Thursday, June 12, 2008

Short Takes

Interviews:
Jennifer Chang, author of THE HISTORY OF ANONYMITY, in Critical Mass, the National Book Critics Circle blog.

In the news:
David Glenn, a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Higher Education, covers FROM SUPERPOWER TO BESIEGED GLOBAL POWER in a June 13 (subscription-only) piece about new foreign policy books on topics that deserve more serious treatment in the 2008 presidential race. Glenn begins his coverage of the book by noting that "one scholar who sees serious differences within the Democratic Party is [the book's coeditor] Edward A. Kolodziej, a political scientist who directs the Center for Global Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kolodziej argues that both Bush-style neoconservatives and Clintonesque liberal internationalists hold vastly exaggerated senses of America's ability to shape the world. Our overwhelming military dominance, Kolodziej says, does not mean that we can snap our fingers and persuade allies and adversaries to do as we please."

Reviews:
WALKING THE WRACK LINE by NPR's Alan Cheuse, in his roundup of "Summer Books to Feed Your Literary Addiction."

A NATURAL SENSE OF WONDER in the Princeton Packet.

CORNBREAD NATION 4 in the Tampa Tribune.

HARDSCRABBLE in C-Ville: Charlottesville News and Arts.

MOTORING in the Charleston Post and Courier.

MARGARET FULLLER, WANDERING PILGRIM in the Feminist Review.

Awards:
Kyle Dargan's BOUQUET OF HUNGERS is a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry.

A NATURAL SENSE OF WONDER was named one of 10 best books for teachers in Scholastic magazine's summer reading roundup. Scholastic also ran an excerpt of the book in their Parent & Child magazine.

We get blogged:
Mention of WINNERS HAVE YET TO BE ANNOUNCED in Conversational Reading.

Citation of ANIMALS AND WHY THEY MATTER in Doing Ethics.

Mention of the Flannery O'Connor Award short fiction series in Emerging Writers Network.