The exhibit "Drawn to Fashion: The Illustrations of Mary Mitchell" begins today! The public is welcome to view the work of Mary Mitchell, Omaha fashion illustrator, now through Nov. 30 at the Robert Hillestad Textiles Gallery on the second floor of the Home Economics Building. The Hillestad Gallery is part of the Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Education and Human Sciences. See the full announcement from UNL here. In Drawn to Fashion: Illustrating Three Decades of Style, artist Mary Mitchell discusses the state of fashion illustration today and chronicles the three … Continue reading Drawn to Fashion: The Illustrations of Mary Mitchell

In no particular order . . . All Hallows Read Neil Gaiman proposes that we give each other scary books during the week of Halloween. I'm in. How about you? I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands — new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe'en. Make their flesh creep… (via Galleycat) Free Samples of the … Continue reading Bookish Links and Delightful Miscellany

The Wild West in England by William F. Cody, edited by Frank Christianson Army scout, frontiersman, and hero of the American West, William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody was also a shrewd self-promoter, showman, and entrepreneur. In 1888 he published The Story of the Wild West, a collection of biographies of four well-known American frontier figures: Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, and himself. Cody contributed an abridged version of his 1879 autobiography with an addendum titled The Wild West in England, now available in this stand-alone annotated edition, including all the illustrations from the original text along with photographs of … Continue reading Two new editions to The Papers of William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody Series

In conjunction with the premiere of Ken Burns’ new documentary on the Dust Bowl next month, you can save 25% off Dust Bowl Dairy by Ann Marie Low. Click here for the discount code. Offer expires Oct. 31, 2012. Burns’ film, The Dust Bowl, will air Nov. 18-19 on PBS. The film was written by Dayton Duncan and produced by Duncan, Burns, and Julie Dunfey. Duncan is the author of Scenes of Visionary Enchantment, which is now available in paperback. Continue reading Ken Burns’ new Dust Bowl documentary

Don’t miss these books this season from the Jewish
Publication Society!

From Gods to God
by Avigdor Shinan and Yair Zakovitch, translated by Valerie Zakovitch

The ancient Israelites believed things that the writers of
the Bible wanted them to forget: myths and legends from a pre-biblical world
that the new monotheist order needed to bury, hide, or reinterpret…

From Gods to God
is a provocative examination and recovery of the ancient myths and legends that
the Bible transformed, buried, or changed in order to fit a monotheistic
worldview.

The Life of Glückel of
Hameln translated by Beth-Zion Abrahams

This is the only English translation of Gluumlckel’s story
from the original Yiddish and is widely considered the most accurate and
complete translation available. It was out of print for many years until this
JPS edition…

The volume also includes an introduction by Beth-Zion
Abrahams that fills in the background of Gluumlckel’s life and tells how she
came to write her memoir.

 

Continue reading “JPS spotlight”

Below is a guest blog from authors Thomas
E. Cronin and Robert D. Loevy. Their new book, Colorado Politics and Policy, is a revised and expanded look at the government, politics, and political traditions
of this purple state.

Because the subtitle of our book is “Governing a Purple State,” many readers ask us: “Why is a once ‘reliably Republican’ state such as Colorado now a swing state, just as likely to vote Democratic as vote Republican?”

The answer is a simple one: “Because of the realignment of upper class, upper income, well-educated voters from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party."

Colorado is filled with high mountains and verdant valleys and lots of cattle grazing on the mountainsides. But the fact is most Coloradans live on a highly urbanized strip of land running from North to South for 150 miles at the eastern foot of the Rocky Mountains. In the center of this highly urbanized North/South corridor are Colorado’s two most populous cities – Colorado Springs and Denver.

Continue reading “Colorado voter insight”

Patrick Madden is spending the end of 2012 on a Fulbright Fellowship in Uruguay with his family, teaching some seminars and writing some essays. During his stay, he is writing a series of “Dispatches from Montevideo” for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. You can read those essays from him about every two weeks here. His book, Quotidiana, is a collection of essays that explores the connections between the ordinary and commonplace in everyday life. In 2011, Quotidiana was the winner of the Association for Mormon Letters Award in the Personal Essay and the Independent Publisher Book Gold Award in the Essay/Creative Nonfiction … Continue reading Award-winning author: Patrick Madden