coming for From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism by Fred Turner; a consensus is developing that Turner has articulated an important new understanding of the relationship between the aspirations of the 1960s counterculture and the utopian visions of the creators and promoters of cyberspace.

Giles Slade reviewed the book about a week ago in the Los Angeles Times:

Turner is eager to trace the complex legacy of cybernetic theory and ideology from its World War II-era birthplace (the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Radiation Laboratory) through the counterculture of the 1960s to the rise of networked computing and the misleading ideology of purity that underlies contemporary views of cyberspace. … Turner describes how the back-to-the-land movement of the 1960s and early '70s eventually turned away from the political work of community-building toward the increasingly elitist belief that small technologies would transform consciousness and that together machinery and consciousness would provide the basis of a new social order.

As Slade summarizes the book in his review, Turner traces the central role of Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth network in facilitating the transformation of counterculture into cyberculture. Between 1968 and 1998, via such familiar venues as the Whole Earth Catalog, the computer conferencing system known as WELL, and, ultimately, the launch of Wired magazine, Brand and his colleagues brokered a long-running collaboration between San Francisco flower power and the emerging technological hub of Silicon Valley.

"One of the many strengths of Turner's From Counterculture to Cyberculture, Slade concludes, "is that it articulates the sociological forces that created this revolution in our time. Twenty-nine dollars will never buy you more book than this."

Read the introduction and an excerpt.

Archived in Film and Media | History | Reviews
Posted by DB at 03:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Norman Maclean was born December 23, 1902. He will forever be associated with the mountains and rivers of Montana, but he was born on the rolling plains of Iowa. His family moved to Missoula, Montana in 1909.

Maclean came to the University of Chicago in 1928 to pursue graduate studies in English. Three years later he was hired as an instructor and eventually became the William Rainey Harper Professor of English. He won the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching three times during his UC career and served as an inspiring mentor to generations of students.

Upon his retirement in 1973, Maclean turned to writing, drawing material from his youth in Montana and his fascination with the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949. In 1976 the University of Chicago Press had the good fortune to publish a collection of his work, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. The book was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and the title novella was made into a movie in 1992. That same year we published Young Men and Fire which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for best general non-fiction.

Maclean died on August 2, 1990 in Chicago, at the age of 87.

Read the opening pages of A River Runs Through It and an excerpt from Young Men and Fire.

Archived in Commentary | Fiction | Literature
Posted by DB at 09:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pulling your hair out searching for that last minute gift? You can't go wrong with The Chicago Manual of Style. It might not fall under the category of "fun" gifts, but it won't require two 'C' batteries, or any assembly. It's perfect for the person who has everything and universal enough to be appreciated by everyone from students to professionals—you've got all the bases covered with a shiny new copy of The Chicago Manual of Style. Heck, run down to the local bookstore and pick up two just in case there's anyone you forgot. And remember, The Manual is now available as a CD-ROM and an online version as well—with our online subscription service you won't even have to fight the crowds at the mall to get it.

Want more gift suggestions? Tempt your mind in our gift catalog.

Happy Holidays!

Archived in Commentary | Reference and Writing
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A recent review penned by the distinguished historian and scholar Anthony Grafton has much to say about Alessandro Scafi's new book Mapping Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth. Writing for The New Republic Grafton praises the book's detailed historical account of the various attempts—made throughout the Middle Ages to the Renaissance—to chart the geographical location of paradise. Grafton writes:

[In Mapping Paradise, Scafi] becomes a sort of erudite Virgil, leading the reader on an extraordinary journey through thousands of texts and maps—a journey that ends up teaching many lessons not only about the visions of the world but about tradition and how it operates.… Scafi's patient and scrupulous exegeses tease out the meanings of icons and symbols, and record the immensely varied visual and verbal conventions that the mapmakers devised, and make clear the extraordinary conceptual richness and density of the maps of paradise. Mapping Paradise is itself a masterly map of concepts and images whose logic has been lost with time.… Mapping Paradise does honor to its author and his teachers, as well as to the generations of scribes and miniaturists, exegetes and theologians, whose colorful world it charts with lucidity and insight.

Archived in Art and Architecture | History | Religion | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Writing in the December/January issue of Bookforum Steven Levy recalls a magazine article penned over thirty years ago by Stewart Brand. Levy notes that Brand's article, published in Rolling Stone in 1972, was one of the first to bring the then-obscure world of computer hackers into public view. That legendary RS article, "Spacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums", is an example of how Brand, the impresario of the counterculture, was instrumental in transforming attitudes towards technology and shaping our digital culture. But the story behind Brand and the radical social transformation he nurtured has gone largely undocumented—until now. Levy writes:

Fred Turner, author of the sharply observed and painstakingly researched From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, has produced a lengthy argument that Brand's feat of bringing computer geeks into a magazine best known for rock-star journalism and gonzo attacks on Richard Nixon was just one step in a decades long crusade to transplant the ideals of the '60s from the dirt-flecked fields of the commune to the elysian fields of cyberspace. In Turner's meticulously detailed if somewhat slow-motion book, he postulates that Brand was an idealistic leader of a merry band of cybernetic pranksters who framed the concept of computers and the internet with a surprising twist: These one-time engines of government and big business had [transformed] into a social force associated with egalitarianism, personal empowerment, and the nurturing cocoon of community. Furthermore, says Turner, Brand's promotion of this concept actually helped turn at least some of it into reality.

Indeed, From Counterculture to Cyberculture is a fascinating exploration of how networked culture came to be.

Read the introduction and an excerpt.

Archived in History | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 03:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In order to evade charges of racism, defenders of profiling point to actuarial data to bolster their claims that profiling is the most cost-effective way to fight crime, relying on the seeming logic of concentrating police resources on the people most likely to commit crime. Meanwhile anecdotal evidence—such as Al Gore being searched—serves to challenge the effectiveness of a purely random approach and nurtures the conventional wisdom that our security depends on targeting certain people. Yet, as Bernard Harcourt brilliantly argues in Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age, relying on profiling or other prediction tools can have the opposite effect—they can actually increase crime, depending on how targeted populations respond to intensified policing and the increased difficulties for certain groups, such as the recently paroled, to find jobs or pursue education. Harcourt's compelling analysis is required reading for anyone concerned with the effects of our society's increasing fixation on security, crime, and punishment.

Read the press release.

Archived in Law | Press Releases | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 02:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is, of course, one of the most enduringly popular and celebrated composers to have ever lived. With this year marking the 250th anniversary of his birth his compositions remain some of the most frequently interpreted by orchestras worldwide. But what accounts for the perennial popularity of his work? Writing for Opera News Todd B. Sollis praises Pierro Melograni's Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: A Biography for its keen insight into the enduring presence of Mozart's music. Sollis writes:

"Never able to secure the kind of well paid permanent court post that many of his contemporaries obtained—Mozart turned to the resources offered him by the consumer market. Melograni argues that in the process Mozart became the sublime composer we know.… Melograni demonstrates persuasively how the [burgeoning 18th C. public of consumers] furnishes the composer with 'new stimuli,' assures his greater liberty, and opens the way to modernity in ways that enable him to occupy center stage on the musical scene even two and a half centuries after his [birth]."

Expertly analyzing Mozart's genius and the social environment that allowed it to thrive, Melograni's biography will be welcomed by anyone wanting a deeper understanding of one of the greatest artists ever known.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Biography | Music | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We don't often get the chance to discuss Clint Eastwood on this blog. Pairing Eastwood with one of our authors may seem as absurd as, oh, pairing him with Martin Heidegger. Luckily, a journalist has given us the chance.

Alison Brady filed an article with the Kyodo news agency—picked up by Tokyo's Japan Times and San Francisco's Nichi Bei Times—that compared "two projects that challenge perceptions about Japanese soldiers and World War II." One is Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney's recent book Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers. The other project is Clint Eastwood's almost-released film Letters from Iwo Jima, based on letters of Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, commander of the Japanese garrison on the island during the battle for Iwo Jima. Both of these projects, writes Brady, by "focusing on the personal writings of the Japanese who died for their country, provide Americans a chance to learn, perhaps for the first time, who these soldiers actually were."

Kamikaze Diaries presents diaries and correspondence left by pilots of the tokkotai and other Japanese student soldiers who perished during World War II. The diaries are eloquent testimony contradicting both the stereotypes of the kamikaze held outside of Japan and the propaganda circulated by the Japanese military: that the tokkotai died happily for the Japanese emperor. The diaries quoted and analyzed in Ohnuki-Tierney's book show them writing soliloquies of anguish and fear, expressing profound ambivalence toward the war, and articulating thoughtful opposition to their nation's imperialism.

Read an excerpt from Kamikaze Diaries.

Archived in Books for the News | History
Posted by TXM at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"True philosophy leads to the latke."

So proved the great philosopher Ted Cohen in the 1976 Latke-Hamantash Debate at the University of Chicago.

Any night of Hanukkah is an appropriate time for the intellectual and gastronomic delights of The Great Latke-Hamantash Debate, a collection of the best of nearly sixty years of brilliant University of Chicago oratory deployed on behalf of latkes and hamantashen.

Our online feature for the book includes the text and audio of Ted Cohen’s “Consolations of the Latke” as well as recipes for both the immortal pancake and the equally worthy pastry.

Q.E.D.

Archived in Commentary
Posted by DB at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

With his unsettling eloquence and his varying voices of protest, play, rage, and refusal, Shylock—the Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice who famously demands a pound of flesh as security for a loan to his anti-Semitic tormentors—remains a source of perennial fascination for Shakespearian critics and audiences. As Robert Fulford, reviewer for the Canadian daily, the National Post, remarks, "the character of Shylock is so compelling that it seems he, not Antonio, must be the merchant in the title, so abrasive in his bitterness that audiences go home thinking only of him and forgetting all the people around him."

But of the dozens of books exploring the mystery and motivations of this fascinating character, Fulford notes Shylock is Shakespeare distinguishes itself from the rest, arguing that the figure of Shylock is so powerful because he is, in fact, the voice of Shakespeare himself. Fulford writes:

Kenneth Gross, a virtuoso critic, identifies the moneylender with the playwright, making Shylock a character into whom the greatest of all writers poured his own ambivalence, anger, and insecurity. Gross argues that Shakespeare found in Shylock a way to "articulate his own doubt, desire and rage, his troubled solitude." Gross imagines Shakespeare speaking to us admitting, "This character I've made, this Shylock, is myself. We are both opportunists of reading and speaking, making capital of human weakness, error and accident."

A bravura critical performance, Shylock Is Shakespeare will fascinate readers with its innovative means of coming to terms with the question of Shylock, ultimately taking readers to the very heart of Shakespeare's humanizing genius.

Archived in Literature | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The first Christians were Jews, and thought of themselves as Jews; it is therefore impossible to understand Christianity without tracing its Judaic roots" writes Chicago author Susannah Heschel in her essay for the December 18 edition of Newsweek. Herschel's essay, just in time for the holiday season, stresses the influence of the Jewish nativity of Jesus and "the Jewish values of education and social responsibility that his parents inculcated in him" in shaping the contemporary values held by much of the western world today.

Heschel's essay is part of the Newsweek holiday season cover story on understanding the world of the nativity: the moral and religious world into which Jesus was born and raised.

Heschel is the Eli Black Chair of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and the author of Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus.

Archived in Books for the News | Religion
Posted by TXM at 02:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a recent review for Time Out Chicago Ruth Welte writes that Caitlin Zaloom's Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London "is half fascinating cultural portrait and half in-depth academic text.… but what emerges from the mix is a nuanced, bottom up picture of Chicago's economic importance in the world market, and how our city's working class swagger has shaped derivatives trading from the inception of the market."

But what is "working class swagger" really worth in the market of the new millennium where "floor traders are being phased out as online trading becomes the norm," and "the need to be seen" is no longer relevant? According to Welte, Zaloom's got the answer. Out of the Pits considers the implications of this sea change for everyone involved, from the traders and brokers on the floor of the former Chicago Board of Trade, to the market as a whole.

Documenting how Chicago is responding to the digital transition and how its traders are remaking themselves to compete in the contemporary marketplace, Out of the Pits is a must read for business buffs or anyone concerned about the future of the American marketplace.

Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Anthropology | Economics | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On Point, a public radio program produced by WBUR in Boston, recently ran this hour-long segment featuring a discussion with Paul Lewis, author of Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict. Debating and expanding on the topics of his book, Lewis engages Gideon Evans, a former Daily Show producer, and Jack Beatty, a senior editor at the Atlantic in a fascinating conversation about the ways humor is changing our cultural and political landscapes.

Lewis was also recently the featured guest on a short spot for the ABC Radio National show Saturday Extra. To find out why Cracking Up is generating so much attention pick up a copy for yourself!

Archived in Books for the News | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Writing for the December issue of Oceanography, the official magazine of the American Oceanography Society, columnist Tom Garrison notes that it's not often one comes across a text as comprehensive and versatile as Dorrik Stow's newest book Oceans: An Illustrated Reference. Garrison writes:

Here is a very rare book: a skillfully written, current, and unusually attractive presentation of ocean science that does not talk down to the audience [but that] unapologetically uses genus names and the SI system of measurements.… [Stow] has integrated contributions from experts in interlocking fields to produce a book that accomplishes the near-impossible: It could be used as a text (it has a useful glossary and index); it could grace anyone's coffee table (the cover photo demands one pick up the book); [or] it could sit happily on a reference shelf (where its charts and tables would be in considerable demand).

Lavishly illustrated and filled with current research, Oceans is a rich, magnificent, and illuminating volume for anyone and everyone who has ever heard the siren song of the sea.

We previously posted an essay by Stow, “Oceans and Sustainability”.

Archived in Biology | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 02:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bernard Harcourt, author of the recent Against Prediction: Profiling, Policing, and Punishing in an Actuarial Age, gave a talk last month for the Chicago's Best Ideas series at the University of Chicago Law School exploring and expanding on the topics he discusses in his new book. According to the Law School's Faculty Blog, "the talk was a very interesting look at law enforcement profiling and whether it works. Professor Harcourt approached this empirically, discussing whether it works on a practical level, injecting a new element in a debate that is traditionally about morals and ethics."

You can listen to the podcast of Harcourt's talk and follow along with the slides from his PowerPoint presentation. You can find his book on our website. Either way it would be ill advised to overlook his timely and revealing critique of the methods underlying our modern law enforcement policy.

Update: Chicago Public Radio's 848 also recently interviewed Harcourt about his new book. The audio can be found on the 848 website. Enjoy!

Archived in Author Events | Law
Posted by TXM at 01:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You'll never look with the same eyes at the British Museum's legendary Egyptian collection—or any other exhibition, for that matter—after going behind the scenes with Stephanie Moser to explore not only the objects on display in the collection's early years, but also the fascinating story of how and why they got there. Revealing the surprising extent to which these artifacts have defined ancient Egypt in the West, Moser argues here that museums don't just transmit knowledge—they actually create it.

Drawing on guidebooks and archival documents, Moser explains the specific strategies—such as using pattern and symmetry, juxtaposing different types of objects, and singling out particular items—that the British Museum and others used, and still use, in representing other societies and historical periods. Far from being passive receptacles for unchangeable facts, museums emerge in Moser's hands as dynamic hotbeds for new wisdom and ideas, profoundly affecting the way we think about everything from art to science to the deep mysteries of our past.

Read the press release.

Archived in History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 04:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Towards the end of each year the Times Literary Supplement solicits the opinions of some of their favorite authors and critics to recommend their personal picks for the Books of the Year. This year we are pleased to note that Marina Warner—a prolific novelist, historian, and critic—has chosen Lois Parkinson Zamora's The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction as one of her picks. Warner says:

It has been a lift to read Lois Parkinson Zamora's The Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, beautifully produced by the University of Chicago Press. She argues exhilaratingly that an aesthetic of fusion, adornment and exuberance rose phoenix-like in the aftermath of the conquest, shaping an influential mode of fantasy, as in the art and architecture of Mexico and the marvelous fictions of Borges.

The first study of its kind in scope and ambition, The Inordinate Eye is an extraordinary critique of the arts in Latin America.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Books for the News | Literature
Posted by TXM at 03:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With commentators weighing in on everything from the metastasizing organic movement to the ubiquity of celebrity chefs, food is all over the news these days. But even as the vibrancy of today's food culture is widely recognized, its deep roots in the early modern period—which gave birth to such everyday staples as coffee houses, restaurants, diet books, and, yes, celebrity chefs—are often overlooked. In his rollicking tour of this revolutionary chapter in food history, Robert Appelbaum paints a captivating picture of the delightfully unfamiliar cultures that gave rise to such enduring inventions.

Drawing on an array of writers including Shakespeare and Rousseau, as well as the rich historical records of England, France, Italy, and the Americas, Appelbaum's vivid narrative deftly weaves together a variety of perspectives, ultimately showing that food was never only food—it was an icon of cultural life and a cause for social struggle.

Read the press release.

Archived in History | Literature | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 01:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As noted by a recent review in the Wall Street Journal, in Economic Turbulence: Is a Volatile Economy Good for America? Clair Brown, John Haltiwanger, and Julia Lane have come up with a surprising answer to the titular question. In their revealing new book, the authors argue that contrary to popular belief "job turnover and firm disappearance" may actually "have positive effects, in the aggregate." Summarizing their argument for the WSJ, Tyler Cowen writes :

As workers lose jobs in one niche or sector, they gain in another, moving on to better jobs and higher pay. In the software sector new businesses are more productive, over a five-year period, than the firms they replace. This new business productivity gain, the authors show, is true generally across sectors—generating efficiency, products, and most importantly jobs.

The book has been the centerpiece of some recent discussions around the blogosphere as well. Free Exchange, an opinion forum moderated by the Economist, features a posting on the book, as does Cowen's own blog, Marginal Revolution—with the latter posting generating some commentary and controversy. If you'd like to find out more we've posted an excerpt from the book online, check it out and join the debate!

Archived in Economics | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 03:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before we became a nation of e-mailing, text-messaging, Blackberrying technology addicts, we had to become a nation of letter writers. Why? The postal system, as David Henkin argues in his engrossing new history, laid the cultural foundations for both today's telecommunications and the habits of interconnectedness that continue to reshape our society. Drawing us into the strikingly familiar yet intriguingly distant world of antebellum America's burgeoning postal culture, The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America tells the fascinating story of the birth of modern communication.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt.

Archived in History | Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 07:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)