Short Takes

CORNBREAD NATION 5 in the Durham Herald Sun, Asheville Citizen-Times, the Winston-Salem Journal (mmm...soft-shell crab), the Johnson City Press, and the Raleigh News and Observer (also an excellent piece on the culinary legacy of chef Ben Barker, who has an essay in the book.)

The new American Historical Review on CHRISTIAN RITUAL AND THE CREATION OF BRITISH SLAVE SOCIETIES, 1650-1740: "Beasley's work is an interesting and important contribution to the study of the religious cultures of the Atlantic World."

The Newnan Times-Herald on the Bell Award given to WHAT VIRTUE THERE IS IN FIRE by Edwin T. Arnold.

THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD is longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Short Story Award. (Also a finalist for the Triangle Awards, announced tonight.)

Press authors John Inscoe and Charles Hudson appear in the four-part series Appalachia, which airs Thursdays 4/29-5/20 on PBS. The film explores the environmental history of the region.

Living on Earth features poet Ross Gay with his poem "Thank You" from BLACK NATURE.

MOTORING was reviewed by the Book Woman on Talk of the Town, a talk show on Nashville's CBS affiliate WTVF.

The Journal of Historical Geography calls WILLIAM FAULKNER AND THE SOUTHERN LANDSCAPE "simultaneously an excellent cultural-historical geography of Mississippi and the South and perhaps the most grounded literary analysis of the work of Faulkner yet published."

Our fall 2010 catalog now available online -- highlights include:

- Natasha Trethewey's BEYOND KATRINA, a personal take on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi both before and in the wake of the hurricane

- JACK LONDON, PHOTOGRAPHER, which showcases for the first time the novelist's extensive photographic career, from Russo-Japanese war to the San Francisco earthquake to the Mexican revolution

- new titles on Treme in New Orleans, whiteness and urban planning in the San Fernando Valley, and Bloomberg's impact on New York City, all in our Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation series

Short Takes

Maria Rost Rublee's NONPROLIFERATION NORMS wins the Alexander L. George Book Award from the International Society for Political Psychology. The award recognizes the best book published in political psychology in the previous year, one that "demonstrates the highest quality of thought and makes a major substantive book-length contribution to the field."

This Sunday (4/25) at 10 am and 10 pm, the Sirius/XM radio show Danger Zone will air an interview with author Charles Horner, whose book RISING CHINA is also in our Studies in Security and International Affairs series.

Lori Ostlund's THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD wins the California Book Award for First Fiction; poets Barbara Hamby (SERIOUSLY FUNNY) and Patrick Phillips (BOY) named Guggenheim Fellows in poetry, Ted Genoways (ANNA, WASHING) in American literature.

"We may take for granted the vast geographical inequalities of wealth in our world, but we shouldn't": Neil Smith (UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT) on KPFA's Against the Grain.

An interview with Camille Dungy on BLACK NATURE will air on KQED (San Francisco) today (4/22) at 5:30 pm PST (online streaming available). Her recent interview for NPR's Morning Edition, along with some of the poems she discusses, can be found here.

CORNBREAD NATION 5 in the Athens Banner-Herald and New Orleans Times-Picayune.

In the Huffington Post: Steve Courtney (JOSEPH HOPKINS TWICHELL) on celebrating the 100th anniversary of Mark Twain's death this week with "the combination of carny hucksterism, entertainment and education for which we are becoming noted here in Hartford."

Poet Harryette Mullen wins the Jackson Poetry Prize; her work appears in BLACK NATURE and THE RINGING EAR, and she is one of eight poets interviewed in our forthcoming title INTO A LIGHT BOTH BRILLIANT AND UNSEEN: CONVERSATIONS WITH CONTEMPORARY BLACK POETS, edited by Malin Pereira.

Donors Amanda and Greg Gregory endow a chair in Civil War era studies at the University of Georgia.

Now available:

WILLIAM BARTRAM, THE SEARCH FOR NATURE'S DESIGN
Edited by Thomas Hallock and Nancy E. Hoffmann

This edited collection of letters, unpublished manuscripts and twenty-four previously unpublished drawings adds depth to our understanding of the early American naturalist William Bartram and provides a fuller picture of his life and thought than can be glimpsed in his famous Travels.

WILDERNESS INTO CIVILIZED SHAPES: READING THE POSTCOLONIAL ENVIRONMENT
Laura Wright

Wright combines the strengths of ecocriticism and postcolonial theory to analyze fictional treatments of environmental issues and postcolonial landscapes. Using an international array of modern novels as texts, including writers from Nigeria, New Zealand, India and the United States,  four chapters examine themes of development and deforestation, water politics, the relationship of women to land they have lost, and the use of animals to metaphorically represent subjugated people.

Barrow family recognized by UGA Alumni Association

UGA Press congratulates the UGA Alumni Association's 2010 Family of the Year, the family of Craig Barrow III of Savannah. Craig is Chairman of the UGA Press Advisory Council, and we would like to express our appreciation to Craig and Diana for their wonderful support of the Press and UGA at large.

Arnold's book on Hose lynching wins Bell Award

Edwin T. Arnold's WHAT VIRTUE THERE IS IN FIRE was named the winner of this year's Malcolm Bell Jr. and Muriel Barrow Bell Award at the Georgia Historical Society's annual meeting Thursday.

The award recognizes the best book in Georgia history published in the preceding year. A list of previous winners can be found here.

In his book, Arnold approaches the study of the 1899 lynching of Sam Hose in Newnan, Georgia through close analysis of newspaper accounts, letters and speeches at the time of the incident and in the decades thereafter. Arnold's work seeks to more fully understand how different versions of this history were used to serve different interests.

As noted by ForeWord Reviews, the case is thought to be the inspiration for the Newnan-born writer Erskine Caldwell's TROUBLE IN JULY, and also provoked the interest of Margaret Mitchell and William Faulkner. The reviewer concludes: "Depending upon whom you believe, Sam Hose was either a family-destroying killer or the innocent victim of a skewed and Southern brand of bad justice. That he was tracked, captured, hung, and dismembered is not in dispute. Author Arnold compiles prodigious research from both sides and chooses to let the reader decide, while still not letting history off the hook."