University of Michigan Press Blog

Q&A with Tamarack Song, co-author of Whispers of the Ancients

It's easy to imagine yourself transported back to a time when an Elder might have told stories like those in Whispers of the Ancients around a glowing hearth. Thanks to Tamarack Song's storytelling skills, monsters, heroes, and shapeshifters come alive and open a doorway to the mysteries of life. Easily accessible to all ages, this is a book that speaks to each person at his or her own level of comprehension and need. It is as beautiful to read as it is to look at.

Tamarack Song has sought out the stories of the North African and Central Asian tribal peoples from whom he is descended, and he has listened to the tales of indigenous people from the tundra to the tropics. His books include Journey to the Ancestral Self, and he has contributed to Lois Einhorn's Forgiveness and Child Abuse. He is also a counselor, wilderness skills teacher, rites-of-passage guide, and founder of the Teaching Drum Outdoor School.

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Guess Total Stadium Count For The University of Michigan Commencement With President Barack Obama on Saturday, May 1, 2010, and Win A Free Book!

Congratulations to the University of Michigan 2010 Graduates!

President Barack Obama will deliver the spring 2010 commencement address at the University of Michigan Stadium ("The Big House") on May 1, 2010, and will receive an Honorary Doctor of Laws Degree. To honor the occasion, we're giving away a free copy of John Kenneth White's new book Barack Obama's America (click the cover for more information) to the person who guesses the number closest to the official tally of stadium-goers. To enter, click the link below, fill out your best guess, and check back here next week for the official count and the winner! Entries accepted until 10:00 AM, May 1, 2010.

To enter your best guess for total count, click here: 

  OBAMA IN THE BIG HOUSE CONTEST

[Your Name Here] Arrested on Way to Grand Canyon: Arizona Immigration Law Raises Questions About National Identity, Racial Profiling, and Democracy

Arizona Senate Bill 1070, or the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," is a new immigration bill in Arizona and the strictest anti-illegal immigration bill measure in many years. The bill makes it a state misdemeanor for anyone to be in the United States illegally and requires police to attempt to determine a person's immigration status if there is a reasonable suspicion, and to arrest a person if there is a probable cause that the person is an illegal alien or a legal alien not in possession of registration documents. The bill raises many important questions about who we are, as a nation of immigrants, and where we stand as a democracy. Check out a few of the new releases from the University of Michigan Press on these important questions, available to professors for exam copy requests, by clicking on one of the book covers below to read more:

->REQUEST AN EXAM COPY

 

UM Press honors National Autism Awareness Month with talk by Annie Lehmann

The University of Michigan Press is proud to present Annie Lehmann, author of The Accidental Teacher, in an Author Series presentation in honor of National Autism Awareness Month.

Lehmann's son Jonah was born with severe autism, and The Accidental Teacher is her memoir of first attempting to "cure," then learning to adapt to, her son's condition. It's ideal reading for anyone who knows or may care for a child with special needs.

Lehmann will speak on Tuesday, April 27, from 5:30-7 p.m. A book sale, signing, and Q&A will follow. The event is free, and located at the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery/Room 100 on campus.

The book is available online for a limited time to read and comment on free of charge, in an Autism Awareness Month presentation by the Press. For more about that Open Text Project, read the blog entry here.

We asked her to say a few words about her presentation:

"After my son Jonah, who has severe autism, reached adulthood, I had a chance to look back and reflect on what I had learned from our shared journey. I wanted to write a book about autism, from a parental perspective — not so much for parents, although many have found it helpful, but more for teachers and professionals who worked with individuals with autism.  

Coming to the Midwest Political Science Association 2010 Conference? Check us out at Booth #405!

UMP staff will be in Chicago for the Midwest Political Science Association 2010 Conference this week. See below for just a few of the new titles we'll have available for booth-goers to flip through. Click on the book covers for more information...

               

Click to view Political Science Online Subject Catalog

No Moderates Left in California Politics: Author Seth Masket on KCRA

Click below to watch the April 12, 2010 KCRA interview with Seth Masket, author of No Middle Ground (2009):

No Middle Ground
How Informal Party Organizations Control Nominations and Polarize Legislatures
by Seth E. Masket

Cloth: 978-0-472-11689-8
Ebook Formats: 978-0-472-02212-0
Request Exam Copy

Where Did the Meteor Over Wisconsin, Illinois, and Iowa Land? The Meteor Farmer Revisited

A large meteor reportedly traveled over the upper Midwestern United States on Wednesday night, prompting searches for a landing site. For tips, we turn to Ben Paynter, guest blogger and contributer to Best of Technology Writing 2008:

"How valuable is buried treasure? Apparently that all depends on the aftermarket. I learned this firsthand by paling around with Steve Arnold, perhaps the most famous meteorite hunter in the world. Arnold used a makeshift metal detector—basically an ATV hitched to a clumsy sled of magnetic coil strapped to PVC pipe—to discover the largest pallasite meteorite ever in the US: a 1,430-pound, keg-sized space rock estimated to be worth more than 1 million dollars. It happened in, of all places, Southwestern Kansas. “The Meteor Farmer” explores how Arnold combined an arsenal of homespun gadgetry with a seemingly, well, spacey approach to cartography to make that possible. How he learned to leverage his fame into a brand name to hawk meteorites as objets d’art to rich collectors, for tens of thousands of dollars. How his opportunism has sparked a harsh bidding war between tony interior decorators and underfunded scientists used to relying on gratis donations for study.

The birds and the ABCs: UM Press Author Series presents John Swales tomorrow

 John Swales, acclaimed international scholar in English as a Second Language, coauthor of The Birds of Washtenaw County, Michigan, author of the memoir Incidents in an Educational Life, and writer of a number of books on academic writing, is the latest speaker in our University of Michigan Press Author Series.

He’ll talk about everything from birding to growing up in World War II England from 5:30-7 p.m. on Tuesday, April 13, in the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery/Room 100 on UM's central campus. Details are posted here: http://www.press.umich.edu/newsroom/authorseries.html . A Q&A, book sale, and signing will follow.

 

Put This In Your Pipe and Smoke It...Fifteen Years Later: Legislation Banning Sale and Marketing of Tobacco Products To Teenagers To Go Into Effect

According to a recent New York Times Article, fifteen years after the Food and Drug Administration first proposed banning the sale and marketing of tobacco products to teenagers, government officials announced last month that they would finally put the rule into effect. The rule was hugely controversial when first proposed in 1995 and was never adopted by the agency because of a Supreme Court ruling that legislation was needed to empower the F.D.A. to regulate tobacco products. That legislation was passed and signed by President Obama last June, and the rule will go into effect June 22, 2010. 

In Suing the Tobacco and Lead Pigment Industries, available April 7, legal scholar Donald G. Gifford recounts the transformation of tort litigation in response to the challenge posed by victims of 21st-century public health crises who seek compensation from the product manufacturers. Class action litigation promised a strategy for documenting collective harm, but an increasingly conservative judicial and political climate limited this strategy. In 1995, Mississippi attorney general Mike Moore initiated a parens patriae action on behalf of the state against cigarette manufacturers. Forty-five other states soon filed public product liability actions, seeking both compensation for the funds spent on public health crises and the regulation of harmful products, but it has taken this long for the laws to be enforced. 

Kyrgyz Government in Bishkek Resigns, Roza Otunbayeva and Interim Government Set Up Control

RECOMMENDED TITLE: Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States:  Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan, by Jacob M. Landau and Barbara Kellner-Heinkele, offers a unique and timely analysis of language policies in the central Asian states of the former Soviet Union. The authors relate these policies to broad issues such as nation-building, planning, and multilingualism.   ->LOOK INSIDE

originally published April 7, 2010 as KYRGYZTAN IN CRISIS AS CLASHES ESCALATE at BBC.com:

"The government in Kyrgyzstan is struggling to retain power as deadly clashes escalate between police and thousands of protesters. Officials say at least 40 people died in the capital, Bishkek, as protesters stormed government and TV offices.