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Off the Shelf: In Trace of TR by Dan Aadland

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Aadland Read the beginning of the Introduction from a freatured gift book idea, In Trace of TR: A Montana Hunter's Journey by Dan Aadland:

"Fifty years ago I sat on a wooden rail enclosing a large observation deck behind the visitor’s center at Mount Rushmore. Encircled by a crowd of chattering siblings, so many of them that my father required us to count off military style each time we reentered the car, I watched a bedecked Sioux pose for pictures with admiring tourists. He was having a fine time, a midsummer Santa Claus with headdress, surrounded by suitors—and so were the tourists.

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UNP books in national magazines

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Two UNP books received accolades from national magazines: Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey by Robert V. Camuto is in the Dec. 31 issue of Wine Spectator. Thomas Matthews said Camuto’s “affection for Sicily and its citizens is heartfelt, and his skill and enthusiasm combine to create a captivating portrait of a singular culture.” In Palmento, Camuto explores Sicily’s emerging wine scene, but what he discovers during more than a year of traveling the region, however, was far more than a fascinating win frontier. To read the full article click here.   Sleep in Me by Jon Pineda was listed as … Continue reading UNP books in national magazines

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UNP author wins 2010 Athearn Prize

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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

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Off the Shelf: In Search of Powder by Jeremy Evans

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Evans Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Shangri-la" from one of our featured gift books, In Search of Powder: A Story of America's Disappearing Ski Bum by Jeremy Evans, Foreword by Glen Plake:

"Shangri-la, as described by James Hilton in Lost Horizon, is a place where the mind, body, and soul is at peace, where sparkling emerald grasses spray across a mountain valley broken by tumbling waterfalls, where the people who inhabit this utopia are as virtuous as the essence of its existence. For decades this refuge, rumored to be in a secret region of Tibet, has baffled those who have sought its coordinates, but the fortunate who have found it never needed a map to locate it. In 1973, an impressionable college student named Johnny Davis, escaping a disjointed childhood in Kona, Hawaii, stumbled upon his Shangri-la.

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Off the Shelf: Beneficial Bombing by Mark Clodfelter

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Clodfelter Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Genesis in the Great War" from Beneficial Bombing: The Progressive Foundations of American Air Power, 1917-1945 by Mark Clodfelter:

 "29 May 1910

On a warm Sunday morning, U.S. Military Academy cadets assembled at Trophy Point to witness a spectacular event. Aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss had announced that he would pilot his thirty-foot-long biplane from Albany to New York and claim the New York World's prize of ten thousand dollars for making the first flight between the two cities. The initial leg of his journey had gone well: Curtiss had taken off shortly after 7:00 a.m., had stopped for fuel at Camelot, and had taken off again at 9:30. Yet as he approached Storm King Mountain a few minutes later at an altitude of one thousand feet, violent air currents above the Hudson River plummeted his frail craft to within fifty feet of the water. He struggled with the flight controls to prevent a further loss of altitude and, as he did so, flew past West Point. His dive hid the airplane from the cadets’ view and caused them to run to Cullum Hall, perched high on a bluff overlooking the Hudson. From there they could clearly see the tiny craft, the first flying machine that most of them had ever witnessed. Oblivious to the pilot’s difficulty, the cadets tossed their caps into the air and shouted their favorite football cheer, with a slight modification: “Rah, rah, ray!
Rah, rah, ray! West Point, West Point, Armay! Curtiss! Curtiss! Curtiss!”1

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UNP author presented with AAS Emme Award

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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

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Bill Russell receives medal from President Obama

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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

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Another John Lardner Reader review, and a Christmas sale

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Earlier this week the John Lardner Reader was reviewed by the Boston Globe. Bill Littlefield, who hosts National Public Radio’s “Only A Game’’ at WBUR in Boston, said that it is a “terrific book because the best of John Lardner is extraordinarily good.” The John Lardner Reader is a collection of Lardner’s writings which are often classified as wry humor and tireless reporting that helped elevate sportswriting to art.   To read the full article, click here. The holidays are approaching fast and UNP is offering a holiday sale on books! Receive 25 percent off on your book purchase now … Continue reading Another John Lardner Reader review, and a Christmas sale

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Off the Shelf: Palmento by Robert V. Camuto

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Palmento Read the beginning of Chapter 1, "Benvenuti in Sicilia" from one of our featured holiday gift books, Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey by Robert V. Camuto:

"I had arrived in Sicily only a few hours earlier, and on the drive to dinner I would break more laws than I had violated during any prior twenty minutes of my life. Indeed, I could always say that I was an innocent straniero merely following a lawless guide in Valeria, the waif with the brick-sized monogrammed Dolce & Gabbana belt buckle and the ever-singing telefonino, who greeted me at Azienda Agricola COS, which I’d chosen as my first stop in Sicily for all noble reasons. I was here because—more than two and a half decades after its founding by a group of university friends—COS had become a thriving symbol of the new Sicily. Its wines were fashionably sipped in cosmopolitan capitals the world over, and COS was considered on the cutting edge of the growing and wholesome natural wine movement. Indigenous grape varietals were farmed biodynamically (using herbal tea treatments and a few practices that resembled alchemy tied to the phases of the moon) and wines were produced with naturally occurring yeasts found in grapes and with minimal added sulfur (sulfites). More than that—burnishing COS’s authenticity credentials—the winery had been fermenting some of its wines not in wood barrels or steel or cement vats but in clay amphorae, a process reminiscent of the Greeks who had first settled Sicily; and therefore it elevated my role here to something like an epicurean archaeologist.

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Off the Shelf: The Year 3000 by Paolo Mantegazza

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Mantegazza Read the beginning of Chapter 1 from The Year 3000: A Dream by Paolo Mantegazza, edited and with an introduction by Nicoletta Pireddu, translated by David Jacobson:

"Paolo and Maria left Rome, capital of the United States of Europe, in the largest of their aerotachs, the one intended for long trips.

This is an electrically run airship. By releasing a spring, they convert the two comfortable armchairs in the middle of the ship into quite comfortable beds. Opposite the chair-beds are a compass, a small table, and a quadrant bearing the three words motion, heat, light.

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