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

    Well bloggers, it’s very hot outside (and a little humid), it’s the middle of the summer, and there are no romantic holidays in sight. Now I don’t know if you lament the fact that only one day a year is targeted towards celebrating love, or if you think that’s really one day too many. If you’re the former than to remedy this I present to you a timeless romantic tradition encapsulated into book form for all the world to enjoy, albeit a little off season. If you’re the latter, then may I propose that you keep reading, as … Continue reading Tusday Trivia: July 29, 2008

When I left Omaha for Philadelphia in June to present a paper on place at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment symposium "Keyboard in the Garden," I couldn’t have selected a better, more appropriate book to take with me. Paradise is place, the environmental historian John Opie suggests in Virtual America: Sleepwalking through Paradise (UNP, June 2008), but Americans by and large have lost their sense of place–of rootedness–and belonging to and in place. This pervasive feeling of placelessness, as Opie terms it, isn’t new in American history, however. Questions about place have puzzled American artists and … Continue reading The Path Home, or Rediscovering Paradise in Authentic Place