"To say I was in love will vex the reader beyond endurance, but he must remember that being in love had a peculiar meaning for me. … It meant a desire to lay my personality at someone's feet as a puppy deposits a slobbery ball; it meant a non-stop daydream, a planning of surprises, an exchange of confidences, a giving of presents, an agony of expectation, a delirium of impatience, ending with the premonition of boredom more drastic than the loneliness which it set out to cure."

Cyril Connolly (1903—74) the author of Enemies of Promise, was one of the most influential critics of his time, who wrote for such publications as the New Statesman, the Observer, and the Sunday Times.

This month's selection is The Birthday Book by the Roman writer Censorinus.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, the Roman scholar Censorinus bestowed upon his best friend a charming birthday present: The Birthday Book, which appears here in its long-awaited first English translation. Laying out everything he knew about birthdays, the book starts simply, but by the conclusion of this brief yet brilliant gem, Censorinus has sketched a glorious vision of a universe ruled by harmony and order, where the microcosm of the child in the womb corresponds to the macrocosm of the planets. Alternately serious and playful, Censorinus touches on music, history, astronomy, astrology, and every aspect of time as it was understood in third-century Rome. He also provides ancient answers to perennial questions: Why does the day begin at midnight? Where did Leap Year come from? Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

E-books from the University of Chicago Press are offered in Adobe Digital Editions format for Mac, PC, and a number of mobile devices such as the Sony Reader, IREX, BeBook, and more. Check out these links to find out more about Adobe Digital Editions or more about e-books from the University of Chicago Press.

American consumer activism has a long and colorful history. Lawrence B. Glickman's Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America traces its lineage back to our nation's founding, revealing that Americans used purchasing power to support causes and punish enemies long before the word boycott even entered our lexicon.

Glickman and his book were the subject of an in-depth feature at Rorotoko.com and will be feted soon at the Newberry Library as part of their Newberry Seminars in Labor History. Here are the details:

November 14, 2009—Saturday Symposium: Consumers—The Unknown Social Movement Debating Lawrence Glickman's Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (University of Chicago Press, 2009). Featuring author Lawrence Glickman, University of South Carolina Commentators: Nan Enstad, University of Wisconsin Madison; Adam Green, University of Chicago; Susan Levine, University of Illinois at Chicago; Nancy MacLean, Northwestern University; and Rick Perlstein, author of Nixonland Please Note: The Saturday Symposium will be held from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM

We hope you can join us at the Newberry!

What do you get when you combine one of the world’s most influential economists and one of its most important legal thinkers? Well, when the two men concerned are Gary Becker and Richard Posner, you get sharp commentary, serious analysis, and innovative thinking about a stunning range of contemporary political and social issues.

Week after week for nearly five years, that’s what Becker and Posner have been offering at the Becker-Posner blog, and with Uncommon Sense, they gather the best of the posts and running debates that have informed, surprised, and confounded a host of readers. Arranged by topic, and updated to take account of subsequent developments, the essays in this volume bring an economic perspective to such questions as the sale of human organs, the use of steroids in professional sports, the regulation of CEO compensation, and many more. To watch two such erudite thinkers trade ideas—and even forceful disagreements—is a sheer pleasure, and a testament to the power of minds unfettered by convention and unwilling to settle for received wisdom.

Read the press release.

Born in Brussels, Strauss grew up in France and attended the Sorbonne in Paris where he agrégated in Philosophy in 1931. He briefly became a visiting professor at the University of São Paulo in Brazil where he also made one of his first forays into ethnographic fieldwork conducting research in the Matto Grosso and Amazon rainforest in 1935. His return to Paris roughly coincided with the beginning of WWII but because of his Jewish heritage and the installation of the Vichy regime in 1940, he emigrated to the United States where he spent the duration of the war teaching at New York's New School for Social Research. Lévi-Strauss returned to Paris in 1948, producing his first published work The Elementary Structures of Kinship the following year, and receiving his doctorate in Anthropology from the Sorbonne. Later in 1959 he would be named to a chair in Social Anthropology at the Collége de France.

Highly decorated for his work throughout his career, he was elected to the Académie Française in 1931 and received the Erasmus Prize for his notable contributions to the social sciences in 1973. In 2003 he received the Meister Eckhart Prize for philosophy and has received honorary doctorates from universities such as Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia. He is also a recipient of the Grand-croix de la Légion d'honneur, and is a Commandeur de l'ordre national du Mérite and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.

In 2008 he became the first member of the Académie Française to reach the age of 100.

The University of Chicago Press was honored to publish editions in English of the following books by Claude Levi-Strauss:

The Savage Mind (1968)
The Raw and the Cooked (1969)
From Honey to Ashes (1973)
The Origin of Table Manners (1978)
The Naked Man (1981)
Structural Anthropology, Volume 2 (1983)
The View from Afar (1985)
The Jealous Potter (1988)
Conversations with Claude Levi-Strauss) (1991)
The Story of Lynx (1995)

In the tense months that followed the 9/11 attacks, the public’s fears of further terrorism were fanned by the deadly anthrax letters, which seemed to symbolize the ease with which terrorists could kill using biological weapons. But in the subsequent years the United States government has spent billions of dollars on combating bioweapons—so citizens can rest easy, knowing we’re much safer. Or are we?

Far from it, say Lynn Klotz and Edward Sylvester, and with Breeding Bio Insecurity they make a forceful case that not only has all of that money and research not made us safer, it’s made us far more vulnerable. Laying out their case clearly and carefully, they show how the veil of secrecy in which biosecurity researchers have been forced to work—in hundreds of locations across the country, unable to properly share research or compare findings—has caused no end of delays and waste, while vastly multiplying the odds of theft, sabotage, or lethal accident. Meanwhile, our refusal to make this work public causes our allies and enemies alike to regard U.S. biodefense with suspicion. True biosecurity, Klotz and Sylvester explain, will require that the federal government replace fearmongering with a true analysis of risk, while openly involving the public and the scientific community in a joint effort to reduce the threat of bioterror.

Read the press release.

As an article in the November London Review of Books points out, the term "honor killing" is relatively new to the western legal system, but in recent years it has increasingly come into play as cases of filicide in Middle Eastern immigrant communities—often motivated by inter-generational culture clashes over arranged marriages—become more common. To explore this topic the LRB article cites several recent books on the subject including Unni Wikan's In Honor of Fadime: Murder and Shame—the tragic tale of Kurdish emigre Fadime Sahindal, murdered in Uppsala, Sweden in 2002 by her father because of her relationship with a man outside of their community—a tragedy compunded by her efforts to avoid such a fate by bringing the issue to the public's attention. As Jacqueline Rose writes for the LRB:

Fadime is remarkable for the way she went public. She secured convictions against her father and brother for threatening to kill her, and then again against her brother for seriously assaulting her during a return visit to Uppsala: he was given a five-month prison sentence.…

Fadime's successes in court gave her every reason to believe that her boldness was paying off. A month before her father and brother were due to be sentenced, she appeared with Patrik on television; they talked about their love and the threats against them. Fadime sought publicity in the belief that it would save her life: 'Perhaps they won't dare to kill me now that so many people know who I am!' Two months before her death, in November 2001, she agreed, after first refusing, to address a seminar in the Swedish parliament organised by the Violence Against Women network. In front of an audience of 350, she described her turn to the mass media as her 'last chance'. She had hoped to create a public debate about the problems of girls from immigrant families. But she also recognised that what she called the 'media circus' had got out of control. Fadime had become a 'national celebrity'. For her sister Nebile, it was this that drove their father to violence, and made him sick (that he was sick would be the grounds for his defence).

There is… something contradictory in the idea that someone could 'go for celebrity status in an attempt to protect herself' (celebrity always contains a potential element of shame). But if this case is so powerful, and more than justifies the meticulous attention Wikan gives to it, it is because Fadime is also driven by another vision of social obligation. She is speaking for the invisible women of her community.… Each of these three books can be read as a form of devotion (Wikan's is literally written 'in honour' of her subject): they are at once tributes and campaigns. To write about honour killing is in the first instance simply to demand that these crimes be talked about and seen. Viewed in these terms, Fadime's self-exposure is a kind of sharing and an act of love: 'I gave voice, and lent face.'

For more read the complete article on the LRB website and read this excerpt from the book.

Though the telegram may be long gone, the allure of a dispatch from a foreign land remains strong. So when Philip Graham began chronicling his sojourn in Portugal at the popular McSweeney’s Web site, it didn’t take long for his dispatches to attract a following of readers eager to experience the faded glories and living mysteries of Lisbon.

Now Graham has expanded on those dispatches, and the resulting book, The Moon, Come to Earth, is travel writing at its lyrical, introspective best. Whether wandering Lisbon’s cobbled medieval streets or wrestling with complicated local customs on the subway, Graham brings an attentive eye and love of idiosyncrasy to scenes that epitomize the paradox of living in a foreign city: Neither a tourist nor a local, he is forever between cultures, fascinated and admiring, but at the same time separate and uncertain. Through his explorations, the culture of Portugal—its rich literary culture, inventive cuisine, and saudade-drenched music—comes vibrantly to life. The Moon, Come to Earth is both a love letter to Lisbon and a testament to the pleasures and discoveries of travel itself.

Read the press release.

Also read an excerpt and see the author's website.

"Yes, we are all lost and wandering in the thick mists. We have no destinations. The city is without outlines. And the drift of figures is a meaningless thing. Figures that are going nowhere and coming from nowhere. A swarm of supernumeraries who are not in the play. Who saunter, dash, scurry, hesitate in search of a part in the play."

Ben Hecht (1894—1964) was a reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily Journal and the Chicago Daily News as well as a playwright, novelist, short story writer, and scriptwriter.

Granta magazine's latest issue is all about our fair city of Chicago, featuring fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and photography by a number of renown contributors, including Press authors like Nelson Algren, Stuart Dybek, Anne Winters, and Roger Ebert (for the online edition only). Demonstrating the city's role beyond its reputation as "the hog butcher of the world" or the playground of famous gangsters like Al Capone and John Dillinger, Granta's Chicago edition focuses on the city, in acting editor John Freeman's words, "as a microcosm for America" and "a nexus for world culture."

To celebrate the launch of the issue Granta has canvassed some of the best local bookstores and asked them to provide a list of their five favorite books about Chicago. Currently the Granta website is showcasing the selections from 57th Street books. 57th Street's five selections: The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko, Division Street: America by Studs Terkel, as well as two recently published by the Press: Neil Harris's The Chicagoan: A Lost Magazine of the Jazz Age, and D. Bradford Hunt's newly released Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing.

With The Chicagoan historian Neil Harris brings the Jazz Age magazine of its title back to life in the pages of his new book which features lavish full-color reproductions of the bi-weekly's art-deco inspired covers and illustrations, as well as reprints of the fascinating editorials and reviews that ran in its pages almost a century ago. And in Blueprint for Disaster Hunt offers a unique perspective on the infamous failure of high rise government housing projects like Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor Homes that challenges explanations attributing their decline to racial discrimination and real estate interests, arguing instead that Chicago's public housing crisis was a failure of public planning.

See 57th Street Books' list of five "Great Books about Chicago" and find out more about Granta's Chicago issue on the Granta website.

Also on the Press website:

Read an interview with the Neil harris, see a gallery of covers and illustrations from the magazine and sample pages in PDF (7.0Mb) from the book.

In January we announced the birth of the new series "South Asia Across the Disciplines"—a unique collaborative publication effort between Columbia University Press, the University of California Press, and the University of Chicago Press designed to increase publication opportunities for emerging scholars in the field. We recently unveiled a new website for the project offering more details, including a formal call for submissions and a list of forthcoming publications at www.saacrossdisciplines.org.

According to the SAAD website:

"South Asia Across the Disciplines" publishes work that aims to raise innovative questions in the field. These include the relationship between South Asian studies and the disciplines; the conversation between past and present in South Asia; the history and nature of modernity, especially in relation to cultural change, political transformation, secularism and religion, and globalization. Above all, the series showcases monographs that strive to open up new archives, especially in South Asian languages, and suggest new methods and approaches, while demonstrating that South Asian scholarship can be at once deep in expertise and broad in appeal. We invite manuscripts from art history, history, literary studies, philology or textual studies, philosophy, religion, and the interpretive social sciences, especially those that show an openness to disciplines other than their own.

As a collaboration among leading university presses, "South Asia Across the Disciplines" marks a new approach. Each book in the series is published under the imprint of one of the three presses, but all are promoted as part of the series, sharing in design, advertising, and publicity.

To find out more about this exciting new publication initiative from three of the academy's leading publishers, navigate to www.saacrossdisciplines.org.

Last week, the Field Museum debuted to much fanfare the renovated Grainger Hall of Gems, where the newest temporary exhibit, "The Nature of Diamonds," will be sparkling through March 28, 2010. But the hall itself, one of the most popular areas of the museum since it opened in 1921, has reemerged polished, shiny, and chock full of dazzling gems. As the Field Musuem notes on its website:

Featured are all the major gemstone varieties, from those known for thousands of years to newcomers discovered in recent decades. You'll behold rare jewels from every era, including an Egyptian garnet necklace more than 3,400 years old; a Chinese jade ornament thought to have been carved about 600 years ago; and a modern pendant created by C.D. Peacock containing a 28.84-carat tanzanite stone—one of the rarest gems in the world. The exhibition combines the beauty of nature with the creativity of human artistry, so don't miss this unique opportunity to follow gems from their raw state to their remarkable setting in stunning jewelry.

To celebrate the reopening of the Grainger Hall, the University of Chicago Press has partnered with the Field Museum to publish Gems and Gemstones: Timeless Natural Beauty of the Mineral World. Featuring nearly 300 color images of the cut gems, precious and semiprecious stones, gem-quality mineral specimens, and fine jewelry on display at the Grainger Hall of Gems, Gems and Gemstones showcases a dazzling array of creations from around the world. Diamonds, sapphires, rubies, amethysts, pearls, topaz, amber—every major gem gets its due in what will be an invaluable source on the subject for years to come.

You can sample pages from the book here or ogle gorgeous jewelry in this birthstone gallery.

Today's Inside Higher Ed. contains an interview with James C. Garland, author of Saving Alma Mater: A Rescue Plan for America's Public Universities. In the interview Garland discusses the economic difficulties that many public universities currently face, among them declining faculty salaries, dramatic rises in tuition costs, and deferred maintenance that "far exceeds state renovation budgets." More than just fallout from the nation's worst recession since the '30s, as Garland argues "the historic economic model—ample public subsidies resulting in affordable tuition—has broken down and cannot be fixed. The current economic crisis has obviously accelerated the decline, but even after the economy recovers I believe there will be no turning back the clock."

Thus in Saving Alma Mater: A Rescue Plan for America's Public Universities Garland offers readers a timely and comprehensive "rescue plan" for America's public universities that would tie university revenues to their performance and exploit the competitive pressures of the academic marketplace to control costs, rein in tuition, and make schools more responsive to student needs.

In the interview Garland cites four elements to his approach including: turning public universities into autonomous state-owned entities governed by independent boards of trustees; pushing states to redirect taxpayer dollars that previously subsidized campuses to fund grants and scholarships only to eligible students; streamline campus decision-making through financial incentives to encourage professors and administrators to use their time more productively; and lastly, revamping the methods for selecting presidents, chancellors, and trustees to mimic the more informed and rigorous procedures at private institutions.

To find out more about Garland's plan for saving alma mater, read the full interview on the Inside Higher Ed. website and read an excerpt from the book.

Also see the author's blog.

Bloggingheads.tv has posted an interesting interview with Eric A. Posner, author of The Perils of Global Legalism. In the interview Posner and host Henry Farrell discuss a variety of issues related to the topic of Posner's new book which offers a provocative argument against the establishment of an international rule of law. Watch the complete interview below or navigate to Bloggingheads.tv.

With The Perils of Global Legalism, Eric A. Posner contends that advocates of global legalism demonstrate a dangerously naive belief that law can be effective even in the absence of legitimate institutions of governance. After tracing the historical roots of the concept, Posner carefully lays out the many illusions—such as universalism, sovereign equality, and the possibility of disinterested judgment by politically unaccountable officials—on which the legalistic view is founded. Drawing on such examples as NATO's invasion of Serbia, attempts to ban the use of land mines, and the free-trade provisions of the WTO, Posner demonstrates throughout that the weaknesses of international law confound legalist ambitions—and that whatever their professed commitments, all nations stand ready to dispense with international agreements when it suits their short- or long-term interests.

To find out more read an excerpt from the book.

Last summer, the legendary Hyde Park Seminary Co-op Bookstores launched a new "web magazine" called The Front Table. Just like the stores themselves, the blog is eclectic, intellectual, and full of fascinating reads. One of our favorite features is "The Editors Speak," a semi-regular look behind the scenes at what goes into the making of a book.

The Press's editorial staff have contributed three times to the column, and, indeed, our own Rodney Powell inaugurated the series with his inside look at the genesis of Scorsese by Ebert. In the piece, Powell discusses his trepidation about contacting the great director, his admiration for the professionalism of the great critic, and his appreciation for the sometimes-overlooked contributions of our design staff. Executive Editor Christie Henry also wrote on her experience with Bigfoot—the book, not the imaginary beast. In her piece, she admits "the irony of a university press publishing a book on Bigfoot" but defends its very serious intentions.

Just this week, the Front Table published Mary Laur's reflections on the herculean task of compiling the monumental The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion. Ten years in the making and consisting of 570 articles, The Child is a logistical feat as well as a landmark resource for anyone who has, or once was, a child. After you read Laur's account, check out the website for the book, and get lost in the world of The Child. Also, see a video from the U of C News Office of Richard Shweder, editor-in-chief of The Child, talking about the book and the process of its creation.