Short Takes

Booklist reviews ALONE ATOP THE HILL, Alice Dunnigan's "indelible self-portrait." The book "gives deserved recognition to a principled and hardworking reporter whose array of singular accomplishments makes her worthy of further scholarship and public attention," according to Foreword Review. The Root reviews ALONE ATOP THE HILL with two other recent books (Eye on the Struggle and The Presidency in Black and White) on black female journalists:

 [T]hese books provide a fascinating timeline of history to enlighten a generation that takes it for granted that a black woman can be the most powerful media personality in the United States or a confidante to a sitting president and first lady. [Alice] Dunnigan and [Ethel] Payne, the Jim Crow pioneers, could best be described as crosses between, say, the political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson and the advocate-broadcaster Tavis Smiley.

Nieman Reports has an excerpt from ALONE ATOP THE HILL. Check it out, along with Simeon Booker's comments, here.

Advance review of the forthcoming book, LENS OF WAR, from Booklist:

This collection of images, many of them familiar to Civil War enthusiasts,were selected to serve as a jumping-off point for the essays of 27 scholars on topics suggested by the photos. The photos, topics, and essays are an eclectic mix. By themselves, many of the photos would seem unremarkable, but the often brilliantly written essays compel the reader to view the photos with a fresh perspective. . . . Together, the photos and essays make a superb addition to Civil War collections.

Check out the Way of Improvement Leads Home blog interview with Brian Craig Miller about his new book, EMPTY SLEEVES. Here's a sample:

JF: In two sentences, what is the argument of Empty Sleeves?

BM: The challenges amputees posed to southern society were not merely visual and symbolic: injured veterans depended on surgeons to make a proper medical recommendation; on women to provide continued medical care, emotional support, and often basic functioning; on employers to cheerfully accept diminished capacity without seeming to stoop to charity or pity; and on the state to provide prosthetics, validation, and, ultimately, a pension. The process by which this new level of white male dependency--on other men, on women, on employers, and on the state--became societally and culturally accepted (however ambivalently) and was, I argue, a critical facet in the remaking of white manhood in the postbellum South.

Library Journal calls THE CURIOUS MISTER CATESBY "a joy to behold."

The Ms. Magazine blog interviews Barbara McCaskill, author of LOVE, LIBERATION, AND ESCAPING SLAVERY, about her forthcoming book, which focuses on William and Ellen Craft.

Want to see the music playlist Monica McFawn would use for her short story collection, BRIGHT SHARDS OF SOMEPLACE ELSE? Check out it out at Largehearted Boy. Ploughshares praises  McFawn's book: "After reading this collection, you will be thankful that somebody so talented has been able to communicate such hidden, intrinsic details so clearly."

Fourteen Hills interviews recent Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction winner Siamak Vossoughi. His collection of short stories, BETTER THAN WAR, will be available this September.

Want to read Sarah Gorham's STUDY IN PERFECT but haven't gotten a copy yet? Check out the excerpt up on Utne.com.

Congratulations, Jeffrey B. Leak! His book, VISIBLE MAN, is the winner of the 2015 Nonfiction Book award from the Literary Awards Committee of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. The awards ceremony will take place on June 28 in San Francisco.

Congratulations, John Lane! His book, MY PADDLE TO THE SEA, has won the fourth annual Allan D. Charles Award for nonfiction given by the University of South Carolina-Union. The prize will be given at the Upcountry Literary Festival on March 21.

Congratulations to our editorial, design and production departments! Three of our titles were selected for the 2015 AAUP Book, Jacket, and Journal Show in the trade typographic category:

American Afterlife: Encounters in the Customs of Mourning, by Kate Sweeney
Designer: Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Production Coordinator: Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Acquiring Editor: Beth Sneed
Project Editor: Rebecca Norton

Study in Perfect, by Sarah Gorham
Designer: Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Production Coordinator: Kaelin Chappell Broaddus
Acquiring Editor: Beth Sneed
Project Editor: Jon Davies

Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies, by Tison Pugh
Designer: Erin Kirk New
Production Coordinator: Kathi Dailey Morgan
Acquiring Editor: Walter Biggins
Project Editor: Jon Davies

University of Georgia Press to host AAUP Book, Jacket and Journal Show April 8-10

The University of Georgia Press will exhibit the Association of American University Presses 2014 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show April 8-10 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. in the press’s offices on the third floor of UGA’s main library.

The show features the best of university press design. Since September, it has traveled across the country, starting with Kent State University Press, Oxford University Press and Princeton University Press. The show will end at the University Press of Florida in May.

Each year, a panel selects the best books from a variety of categories, including scholarly typographic, scholarly illustrated, trade typographic, trade illustrated, and jackets and covers. This year, the committee received 263 books, 330 jacket and cover design entries, and four journals from which to judge. The four jurors, composed of designing professionals and AAUP members, selected 39 books, 22 jackets and covers and one journal as the best examples of university press design. At the UGA show, visitors can vote for their favorite designs and the chance to win a book from the press.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect when I was invited to judge the AAUP book design competition,” said jackets and covers co-juror Emmet Byrne, design director at the Walker Art Center. “But once I was knee-deep in the stack of ‘real’ scholarly publishing, I found myself enthralled with work that expertly straddled the line between pragmatic and seductive, beautiful object made more beautiful by the fact that they were intended to be dog-eared, highlighted, photocopied and scribbled on. The books that we’ve selected for this competition aren’t books that are merely good looking, but books that want to be read.”

UGA Press received recognition in the scholarly typographic category for The Larder: Food Studies Methods from the American South and Red, White and Black Make Blue: Indigo in the Fabric of Colonial South Carolina Life. Thieves I’ve Known was selected for the trade typographic category. 

“Did we understand what the book was about? Did the cover have the right mood? Was it well-executed? Was it aesthetically pleasing? And as always with university press designs, was the concept there? There are many things to keep in mind while looking at university press designs, such as less-than-perfect imagery provided, production constraints and heavy subject matter, but overriding all of these things is the fact that good design is good design,” said jackets and covers co-juror Kathleen Lynch of Black Kat Design. “I feel good about our choices: our winners stood out to us for their clear messages, well-thought-out designs, and beautiful executions.”

Individuals or large groups who are unable to come during the show times can contact Kaelin Broaddus, kaelinb (at) uga.edu, to schedule an appointment for times during the week of April 6.

Carol McCabe Booker and James McGrath Morris on Alice Dunnigan and Ethel Payne, Pioneering Women of the Black Press

Carol McCabe Booker, editor of Alice Dunnigan’s autobiography, Alone Atop the Hill, and James McGrath Morris, author of Eye on the Struggle, a biography of Ethel Payne, spoke about these two legendary African-American journalists and their impact and legacy on C-SPAN's BookTV over the weekend.

Event for Saving the Soul of Georgia

Maurice C. Daniels, dean and professor of the University of Georgia School of Social Work, will discuss SAVING THE SOUL OF GEORGIA: DONALD L. HOLLOWELL AND THE STRUGGLE FOR CIVIL RIGHTS, a biography of the famed civil rights attorney, on Thursday, February 26, 2015 at 7:00 p.m. at the Atlanta-Fulton County Central Library. He will be joined by retired federal judge Horace T. Ward, who practiced law with Hollowell in the 1960s. The event is free and open to the public.

The biography, which has been praised by scholars, continues to earn accolades, most recently from Polly Price of the Emory University School of Law and Kenneth W. Mack, Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard University.

Price’s review of the book, which appeared in the March 2015 issue of Journal of American History, called the biography “compelling.”  Wrote Price, “In Daniels’ hands, court proceedings come to life with a narrative accessible to lawyers and non-lawyers alike. . . . The inclusion of twenty-seven carefully selected photographs further brings to life one of the best biographies of the civil rights era.”

Mack, co-faculty leader of the Harvard Law School Program on Law and History, examined the Hollowell biography along with Yvonne Ryan’s “Roy Wilkins: The Quiet Revolutionary and the NAACP” in the February 2015 issue of American Historical Review. Both authors, he wrote, “have crafted well-researched accounts that explore much-neglected aspects of the history of the civil rights movement.”

“Daniels’s book,” Mack also wrote, “makes a point that needs emphasis: that embedded within the grassroots movements that now occupy much scholarly attention were thousands of everyday legal confrontations where lawyers like Hollowell played an essential role in allowing activists and ordinary African Americans to negotiate a repressive local legal system. . . . there is much to admire in his exploration of the various ways that rank-and-file lawyers like Hollowell were essential in realizing the democratic promise of the movement.”

Judge Horace Ward will also join Daniels for a discussion of the book. Ward was denied admission to the University of Georgia School of Law in the 1950s, but went on to earn a law degree from Northwestern University and returned to Georgia to join Hollowell’s legal team in their successful effort to desegregate the University. He later became a partner in Hollowell’s firm, during which time he worked on several other significant civil rights cases. He went on to serve as a judge in Fulton County, Georgia and the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.  In 2014 he was awarded an honorary doctor of laws degree by The University of Georgia.

The event, which will include a book signing, is sponsored by the University of Georgia Press, the Atlanta-Fulton County Public Library System and the Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies and Research. The library is located at One Margaret Mitchell Square NE, Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, contact Amanda Sharp, University of Georgia Press  (asharp@uga.edu or (706), 542-4145), or Harold Waters (hwaters@uga.edu, (706) 542-5450)).