University of Michigan Press Blog

Outdoors writer calls Jerry Dennis "a national treasure"

Reviewing The Windward Shore, Michigan outdoors writer Dave Richey described author Jerry Dennis as "a national treasure" and said of Dennis' latest book, "We see, feel, hear, taste and touch winter along the Great Lakes, and we rejoice with the author as he examines everything about winter in this area."

The Windward Shore has garnered enthusiastic praise since its release in September, and Dennis has given popular readings from the book throughout Michigan and the Midwest. Here, Dennis collects his thoughts and reflections on nature as he recounts several walks throughout the Great Lakes region after a knee injury forced him to live life at a slower pace.

Richey, himself a prominent nature writer who retired from the Detroit News in 2003, concluded his review calling The Windward Shore "a truly wonderful read by a favorite author."

'Windward Shore' author Jerry Dennis on Minnesota Public Radio

Acclaimed Great Lakes author Jerry Dennis recently appeared on Minnesota Public Radio to discuss his new book, The Windward Shore: A Winter on the Great Lakes (University of Michigan Press, 2011) and his abiding interest in the region. Joined by fellow nature writer Darby Nelson, Dennis spoke on his appreciation for Thoreau, the roots of his own writing, the improbable hoax of whales in Lake Michigan, and more.

"I have always been fascinated with the contradictions in human nature when it comes to nature," Dennis said on the Midday program. "As I've spent twenty-some years studying the Great Lakes and writing about them, I've seen them as a very good example of that. This is a place we love, yet we dump our sewage overflow into it. Our industrial waste for many, many years was dumped into them. We still dump billions of gallons of agricultural waste--inadvertantly in most cases, but it still ends up there. Every time we have a major thunderstorm, huge amounts of water flood our sewage treatment plants, millions and sometimes billions of gallons of untreated sewage go into our lakes. I wanted to understand this better, as well, and thought, what is our relationship with nature and why is it so central to our existence and our experience as human beings? And why are we short sighted? Why do we not take a more active role in protecting these places that we claim to love?"

Listen to the entire broadcast online at Minnesota Public Radio. Jerry Dennis's The Windward Shore is available now.

UM Press author Diana Beresford-Kroeger chosen as a 2011 'Utne Reader' Visionary

Utne Reader has selected University of Michigan Press author Diana Beresford-Kroeger for its annual list of "visionaries."

"Each year Utne Reader' puts forward its selection of world visionaries—people who don’t just concoct great ideas but also act on them," judges wrote.

Diana Beresford-Kroeger, author of Arboretum Borealis and Arboretum America, is one of those visionaries for 2011, the magazine said. In an article highlighting her passion for nature, Beresford-Kroeger's dedication and heart exudes as she declares her plans to further improve the earth one tree at a time.

Read more at: "Diana Beresford-Kroeger: Tree Walker."

Modern politicans aren't the first to verbally stumble, 'Elly Peterson' author writes

Sara Fitzgerald, a former Washington Post journalist, is author of Elly Peterson: 'Mother' of the Moderates.

Will a statement made by a tired politician at the end of a long day of campaigning help define the 2012 presidential race?

• Michele Bachmann placing the “shot heard ‘round the world” in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts?
• Rick Perry labeling the Federal Reserve chairman’s management of the economy as “treasonous?”
• Mitt Romney’s response to a heckler that “corporations are people, too?”

Romney knows very well the consequences of making a statement that comes to be defined as a “campaign gaffe.” Forty-four years (and 11 presidential election cycles) ago this August 31, his father, Michigan Gov. George Romney, spent a day at the Michigan State Fair and then taped an interview with Lou Gordon, the host of a show called Hot Seat on WKBD-TV in Detroit.

Sleeping Bear Dunes named America's 'most beautiful place;' UM Press author responds

George Weeks is author of Sleeping Bear: Yesterday and Today. He writes:

A national Web site survey by ABC-TV’s Good Morning America show recently declared Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore the “Most Beautiful Place in America.” Its nearly 100,000 votes edged out Cape Cod in Massachusetts and other places in California, Colorado, Arizona and elsewhere.

The story was later picked up by the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News. National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said, “It’s great that a park… a little off the beaten track in northern Michigan, is being recognized for its exceptional beauty.”

Beyond the sweeping views of the dunes and Lake Michigan, much of the exceptional beauty of today stems from cultural attractions of yesterday. They include towering lighthouses, the Sleeping Bear Point Coast Guard Station Maritime Museum, designated shipwreck sites of Sleeping Bear and the Manitou Passage from the early Great Lakes maritime era, and the Glen Haven Historic Village that is on the National Register of Historic Places as a turn-of-the century company lumbering town by being perhaps the best preserved example of a frontier wooding station and steamboat stop on the Great Lakes—certainly on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

In his preface to my book Sleeping Bear: Yesterday and Today, 1989-93 National Park Service Director James Ridenour said, “Sleeping Bear Dunes is truly one of the jewels of the National Park System.”

It’s a jewel for the natural beauty of today and for the attractions of yesterday.

Library Journal declares 'Faithful Unto Death' to be 'a good read... riveting'

Library Journal recently reviewed Becky Thacker's new novel, Faithful Unto Death, declaring is to be "a crime story with Midwestern gothic overtones, not unlike Truman Capote's In Cold Blood."

"Authentic atmosphere and a remarkable portrayal of brave children make for a good read... the courtroom scenes are riveting," reviewer Teresa Jacobsen continues.

The book traces the mysterious death of Anna Spencer Thacker in Benzonia, Mich., in 1894. Suicide, accident... or murder?

Faithful Unto Death is Thacker's first novel, and the University of Michigan Press is serializing the novel for free this summer for fans of its Facebook page.(Hurry, it's only posted through Labor Day week!)

'Elly Peterson' author celebrates 40 years of the National Women's Political Caucus

Sara Fitzgerald is a former Washington Post reporter and author of Elly Peterson: "Mother" of the Moderates, a biography of one of the leading ladies in the Republican Party, who set the stage for a new generation of women in politics. She was a panelist recently at the 40th anniversary gathering of the National Women's Political Caucus.

Forty years ago this summer, 300 women gathered at the Statler Hilton Hotel in Washington to found the National Women’s Political Caucus.

In her memoir Getting Better All the Time, Liz Carpenter recalled, “It was a day that changed my life.” If she had not gotten so involved, she wrote, “I would have missed out on so much, so many friendships with remarkable women of all income levels, so much learning as we hammered at the doors of Congress and the legislatures, so much understanding of my own country and how the other great movements for fairness and equality took place.”

By the end of that hot weekend in July 1971, the caucus had committed itself to diversity—and that included Republican women.

Betty Friedan tried to recruit Elly Peterson to attend the founding meeting, but Peterson declined. Friedan wanted Peterson involved, she wrote a few years later, because she “had been the most powerful woman in the Republican party—its traditionally powerless lady vice-chairman.” Peterson, she said, was among the “politically oriented women who hadn’t been interested in women’s rights before,” who “were ready now to organize such a caucus.”

Recently the NWPC gathered at another Washington hotel to celebrate its 40th anniversary. There were workshops on campaign skills, and rousing speeches from feminist leaders such as Gloria Feldt, the former president of Planned Parenthood. But for me the high point was the Saturday luncheon, when four women who had been present at the first gathering shared their memories of it.

Michigan poet and UM Press author Philip Levine named U.S. poet laureate

Philip Levine, a native Michigander, Detroit poet and author of several University of Michigan Press books, has been named poet laureate of the United States.

"How can I put it? It’s like winning the Pulitzer," he told The New York Times. "If you take it too seriously, you’re an idiot. But if you look at the names of the other poets who have won it, most of them are damn good."

Levine is the author of several collections of essays on poetry for the UM Press as part of its celebrated Poets on Poetry series, including Don't Ask, So Ask, and the memoir The Bread of Time. UM Press also published On the Poetry of Philip Levine, the first critical collection to focus on his work, edited by Christopher Buckley as part of the Press series Under Discussion.

He was chosen as Poet Laureate by James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. Born in Detroit, many of his most popular poems concern the travails of the working class in that city. He is the author of some 20 poetry collections, including The Simple Truth, his fifteenth collection, which won a Pulitzer Prize. The title poem from that collection is widely quoted online:

Some things
you know all your life. They are so simple and true
they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme,
they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker,
the glass of water, the absence of light gathering
in the shadows of picture frames, they must be
naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.

Moderates, the debt ceiling, and the future of the Republican Party: Sara Fitzgerald, author of 'Elly Peterson,' weighs in

A couple of months ago, The Washington Post mused, in a front-page story on the presidential campaign of Jon Huntsman Jr., “Can a Republican moderate survive?”

I smiled when I saw the headline because you might think I was crazy to set out to write a book that would be titled Elly Peterson: “Mother” of the Moderates.  It’s not as if the moderates are holding a national convention, with chapters in every state and city these days!

The current Republican establishment is not very interested in "moderates," and Democrats are not very interested in things that are labeled "Republican." And for someone like Elly Peterson who abandoned the Republican Party and eventually labeled herself an "independent," ... well, perhaps there's a support group somewhere on Facebook that fits the bill.

In the case of Huntsman, a former governor of Utah who stepped down as Barack Obama’s ambassador to China to seek the presidency, his aides were concerned early on that he might be labeled a moderate--the "M-word" one called it--because that is apparently viewed as cause for immediate disqualification among the voters likely to turn out in Republican presidential primaries.

They are probably right.

Read two UM Press novels FREE on Facebook this summer!

Starting today, July 18, all you have to do is "like" the University of Michigan Press Facebook page and you'll have access to ongoing chapters of two brand-new novels. Check in every week and you'll have read all of both books by the end of the summer!

Barbara Kingsolver said she read Marjorie Cole's Spell on the Water and "couldn't put it down." It's about a woman struggling to put her family back together in a small town after her husband's death.

Becky Thacker's Faithful Unto Death is a historical whodunit, based on true events in her own family. Set in a tiny town in Northern Michigan, it traces the mysterious death of the mother of five: illness, murder, or suicide?

There is no charge for viewing the ongoing segments of either book (not that we wouldn't love for you to buy copies for yourself, of course).

Check them out online today!