The Blizzard Voices by Ted Kooser “It’s the little details that make the stories vivid. . . . In just 64 pages, Kooser brings the people of the great blizzard back to life. You can feel the chill in these pages, hear the voices as if you and the speaker are huddled next to the stove, talking of recent events while the windows rattle in the January wind.”—Nebraska Life Read More Praise for The Blizzard Voices. Continue reading More Praise for The Blizzard Voices

  Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward by Charlyne Berens “[A] fascinating and complex portrait. In Hagel’s case, such a portrait is indeed timely.”—Nebraska Life Read more praise for Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward. Continue reading More Praise for Chuck Hagel: Moving Forward

Whether it’s the Cardinals or the Tigers, baseball season is almost over.  To tide you over to the next season, try these baseball books from the University of Nebraska Press: Tris Speaker: The Rough-and-Tumble Life of a Baseball LegendBy Timothy M. GayVisit the bookpage to read an excerpt Blackout: The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Spring TrainingBy Chris LambVisit the bookpage to read an excerpt The Boys Who Were Left Behind: The 1944 World Series between the Hapless St. Louis Browns and the Legendary St. Louis CardinalsBy John Heidenry and Brett TopelVisit the bookpage to read an excerpt Miracle … Continue reading Baseball Fix

The Journal of Sports Media now has its own blog!  Brad Schultz, the editor of Journal of Sports Media, began the blog this month.    Continue reading Announcing Journal of Sports Media Blog

his may be one of the shortest books I have ever read, has taken the longest time to get through, and even longer to mentally digest.  The Question , by Henri Alleg, was challenging for me to read.  I love fiction and I love poetry.  This was NONFICTION to the highest degree.  So real it felt surreal.  I tried and tried to put myself in his position to imagine what I would do – – the only conclusion I came to is that I am a much weaker person than I hoped I would be.  Mr. Alleg endured tortures that … Continue reading “Question” awakens my motivation

The Question by Henri Alleg “The Question remains a political touchstone in France, and Mr. Alleg, who is still active in his mid-80s, is a familiar commentator there on the past crimes of French colonialism. But in the English-speaking world, the book has been largely forgotten. Now Bison Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, has published a new American edition, the first since 1958. It includes an afterword in which Mr. Alleg draws parallels between French conduct in Algeria and the American treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.”—The Chronicle of Higher Education Read More … Continue reading More Praise for The Question

Nocturnal America by John Keeble “Keeble’s Pacific Northwest [is] a rich and desolate landscape that yields a limitless trove of both peril and passion. . . . Keeble is adept at speaking from either the male or female point of view. . . . Daily existence is a wild and precarious dance in Keeble’s world, where lives gingerly balance between hope and grief.”—Booklist Read More Praise for Nocturnal America Continue reading More Praise for Nocturnal America

his month’s podcast features UNP author Louise Barnett reading from the new preface to Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. Barnett describes some of the fascinating and slightly unusual experiences–including adopting the persona of Custer for a battery of psychological tests–that have arisen from her fascination with the (in)famous general. Her work proves that George Armstrong Custer remains a national historical obsession. For more than a century, Americans have been captivated by the legend of General George Armstrong Custer. But the various truths of Custer’s life and last stand prove elusive. Why are … Continue reading October Podcast: Louise Barnett Reads from Touched by Fire

The Meteor Hunt by Jules Verne,
translated and edited by Frederick Paul Walter and Walter James Miller

“With its stock comic and melodramatic characters, slangy dialogue, satiric jabs (knocking U.S. imperialism, Verne posits a 51-star flag), and supercilious authorial attitude, the yarn is easy to imagine as a Preston Sturges or Frank Capra movie, especially if the mildly archaic diction of this translation were retained. Darn good entertainment; excellently annotated, too.”—Booklist

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