UNP congratulates Margaret D. Jacobs again on winning the 2010 Athearn Western History Association Prize for her book White Mother to a Dark Race. We just received this photo from the annual awards banquet at the WHA Conference in Lake Tahoe on Friday, Oct. 15. Jacobs is a professor of history and the director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She has also won the 2010 Bancroft Prize and the Armitage-Jameson Prize sponsored by the Coalition for Western Women’s History.    Heather Lundine, UNP managing editor; Margaret D. Jacobs, author; John R. Wunder, President … Continue reading UNP author wins 2010 Athearn Prize

Jay Gallentine was presented with the AAS Emme Award Tuesday night! This annual award is sponsored by the American Astonautical Society and recognizes outstanding books which advance public understanding of astronautics through originality, scholarship and readability.   Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft, tells the story behind the first unmanned space probes and planetary explorers. It includes everything from the Sputnik and Explorer satellites in the 1950s to the Voyager Missions of the 1970s. Gallentine uses original interviews with keyplayers, never-before-seen photos and journal excerpts to illustrate the lives and legacies of the Americans and Soviets who experienced … Continue reading UNP author presented with AAS Emme Award

The White House announced yesterday that President Obama will be giving Bill Russell, a former NBA star, the Medal of Freedom. This high civilian honor is presented to individuals who have made contributions to the security or the national interest of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. Bill Russell is a former Boston Celtics Captain who led the team to eleven championships in thirteen years and was named NBA’s Most Valuable Player 5 times. He then went on to be the first African American to coach in the NBA. Russell is also an … Continue reading Bill Russell receives medal from President Obama

Some exciting news!  Author of Just Breathe Normally, Peggy Shumaker, was announced as the new Alaska State Writer Laureate 2010-2012 by The Alaska State Council on the Arts. As State Writer Laureate, Shumaker will represent the Council and the State of Alaska in communities, conducting workshops and readings as well as connecting Alaskan writers with each other and with the outside world. She succeeds former poet laureate Nancy Lord, who is the author of Rock, Water, Wild (University of Nebraska Press, 2009).  In Just Breathe Normally, a traumatic cycling accident causes Shumaker to search for meaning within extremity. The book … Continue reading UNP author announced as laureate

Last Friday, Oct.8, the Nebraska Book Awards were announced and UNP came away with two awards.   Bruce A. Glasrud and Charles A. Braithwaite’s  African Americans on the Great Plains: An Anthology won for the anthology category. This book, the first of its kind, supplies the critical missing chapter in American history of African Americans in the western frontier. There might have been a mention of Estevan, slavery, or the Dred Scott decision, but the rich and varied experience of African Americans on the Great Plains went largely unnoted until recently.    For the nonfiction honor, Robert Cochran’s Louise Pound:  … Continue reading Two more awards for UNP

What’s that cliché saying again… When it rains, it pours? Because that is exactly what is happening right now with UNP awards. David L. Preston has been selected to receive the 2010 Annual Archives Award for Excellence in Research for his book, The Texture of Contact: European and Indian Settler Communities on the Frontiers of Iroquoia, 1667-1783. The award is given by the New York State Archives for extensive research using the records at the Archives as a Hackman Resident in 1999 and the publication of the book this year.The Texture of Contact is a landmark study of Iroquois and … Continue reading UNP author wins research award

Good things come in threes, right? UNP is proud to share that Peruvian writer, Mario Vargas Llosa is the third consecutive Nobel Prize in Literature winner to publish with our press. He was a contributor to The Global Game: Writers on Soccer published in 2008. The Global Game is a collection of writings that reflect the universal and infinitely varied ways in which soccer connects with human experience.  UNP is also the publisher of Nadirs (Nebraska, 1999) by 2009 Nobel Laureate Herta Mueller, as well as Onitsha (Nebraska, 1997) and The Round and Other Cold Hard Facts (Nebraska, 2002) by … Continue reading UNP contributor wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Coastal Encounters is a collection of research about the transformation of the Gulf South in the Eighteenth Century. It reveals the history of the coast’s collision of European, African and Native peoples with different perspectives about the changes that occurred. One of the contributors is Shannon Lee Dawdy, who is one of the nation’s leading researchers on topics related to New Orleans and the Caribbean. She has also just been named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. Dawdy received the award  — also known as a "genius grant" — from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which includes a $500,000 … Continue reading UNP contributor wins the genius grant

Two UNP authors — Jay Gallentine and Margaret D. Jacobs — recently won three prestigious national awards, and we couldn’t be more proud.   Ambassadors from Earth: Pioneering Explorations with Unmanned Spacecraft, by Jay Gallentine, won the annual Eugene M. Emme Astronautical Literature Award, which is sponsored by the American Astonautical Society. Ambassadors from Earth tell the story behind the first unmanned space probes and planetary explorers. It includes everything from the Sputnik and Explorer satellites in the 1950s to the Voyager Missions of the 1970s. Gallentine uses original interviews with keyplayers, never-before-seen photos and journal excerpts to illustrate the … Continue reading UNP authors win three national awards