University of Michigan Press Blog

"Racial Union" Wins American Political Science Association Award

CONGRATULATIONS to Julie Novkov, author of Racial Union: Law, Intimacy, and the White State in Alabama, 1865-1954, a stunning exploration of America's attitudes toward interracial marriage and winner of this year's Ralph J. Bunche Award given by the American Political Science Association. The Ralph J. Bunche Award is awarded for the best scholarly work in political science published in the previous calendar year that explores the phenomenon of ethnic and cultural pluralism.

Attending the American Political Science Association meeting in Toronto Sept 3-6? Check out Professor Novkov's book and many others at the UMP Booths, #418-420.

Michigan Author Award goes to UMP writer

The Michigan Center for the Book announced Monday that Dave Dempsey is the recipient of this year's Michigan Author Award.  Dempsey has authored three books published by the University of Michigan Press:  Ruin and Recovery: Michigan's Rise as a Conservation Leader (2001), William G. Milliken: Michigan’s Passionate Moderate (2006, paperback published in 2009), and Great Lakes for Sale:  From Whitecaps to Bottlecaps (2008, paperback published in 2009).

 

The award honors a Michigan writer for his or her contributions to literature based on an outstanding published body of work.

 

"I'm glad that writing about Michigan conservation is considered worthy of the award," said Dempsey.  "To me, the water, wildlife and land of Michigan are a fundamental part of its history and character.  And how we protect all of these today will have a lot to do with Michigan's future."

 

This year's award, sponsored jointly by the Center for the Book, the Michigan Library Association, and Sleeping Bear Press will be presented Nov. 6 at the Michigan Library Association's "Ready Set Go!" conference at the Lansing Center and Radisson Hotel in Lansing. Tickets ($25) are available to hear Dempsey speak at the award presentation luncheon. For more information, visit http://www.mla.lib.mi.us/events/annual.

 

For more information about the award, visit:  http://michigan.gov/printerFriendly/0,1687,7-160--220472--,00.html.

David Kairys on Law and Disorder Radio

A memoir that is also a compelling page-turner, Philadelphia Freedom is the poignant, informative, often inspiring account of renowned civil-rights lawyer David Kairys's personal quest for achieving social justice during the turbulent 1960s and 70s.

Philadelphia Freedom brings us intimately and directly into Kairys's burgeoning law career and the struggles of the 60s as his professional and private life navigated the turmoil and promise of the civil rights and antiwar movements.

Listen to an interview with Kairys on Law and Disorder radio.

Learn more about Philadelphia Freedom: Memoir of a Civil Rights Lawyer.

Dave Dempsey in The Detroit News

Dave Dempsey, a senior policy adviser for the Michigan Environmental Council and author of several University of Michigan Press titles including Great Lakes for Sale: From Whitecaps to Bottlecaps, Ruin and Recovery: Michigan's Rise as a Conservation Leader, and William G. Milliken: Michigan's Passionate Moderate, was in The Detroit News yesterday with Despite Federal Protection, Great Lakes Remain Troubled Waters.

From www.detnews.com:

If there's one sure bipartisan thing in the environmental politics of Michigan, it's this: The message to anyone outside the state is "hands off" the waters of the Great Lakes. No Michigan politician would dare advocate exporting Great Lakes water to thirsty Texans, for example. And no politician would issue a news release touting a proposal to sell a share of Lake Michigan to T. Boone Pickens.

And yet, unless action occurs soon in both Washington, D.C., and Lansing, we'll end up with exactly those policies in place -- with potentially monumental consequences for the Lakes and for Michigan.

How did we get into this mess?

Read more

If Bricks Could Talk

by Mardi Link, author of the forthcoming Isadore's Secret and bestseller When Evil Came to Good Hart

On Wednesday, July 29, the "Murder Takes a Road Trip" book tour made a stop in Benzonia at the Mills Community House, a stately and historic Northern Michigan landmark celebrating its 100th anniversary this year.

What a setting in which to discuss our state's literary history and our own contributions to it!

For a complete schedule of Mardi's upcoming events, visit the UMP Author Events page.

Q&A with Susan Messer, author of Grand River and Joy

Grand River and Joy, named after a landmark intersection in Detroit, follows Harry Levine through the intersections of his life and the history of his city. It's a work of fiction set in a world that is anything but fictional, a novel about the intersections between races, classes and religions exploding in the long, hot summers of Detroit in the 1960s. Grand River and Joy is a powerful and moving exploration of one of the most difficult chapters of Michigan history.

Susan Messer's fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications. She received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in prose, an Illinois Arts Council literary award for creative nonfiction, and a prize in the Jewish Cultural Writing Competition of the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture. Her story "Remnants, Like Dust in Pocket Seams," which is the basis for her novel, won Moment magazine's 2005 short fiction competition.

  Listen to the podcast

Barack Obama’s Real Majority

by John Kenneth White, author of Barack Obama's America

"Nearly four decades ago, social scientists Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg defined the Real Majority of the American electorate as being "un-young, un-poor, and un-black." Put another way, most Americans were white, married, middle-aged with modest incomes, and resided in the suburbs. Thinking of politics in these demographic terms led many analysts to view the issues of the day through the prism of how they would resonate to this Real Majority. As cultural issues became dominant (i.e., abortion, the death penalty, crime, drug use, and the like), Scammon and Wattenberg’s Real Majority became alienated from the Democratic party, and began to vote for Republican presidents. As a result, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan carried into office the cultural grievances of this Republican-minded majority, and earnestly sought to maintain its support.

Deep into the summer of 2009, Barack Obama is in the doldrums.