Category: Guest blogs

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Need a dinner suggestion? Antarctic fare offers nice surprise

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We would like to welcome UNP's new marketing manager, Martyn Beeny to his
first blog post. He comes to UNP from the South Dakota State Historical Society Press in Pierre, SD, where he was Marketing Director and Associate Editor since 2005.

The first week on the job is always a whirl, a shimmering
mirage, where you keep thinking you are grasping the nuances of your new job
and the wonderful people you are meeting all around you, only to realize that
you cannot actually reach out and grab it—the mirage is the idea that you have
any idea about what you are doing, of course.

You meet a lot of new people, you try to learn their names
as quickly as possible, you move things around in your new office; all things
you expect. What I didn’t expect was to find myself standing in front of the
stove after work this week trying to cook sautéed penguin. Ok, hold on. Before
someone writes to PETA and sends them my name, I was not actually cooking
penguin; that is illegal! And yet, I did find myself in front of the stove
attempting to replicate a dish from our recent title, Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic
Cuisine by Jason C. Anthony.

Aside from the wonderful writing that describes so
eloquently the harsh cuisine of the Antarctic, Anthony included in his book a
selection of recipes from various points in Antarctica’s history. As I flicked
through the pages during that first, whirlwind week, one, that for sautéed
penguin, caught my eye. As mentioned above, it is illegal to kill/cook penguin,
but my mind instantly wondered if the recipe might be adapted slightly to use a
legal ingredient so that the modern reader might entertain himself (and
hopefully others) with fare from the south.

I don’t claim to be a chef, but I think I can follow
directions given in a recipe. That assumption led me to the aforementioned
position in front of the stove and to the photo diary below. Today, I shall feed
my fellow workers with sautéed “penguin.” We’ll let you know what they think!

Having traveled to Antarctica to spear my penguin (purchased
Cornish game hen from the frozen section in the local grocery store), I plucked
and cleaned it (defrosted it, opened the packaging, and removed as much meat as
I could!), and melted the butter. The original recipe in Hoosh called for a whopping four ounces of butter. I halved that.
I’m guessing that penguin meat requires a little more cooking than the rather
more fragile game hen I had substituted.

Hoosh 1

Continue reading “Need a dinner suggestion? Antarctic fare offers nice surprise”

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Krissed Off: Preserving the Ponca language

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My colleague Matt Bokovoy met Louis Headman, a Ponca elder, about a year ago in Oklahoma. Bokovoy is the Indigenous Studies editor at the University of Nebraska Press and was on his way to a gig with his band in Oklahoma City. He was keen to talk with Headman about his work on the first Ponca dictionary, a project Headman was undertaking in collaboration with the language's remaining speakers — a group of six elders. Collaboration is key to publishing, perhaps nowhere more so than at university presses. When a press like Nebraska becomes involved with an ambitious and sensitive project like the … Continue reading Krissed Off: Preserving the Ponca language

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Krissed Off: Seeing Nebraska in New Orleans

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Like many Americans, I first saw Nebraska from the interstate, zooming through at seventy-five. My early encounters with the University of Nebraska Press were more numerous and more substantial. As a grad student and then editor living in the Northeast and Deep South I saw the Nebraska name on dozens of spines at bookstores and in my professors’ offices, and I read reviews of UNP books in the scholarly and general-interest press. Associations (all of them positive!) were formed. Nebraska – the publisher but also in some meaningful sense the university and the place – became, for me, much more … Continue reading Krissed Off: Seeing Nebraska in New Orleans

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The Director Dish: A Word about Words

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I love words. Always have. As a
kid, I loved to do the Jumble in the newspaper every morning, and my mother,
sister, and I would play Scrabble whenever we had a chance. (Those were the
days you played on an actual printed game board!) Even today, I have three or
four Scrabble or Words with Friends games going at once and I do crossword
puzzles incessantly. I just generally love word games. (Word Warp is my latest
obsession, but it’s really not that challenging and is aggravating my carpal
tunnel syndrome.)

I like words on their own—before they
are lined up and carefully crafted into beautiful poetry or captivating fiction
or thoughtful memoir. I confess, though:  I play favorites. My favorites these days are "erstwhile,"
"penultimate," and "extra-canonical." Erstwhile makes the
current list because, although it means “of things past” or “former,” I’ve
always imagined that it has a bit of earnestness to it—former, yes, but with
some eagerness, some desire to please. Ridiculous, I admit, but it gives me a
bit of pleasure whenever I have the occasion to use it.

Penultimate is another word I can
picture in action. “Next to last.” I see penultimate lined up, second to the
end, leaning forward, trying not to be last. Penultimate is a wonderful word to
have at my disposal. As a university press publisher, I’ve been able to see
many multivolume series come to fruition, and there can be a certain sadness
when the penultimate volume is released, for we know the next one will be the
last. Or, alternatively, much joy knowing we are that much closer to completion!

Extra-canonical: "not included
in the canon of Scripture. " I love this word! And I’ve had many occasions
to use it since our announcement of the new JPS three-volume set, Outside the Bible, a collection of the
works not included in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), publishing in fall
2013. This set is an incredible, once-in-a-century compilation of translations
and commentary about works that did not make the cut: what they are, what they
mean, and why they weren’t included in the Bible. As I write this, it is the
third day of Hanukkah—and I'm wondering why weren’t the books of the Maccabees
included in the Bible? Or Jubilees, or the Psalms of Solomon?  Or Susanna? Alas, this is fodder for a future
blog . . .

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Krissed Off: The Searchability fetish

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In 2006 a colleague at a leading university press told me “searchability is a fad.” His comment has been on my mind ever since. Much of the discussion about electronic publishing, at least in scholarly circles, cycles back to searchability – the idea that our books will be more useful if readers can immediately home in on key words or phrases, either within a book or across many books. I spend a good part of my day with a search engine, so it’s not like I’m opposed to searching and searchability altogether. I’m not against electronic publishing either, although I’ve long … Continue reading Krissed Off: The Searchability fetish

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From the desk of Nicole Tonkovich

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TonkovichNicole Tonkovich is the author of newly released, The Allotment Plot: Alice C. Fletcher, E. Jane Gay, and Nez Perce Survivance. Tonkovich recently began a blog where she will transcribe field diaries kept by Alice Fletcher during
her allotment work. Click here for the first entry. Below she discusses how she discovered her book's topic. 

I became aware of E. Jane Gay and Alice C. Fletcher while
watching Ken Burns’s PBS series The West.
I was immediately intrigued–both by the clarity and beauty of Gay’s
photographs and by the fact that these two women were well into their middle
age when they went West, where Fletcher supervised the allotment of lands to
the Nez Perce Indians from 1889 to 1892.

As I delved into the story I was initially attracted to Gay’s
work. In addition to her photographs, she documented the pair’s adventures in a
series of witty and sometimes-acerbic columns published in reform periodicals
of the era. What she was telling the readers of these newspapers differed in
detail and in intent from the reports her friend Fletcher was sending to the
Indian Bureau. Somewhat reluctantly, I began to read Fletcher’s records, as
well. She was in many ways Gay’s opposite: where Gay was acerbic and witty,
Fletcher was earnest and hectoring. Gay had a lively sense of irony; Fletcher
lacked that sense entirely. Yet together they were part of the conception and
administration of a major federal program that impacted not only the Nez Perces
but nearly every Indian tribe in the nation, decimating their lands and
endeavoring to erase tribal identities altogether.

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Why University Presses Matter

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As a part of the University Press Week blog tour, UNP's Bison Book manager, Tom Swanson, explains why university presses matter to their region. The tour continues today at Syracuse University Press. A complete blog tour schedule is also available here. The University Press is a haven for those authors and books that may be lost in the world of big house publishing.  It’s not that the big houses ignore our region, it’s more a matter of we know what we want and we need outlets to provide it. The University of Nebraska Press came to the idea that while they are … Continue reading Why University Presses Matter

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From the desk of Jason C. Anthony

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AnthonyJason C. Anthony is the author of Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine, which is now available.

Writing
Hoosh, my first book, was a new way
to articulate my affection for Antarctica, an otherworldly place I called home
for several years. Like so many travelers to the polar regions, I found that the
experience of that strange, vast icescape, under an often ethereal light and marked
by traces of an astonishing history, changed me forever. Between 1994 and 2004,
I returned and returned to Antarctica to enjoy the hell out of a job that took
me by plane to the South Pole, across McMurdo Sound in an icebreaker, or into
small tent camps at –35°F in the middle of the polar ice cap. I’ve written
about Antarctica for years, publishing nearly two dozen essays and articles
about the place (many available to read at Albedo Images). 

Writing
Hoosh has been a real joy because it
allowed me to step away from my usual descriptions of landscape and experience
and instead focus on the history of Antarctic exploration and settlement. More
specifically, it allowed me to have some fun exploring the idea of food as a
window onto Antarctic history and culture. Writing about Antarctic cuisine is an
ideal way to measure the tenous relationship Antarcticans have had with their
lifeless home over the last century. It provided great opportunities to sketch many
of the great characters in Antarctic history – the well-known expedition
leaders, their little-known cooks, and other expedition members – and to
highlight the various writers – known and unknown, historical and contemporary
– who have told such great stories about dining at the bottom of the Earth.

Continue reading “From the desk of Jason C. Anthony”

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Krissed Off: Spot the dissertation

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Can you guess which of the following award-winning, widely reviewed books from the past couple of years originated as a dissertation? Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart Pekka Hamalainen, Comanche Empire Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts Aaron Sachs, The Humboldt Current Danielle McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street Sarah Igo, The Averaged American It’s a trick question; they all did. First books – often dissertations revised with the help of editors and peer reviewers – are among the most important scholarship published by university presses. The best revised dissertations are field-defining buzz books that generate … Continue reading Krissed Off: Spot the dissertation

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The Director Dish: From the playbook to print

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The Nebraska-Northwestern game on
Saturday was a thriller. Except for the Huskers themselves, I don’t think
anyone cared more about a Nebraska win than I. After all, I spent nearly ten
years at Northwestern University Press and last year, hosted three of my former
colleagues at Memorial Stadium, only to see the Wildcats beat us. This year, I
opted to stay home rather than fly to Evanston for the game. I was certain we’d
beat them—but boy was my resolve tested! Alas, the team came through for me.

Those of you who know our Press
know we publish a wide range of sports history, from golf to running to
hiking to professional and collegiate sports such as baseball, basketball, and
football. In fact, we are becoming so well known for our sports books that we
received a surprise visit from Orlando Magic senior VP Pat Williams yesterday.
He was in town for a speech but wanted to stop by and meet the folks at UNP
because he loves our books. We loved meeting him. Thanks, Pat!

Sadly, though, it doesn’t take
someone who follows college or pro sports to know the troubles that have beset
individuals and teams in a culture singularly dedicated to winning. In a book
we published in 2010, Scoreboard, Baby,
Ken Armstrong and Nick Perry go behind the scenes of the University of
Washington’s 2000 football season to uncover a tale of corruption, complicity,
and crime. Buzz Bissinger said it was “the most harrowing book I have ever read
about college sports.” Of course, there are even more harrowing tales about
college football these days—we read about them in the paper every day, it
seems. But college football doesn’t have a monopoly on these tales.

Continue reading “The Director Dish: From the playbook to print”