This Week in History: August 4 – 8, 2008Well, August is officially here, and let me tell you we are sure feeling the heat here in Nebraska!  Hopefully the weather in China is a little milder because this week the summer Olympics officially begin in Beijing where over 10,000 athletes from around the world will be competing. It seems like the Olympics get bigger and bigger all the time! Did you know that even though the Olympics can be traced back to ancient Greece the modern Olympics didn’t begin until 1859? Just a little fun fact I thought I’d share. … Continue reading This Week in History: August 4-8, 2008

Women’s Work The origins of “Wonderful Words of Life” in The Plain Sense of Things by Pamela Carter Joern                                Several years ago I sat with my mother and my Aunt Fern at Fern’s kitchen table. We drank tea and ate oatmeal cookies. Fern was my father’s sister, and though she and my mother lived in the same town until Fern died, they were different people. Fern loved opera which my mother considered overly highbrow. Fern was a staunch Democrat, while the only Democrat my mother ever voted for was … Continue reading Author Guest Blog: Pamela Carter Joern

New this month from the University of Nebraska Press, is Beyond a Common Joy: An introduction to Shakespearean Comedy by Paul A. Olsen. In this very engaging and persuasive take on Shakespeare’s comic transcendence, Olsen shows how he took from the great themes of his day and molded them into a literary form “on par with epic and tragedy”. This week our Links will pay homage to this great playwright and see how Shakespeare fairs in the modern world. 1.    First off, in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past century (or two), let me introduce … Continue reading Linking in Lincoln: August 6, 2008

Ok bloggers, we are 3, yes count them, 3 DAYS away from the opening ceremonies of the summer Olympics in Beijing! Now I, an avid anti-sports fan, am even brimming with excitement at the prospect of watching athletes around the word strive for the gold (or in most cases strive and then fall short, but we’ll cheer them all the same). Since the whole world has a love affair with the Olympics, this is the perfect season to introduce UNP’s newest book Personal Record: A Love Affair with Running by Rachel Toor. Chronicling her transformation from self professed couch potato … Continue reading This Week in History: August 5, 2008

New this month from the University of Nebraska Press: Mayor Helen Boosalis: My Mother’s Life in Politics by Beth Boosalis Davis. As a 1950s housewife and League of Women Voters volunteer who spearheaded the city of Lincoln’s switch to a "strong mayor" form of government, Helen Boosalis never anticipated that she herself would one day be that strong mayor and chief executive of Nebraska’s capital city. Helen Boosalis’s story, told by her daughter, Beth Boosalis Davis, is the story of a true pioneer of women in politics. The daughter of Greek immigrants, Boosalis achieved national prominence as the first woman … Continue reading New in August from the University of Nebraska Press

This Week in History: July 28-August 1, 2008 This week we say farewell to the month of July.  How does time go by so fast?  Before you know it we will be rushing around trying to get ready for Christmas again!  Well, the good news is that football season is only a month away and we still have some time to enjoy the extreme heat before the extreme cold sets in. But, before we get ahead of ourselves, let’s look back at what was happening this week in history. July 28, 1994: Baseball pitcher Kenny Rogers of the Texas Rangers … Continue reading This Week in History: July 28 – August 1

"MazdaSpeed Motorsports billed our duel as Fact vs. Fiction, and now we see why fact wins. You made being a racer up. I am a racer." Sam Moses, author of Fast Guys, Rich Guys, and Idiots raced against author Garth Stein (The Art of Racing in the Rain) in the Mazda Grand Prix of Portland and WON the "Fact verses Fiction" battle. Here are the pictures: Continue reading Fact Versus Fiction Battle

New this month from the University of Nebraska Press is, Coincidence and Counterfactuality: Plotting time and space in narrative fiction by Hilary P. Dannenberg. This groundbreaking analysis of plot answers the pivotal question of how do we tell good stories?  By charting the development of fiction over history, from the renaissance to today, Dannenberg explores how the novel has changed over time and authors develop complex strategies for piercing the cognitive stricture of the reader with real life experiences. This week Linking in Lincoln will take a look at both coincidence and counterfactuality (as in defining it) and see what … Continue reading Linking in Lincoln: July 30, 2008