At the risk of tooting our own horn, some recent media highlights of JHU Press books follow. To read the articles, reviews and listen to podcasts, click on the respective hyperlinks.
For TLS‘ “Books of the Year” column, Richie Robertson said of Lure of the Arcane: The Literature of Cult and Conspiracy by Theodore Ziolkowski, “Conspiracies, whether attributed to mystery cults, Freemasons, Socialists, or Rosicrucians, pervade literature from Euripides to Umberto Eco, as Theodore Ziolkowski shows in Lure of the Arcane. Ziolkowski has read everything, taking even a 3,000-page German novel in his stride, and summarizes and analyses his material fascinatingly for lesser mortals.”
Scientific American spoke with author Brian Southwell about his new book, Social Networks and Popular Understanding of Science and Health: Sharing Disparities.
On the Scientific American blog, Southwell talked about the uneven way in which information is disseminated in this 24/7 information age.
Publishers Weekly gave Amish Quilts a starred review and The New York Times featured Amish Quilts in its 2013 Holiday Gift Guide, saying, “The gap between what artisans intend and what dealers and owners come to believe is entertainingly conveyed in this study by the textiles historian Janneken Smucker.”
Janneken Smucker spoke with Passing Time radio host, Ellen Endslow, director of collections and curator at Chester County Historical Society.
A recent Boston Globe review of The Papers of Frederic Law Olmsted, Volume 8, “The letters, photographs, and drawings in the book are of historical interest, of course. They document how Olmsted turned his radical vision of different kinds of parks connected by pedestrian-friendly links into a cornerstone of Boston’s urban plan. But they’re also still useful today: They’re being used to guide restoration projects in the Emerald Necklace, including a major restoration of the Muddy River Improvement currently being carried out by the Army Corps of Engineers.”—Kevin Hartnett
The Huffington Post published The Story Within contributor Joanna Rudnick’s article on the importance of sharing information about cancer-causing genetic mutations. The Story Within was the centerpiece for a genetics and identity symposium the book’s editor, Amy Boesky, organized. Contributor Patrick Tracey summarized the day in a No Family Madder blogpost. The piece begins, “If there were an All-Star Team for memoirists struggling with genetic misfortune, then the writers gathered in Boston on Friday for the publication of The Story Within would surely be it.”
Amy Kuebelbeck’s book, A Gift of Time, is being discussed in an online forum for those seeking comfort in a poor prenatal diagnosis.
Don Lincoln, author of Alien Universe, spoke with NBC News about the likelihood of aquatic aliens.
Michael Olesker was a guest on WYPR’s Maryland Morning to discuss his latest book, Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age.
Your Child’s Teeth by Evelina Weidman Sterling and Angie Best-Boss received a fantastic review in Publisher’s Weekly.
Chesapeake Bay Magazine‘s annual gift-idea list for the fishing fanatic who has wants everything includes Field Guide to Fishes of the Chesapeake Bay by Edward O. Murdy and John Musick, illustrated by Val Kells. Reviewer John Page Williams states, “The science is solid, as it should be from two veteran Bay ichthyologists, but it also carries an engaging human touch that brings each species to life through brief but informative paragraphs on where and how often it turns up in the Chesapeake, what it eats, and why it is important ecologically, commercially, and recreationally.”
Politico published an excerpt of an interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski that appears in full in Zbig: The Strategy and Statecraft of Zbigniew Brzezinski.
