I just returned from a weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, where a terrific group of Western history readers and writers had gathered for the Will Rogers Medallion Awards. This organization, originally founded to honor cowboy poetry but now honoring works … Continue reading From the desk of Nancy Plain
Author Michelle H. Raheja is an assistant professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. Her articles have appeared in American Indian Culture and Research Journal, American Quarterly, and edited volumes. Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in … Continue reading Depp’s Tonto Recycles Stereotypes for New Audience
David George Surdam is an associate professor of economics at the University of Northern Iowa. He is the author of Wins, Losses, and Empty Seats, The Postwar Yankees and forthcoming Run to Glory and Profits: The Economic Rise of the NFL during the 1950s.
How
did I end up writing about the NFL? To borrow a line from Howard Cosell, “I
never played the game.” As a scrawny, bookish kid who could not throw or catch
a football with proficiency, I was not a prime candidate for the school team. I
also did not enjoy being hollered at. My parents prohibited me from playing,
both from fear of injury and from a dislike of the game. Still, the high school
football coach encouraged me to play, but to this day, I don’t know why. He
knew I couldn’t perform any of the fundamentals of the game; perhaps he wanted
me to raise the team’s grade point average.
I did, however, play Strat-O-Matic Baseball
and Football. I had long been interested in baseball history, having read
Harold Seymour’s Baseball. I can
still remember reading about baseball’s triumvirate, but mostly there were the
numbers. I can remember the day browsing in a local library when I chanced upon
the new Macmillan Baseball Encyclopedia.
Sheer delight—page after page of statistics.
Strat-O-Matic creator Harold Richman did a wonderful job transforming
statistics into a game. While I mostly played the baseball game, the football
version was actually more fun. There were more tactical decisions to make, and
of course, you could compile copious statistics.
As a senior in the Robert D. Clark Honors College at
the University of Oregon, I used regression analysis to explain baseball run
production—slugging average and on-base
percentage were paramount. While I attended graduate school and started my
academic career, though, my interest in baseball and football was quiescent.
One of my friends and mentors at Loyola University of Chicago suggested that I
diversify my research. I had pretty much said all I wanted to about the
economics of the American Civil War. Researching sports was an obvious choice
for me.
I just got back from the Western Writers of America (WWA) convention, held at the Riviera Hotel, in Las Vegas, Nevada, from June 24-29. In spite of the record-breaking 117-degree heat, it was one of the WWA’s best conventions ever. … Continue reading From the desk of Nancy Plain
Author Terese Svoboda, the winner of a recent Guggenheim Fellowship in fiction, will be in Omaha this Wednesday, July 10, from noon to 1:00 p.m. to join “Wednesday Words: The Braided River Series” at KANEKO in the KANEKO-UNO Library. Here … Continue reading From the desk of Terese Svoboda
Mary K. Stillwell is the author of the first-ever biography of Ted Kooser, available this September. Below she writes about Kooser receiving the Mark Twain Award. Ted Kooser, Nebraska’s Pulitzer Prize-winning former U.S. poet laureate, traveled to Michigan State in early … Continue reading From the desk of Mary K. Stillwell
Bright lights, tall buildings,
and people bustling about: in the city that never sleeps, a small bison named
Benny left the familiar Great Plains in order to conquer the book publishing
world.
The
idea of sending Benny to New York first came up in early April. The University
of Nebraska Press (UNP) marketeers decided we needed to send a representative
to New York City to promote the Press along with our imprint, Bison Books. Benny
had dreamed of going to New York ever since he was a calf, and finally, here
was his chance.
Benny traveled
to New York City during the first week in May, to promote UNP’s new Fall titles
to various publications and clients. Benny was a little sad that he would be
missing the lovely Spring weather Nebraska usually has in May. However, as May 1
approached, Nebraska encountered cold temperatures and snow. Benny wasn’t so
reluctant to leave anymore, because the East Coast was being faced with a
forecast of sunshine and heat, which was his favorite kind of weather!
So off Benny
went, flying from one city to the next until he finally landed in the Big
Apple. There was so much he wanted to do and so much he wanted to see! His
first stop was at one of the most well-known spots in NYC, the place where all
tourists go: Times Square.
Continue reading “The Marketeers Club: Little Bison in the Big Apple”
Barbara Loeb is the co-editor of The Woman Who Loved Mankind by Lilian Bullshows Hogan, the fascinating life story of a 20th-century Crow woman elder. Loeb and Mardell Plainfeather set out to tell Hogan’s story in traditional Crow storytelling forms. When Mardell … Continue reading From the desk of Barbara Loeb
Ray A. March is the author of River in Ruin, which discusses the history of the Carmel River since the arrival of Europeans to the Monterey Peninsula in the 1700s, focusing on its uses, users, and the recent impact of development. … Continue reading From the desk of Ray A. March
Susan Blackwell Ramsey is the author of A Mind Like This, winner of the 2012 Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Below she describes how she came to write the first poem titled “Pickled Heads, Saint Petersburg.” (Read the full poem here.) … Continue reading From the desk of Susan Blackwell Ramsey
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