Bigger Than Life: A Murder, A Memoir, is a result of Dinah Lenney’s reassessment of her life when her father, Nelson Gross, was found dead.  The book is a coming-of-age story for Dinah as well as a contemplation on loss.  Dinah Lenney appeared on the Gregory Mantell Show in April.  Below is an excerpt of the show where Dinah discusses the chain of events after learning her father–Nelson Gross–was missing.  You can learn more about the writer and actor Dinah Lenney on her website. Continue reading Dinah Lenney on the Gregory Mantell Show

Author Dinah Lenney reads from her memoir Bigger Than Life: A Murder, a Memoir at the Writers’ Program Publication Party.  The cast is made possible by the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.  And, if you like today’s cast, be sure to come back tomorrow to view an interview with Dinah on The Gregory Mantell Show.  We linked to the show before, but why send you away when you can watch it here? Enjoy! Download ucla-dinah-lenney.mp3 Continue reading Dinah Lenney at the UCLA Extension Pub Party

Just Breathe Normally by Peggy Shumaker “Shumaker displays a rare gift. . . . [H]er scattered memories come together to form a riveting and exceptionally touching story. . . . An entrancing meditation on absolution and memory.”—Kirkus Reviews “Painful healing from a freak bicycle accident burns at the heart of this collection of lyrical anecdotes. . . . Shumaker’s prose possesses throughout a limpid serenity.” —Publishers Weekly “Shumaker, a poet, has a haunting, lyrical quality to her writing. The words flow and tumble down the page. . . . Reading about pain and loss and fear can be almost as … Continue reading Praise for Just Breathe Normally

The Year the Stars Fell: Lakota Winter Counts at the SmithsonianEdited by Candace S. Greene and Russell Thornton “The scholarly analysis is very readable. . . . Don’t miss the elegant simplicity of these artist/historian winter counts.”—True West “In this wonderful book, readers are presented with more than 900 individual pictographs signifying several centuries of tribal knowledge. . . . Taken together, these fascinating images provide an alternative history of the American West as written by those who were there in the beginning and remain there now. Like the Bayeux Tapestry—the embroidered cloth that preserves a visual history of the … Continue reading Praise for The Year the Stars Fell

The Big Empty: Contemporary Nebraska Nonfiction WritersEdited by Ladette Randolph and Nina Shevchuk-Murray “These essays are springs from which flows our collective identity. . . . Read The Big Empty slowly. Savor the depth of thought, the breadth of subjects, the richness of language. Distance surrounds us, and these Nebraska writers, ‘who pass through it with open eyes,’ as Ron Block says, open ours.”—Linda Read Deeds, Nebraska Life Read earlier praise for The Big Empty Continue reading Praise for The Big Empty

Into That Silent Sea: Trailblazers of the Space Era, 1961–1965 by Francis French and Colin Burgess “Francis French and Colin Burgess don’t have any special hooks or other gimmicks in Into That Silent Sea; instead, they simply offer a well-written account about the Americans and Russians who were the first to fly into space. . . . The book . . . offer[s] some excellent profiles of these individuals that are accessible to both newcomers to space history and well-read enthusiasts alike.”—The Space Review Click here to read previous praise for Into That Silent Sea Continue reading More Praise for Into That Silent Sea

It’s been 15 years now since the University of Nebraska Press and I set off together on the venture of publishing a comprehensive, detailed, difficult, controversial and confounding history of the Hanford Site in southeast Washington.  We published the first hardback edition in autumn 1992, and it immediately became the best-selling book in the Hanford region.  I’m told that work nearly stood still on the vast desert site, as thousands of employees, subcontractors, site watchers and regulators, and site neighbors pored through the pages—in some cases scarcely believing what they were reading.    Some could not grasp that they had lived and labored at Hanford for many years and not known of the events taking place all around them.  Some were angry, some confused, some sad, some inspired to go out and work on cleanup and education, some in denial.  Some thought much of the material in the book must be classified.

I knew I had consulted only open sources, and had never tried to access secret information.  I had also been meticulously careful to check and re-check measurements and calculations taken from old documents, and I even took statistics and chemistry classes to understand the material I was reading.  I had made sure that every one of my thousands of references was scrupulously accurate.         

Continue reading “Why Hanford’s History Is Still Compelling”