Salamanders of the Southeast completes a series

SALAMANDERS OF THE SOUTHEAST, the fifth and final volume of our well-regarded series of guides to the herpetofauna of the southeastern U.S., is now available.

While salamanders conceal themselves well and are seldom seen, in the southeast they far outnumber any other terrestrial vertebrate groups in species and often in population sizes. This book showcases these beautiful examples of “hidden biodiversity” and demonstrates their role as an important component of the ecology of the region.

Written by ecologists Joe Mitchell and Whit Gibbons, SALAMANDERS OF THE SOUTHEAST features 102 species, each illustrated with color photographs of typical adults and variations. Species accounts include notes on habitat, similar species, behavior, reproduction, predators and conservation status. Each account is accompanied by distribution maps for both the southeast and the U.S. as a whole, demonstrating how many species are unique to the region or in some cases to a single mountain or a few counties within the region.

The book covers Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky, a region especially rich in salamanders and also a focal point of concern for conservation of amphibian habitat.

The first book in the series, SNAKES OF THE SOUTHEAST, was published in 2005. Subsequent volumes presented accessible, authoritative information on:

TURTLES OF THE SOUTHEAST (2008),

FROGS & TOADS OF THE SOUTHEAST (2008),
(click here for a companion collection of frog and toad calls on YouTube)

and LIZARDS AND CROCODILIANS OF THE SOUTHEAST (2009).

Herpetological Review called books in the series “exquisite” and noted, “All are of uniformly high quality, clearly written, with an attractive layout. Each has solid introductory information, detailed species descriptions, excellent range maps and color photographs, line drawings showing defining features, and a strong conservation message.”

Short Takes

Lori Ostlund (THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD) makes the Dzanc Books alternate "20-under-40" fiction list, as reported by Publishers Weekly; the list includes authors who publish with a wider range of small and independent presses than those included in the New Yorker's recent "20 under 40" issue. Also, they're not all under 40 (although there are 20 of them).

CORNBREAD NATION 5 enthusiastically reviewed in the inaugural issue of the new online food mag The Zenchilada (see page 105).

Bookslut on Colin Cheney's debut collection HERE BE MONSTERS. His poem "Lord God Bird," which originally appeared in Notre Dame Review, has just been awarded a Pushcart Prize. Also a new audio interview at Scattered Rhymes, with links to Darwin's notebooks and other topics Cheney mentions.

Encyclopedia Britannica's Advocacy for Animals site recommends VISIONS OF CALIBAN: ON CHIMPANZEES AND PEOPLE by Dale Peterson and Jane Goodall as great summer reading for animal lovers, and notes that it is "approaching the status of a classic."

TENNESSEE WOMEN reviewed on H-Net: "Suffice it to say, there is not a ringer among the eighteen essays. Each is informed by the most recent scholarship in the fields of American women's history, southern history, and the history of Tennessee." From a highlight in the current issue of Mississippi magazine: "In 34 articles, the second volume of MISSISSIPPI WOMEN chronicles the interesting, intriguing, and complicated lives of past Mississippi women."

H-Southern Industry reviews Marko Maunula's GUTEN TAG, Y'ALL.

Now available:

CHARLOTTE, NC
Edited by William Graves and Heather A. Smith
This collection of accessible essays by geographers, historians, and architects, examines rapid change in Charlotte from several unusual and interesting angles. Contributors look at the banking industry and the construction of a global finance center, but also NASCAR, the reuse of textile mills, gentrification in uptown, and immigrant corridors on South Boulevard and the East Side, trying to clarify what kind of place Charlotte is and how it got to be that way.

National Book Award finalists to be announced at Flannery O'Connor childhood home

This October, the National Book Foundation will announce the 2010 finalists for the National Book Award at the Flannery O'Connor Childhood Home in Savannah, Georgia. (The foundation has not yet announced who will read the list of 20 finalists in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and young people's literature.)

In past years, John Grisham has made the announcement from William Faulkner's home in Oxford, Mississippi. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has named the finalists from City Lights Book Shop in San Francisco, Garrison Keillor from the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Camille Paglia from the Library Company of Philadelphia.

The foundation's choice of Flannery O'Connor's childhood home (included in A LITERARY GUIDE TO FLANNERY O'CONNOR'S GEORGIA) comes in the wake of last summer's campaign to determine the Best of the National Book Award winners in fiction, with all 77 past winners in the running. Public vote selected Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories, which won the National Book Award in 1972 -- eight years after her death -- beating out finalists John Updike and Walker Percy.

Short Takes

Dyana Furmansky's ROSALIE EDGE, HAWK OF MERCY has won the Colorado Book Award for Biography.

Urban Affairs Review includes BLOOMBERG'S NEW YORK by Julian Brash (forthcoming in February) in a roundup of books assessing recent change in New York City: "To some observers, however, including most of the above authors— Moody, Greenberg, Angotti, and Brash— Bloomberg’s mayoralty marked the culmination of a disturbing trend that began with the fiscal crisis. For them, the city is becoming a less hospitable place for people in need, as power shifts to economic elites who divide public benefits less equitably."

Emerson Society Papers reviews PASSIONS FOR NATURE: "Johnson's interdisciplinary study breaks new and compelling ground in its establishment of a dialogue between writers, naturalists, painters, and landscape designers on the subject of nature and its role in American life."

Choice recommends THE OYSTER QUESTION ("will interest those concerned with preserving Chesapeake Bay and its natural resources, and environmental historians who focus on state resources") and GLASS CEILINGS AND 100-HOUR COUPLES ("this provocative book raises many questions but does not stoop to providing pat answers about how couples should manage the work-family balance.")

Western American Literature reviews JACK LONDON'S RACIAL LIVES: "London shifted or adjusted his racial attitudes over time as the result of his travels, and Reesman smartly and systematically charts this trajectory."

Florida Forum, magazine of the Florida Humanities Council, profiles Jack Davis, winner of the Florida Book Award for nonfiction for his biography of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, AN EVERGLADES PROVIDENCE.

Upcoming events:
Wednesday, July 14
2-4 pm
Hudson Institute conference center
Washington, DC
also streamed live: www.hudson.org/WatchLive

Charles Horner (RISING CHINA) and Christopher Ford (The Mind of Empire) in a panel discussion on the role of China's past in understanding its future strategies; with Ashley Tellis (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and Arthur Waldron (University of Pennsylvania)

Now available:
IN SEARCH OF BRIGHTEST AFRICA
Jeannette Eileen Jones

While acknowledging the current of American thought that saw Africa as a "dark continent," Jones examines a countertrend in late nineteenth and early twentieth century cultural and intellectual history, in which early environmentalists, filmmakers, New Negro political thinkers and others turned to Africa as an important source of knowledge and enlightenment.

JURY DISCRIMINATION
Christopher Waldrep

Waldrep explores the remarkable 1906 case in which white Mississippi lawyer Dabney Marshall (carrying out a plan conceived by black Mississippi lawyer Willis Mollison) successfully demanded the racial integration of juries in Mississippi, with particular focus on the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case and the consequesnces of its narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment.