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I dislike parades. Not a little, a lot!

I don’t care about the pageantry or the spectacle. I just get bored. A.D.D.? Maybe. Every time I’m stuck watching them, I can’t find an ounce of enjoyment – I just think about two dozen other things I could be doing. This couldn’t be truer than when I’m at Disneyworld.

My kids, on the other hand, love parades. So when people start lining the streets, they want to stop riding roller coasters and wait. UGH…

Wait for what? Floats. No thank you! If a float doesn’t contain root beer and ice cream, I don’t want it.

I figure with half of the eligible riders standing along the parade route, the lines to the cool things are shorter. Not my family. We wait – and not for the good stuff.

A funny thing happened on our trip last week. We were headed to a ride at the back of the park while people were lining up for the parade. No one with me suggested we stop to watch (miracle), so I powered into the street. We must have been the last ones let out before they closed the rope because we found ourselves about 20 paces in front of the parade with all of its flags and music.

Maybe it was the fact that I was pushing my daughter’s wheelchair, or possibly because I looked so stately and official, but it became apparent that the spectators thought we were supposed to be the ones leading the parade. We all realized it at the same time as they clapped and waved at us.

My kids became confused.

They grouped together.

“Should we pull off and get out of the way?” they wondered.

The oldest asked, “What do we do?”

Of course they looked to me, the leader, the head honcho, the alpha male for direction and what did they find me doing?

Waving

With a dopey grin on my face, I waved back at all of my adoring fans.

♦

When life puts you at the front of the parade, smile and wave!

♦

The kids laughed at me, but it caught on. All of us began waving to the crowd.

You know what? Everyone waved back. The people didn’t think we looked out of place – they just waved at us. I wonder what they thought when the real parade came and they realized we didn’t belong. Oh well, we were gone by then. We walked over half of the parade route unencumbered by the bustling crowd until we got near the ride we wanted. Then we simply ducked into the masses and became one of them – anonymous once more.

I still hate parades… But for a moment, I was the grand marshal.

In the wake of his resignation, many are asking who Fidel Castro really was, and what really happened in Cuba during his tenure as President. The answer to these questions--and more--can be found in two Yale Press titles, both available in paperback.

The Real Fidel Castro by Leycester Coltman

Published on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban revolution, this timely book, the most intimate and dispassionate biography of Fidel Castro to date, offers a fresh assessment of the revolutionary leader. Written by the British ambassador to Cuba in the early 1990s, it chronicles the events of Castro’s extraordinary life and explores the contradiction between the private character and the public reputation.

Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott

In this acute and profoundly engaged exploration of Cuban history, British journalist Richard Gott illuminates the island’s entire revolutionary past, from pre-Columbian times to the present. He emphasizes little-known aspects of Cuba’s early centuries and provides an extraordinary account of Castro’s regime, its lonely survival in the post-Soviet years, and its expected future. View the table of contents by clicking here.

Daniel Solove, author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, was recently interviewed by C-SPAN for their weekly series, "The Communicators." C-SPAN has now made the entire interview available on YouTube.

"The Communicators" is C-SPAN's weekly series that examines the people and events currently shaping telecommunications policy. Topics of the Solove interview included the use of the Internet as a tool for gossip and slander and the privacy issues raised by posting private information about others on chatrooms, online discussion groups, and blogs.

Daniel J. Solove is associate professor, George Washington University Law School, and an internationally known expert in privacy law. He is frequently interviewed and featured in media broadcasts and articles, and he is the author of The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. He lives in Washington, D.C., and blogs at the popular law blog http://www.concurringopinions.com.

Click here to listen to an interview with the author on the Yale Press Podcast.

In this Show: To Disney of Not! EPCOT USA by Deirdre Flint Let me know where you are: Click on ‘Join the CLIP Frappr Map’ in the menu bar. Post a comment: Click the comment button below or leave a voice mail by clicking ‘leave me a message’ in the menu bar or by calling 206-350-6204 or e-mailing at [...]

Fady Joudah’s Earth in the Attic is winner of the 2007 Yale Series of Younger Poets competition and judge Louise Glück's fifth selection for the series.

Judge Glück describes the poet in her Foreword as "that strange animal, the lyric poet in whom circumstance and profession. . . have compelled obsession with large social contexts and grave national dilemmas." She finds in his poetry an incantatory quality and concludes, "These are small poems, many of them, but the grandeur of conception is inescapable. The Earth in the Attic is varied, coherent, fierce, tender; impossible to put down, impossible to forget."

Read an excerpt, or listen to Joudah read "In the Calm" from his poem, "Pulse."

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American medical doctor and a field member of Doctors Without Borders since 2001. He is also the translator of Mahmoud Darwish’s recent poetry The Butterfly’s Burden. He lives in Houston, TX.

The Yale Series of Younger Poets champions the most promising new American poets. Awarded since 1919, the Yale Younger Poets prize is the oldest annual literary award in the United States. Past winners include Muriel Rukeyser, Adrienne Rich, William Meredith, W.S. Merwin, John Ashbery, John Hollander, James Tate, and Carolyn Forché.

In the wake of recent news stories about internet privacy and cyber-vigilantes, Daniel Solove, author of The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, has continued to share his expertise in a variety of articles and forums. Here is a brief list of some sites where Solove has appeared:

• For their January 21 article "Keeping Teens Safe Online," ConsumerAffairs.com asks Solove about how teens view the Internet, and what parents can do.
• The Washington Post posted the second-half of "Privacy, Free Speech and Anonymity on the Internet," the transcript of Solove's two-day online discussion, in which he answered questions from the public.
• The Arizona Daily Star turned to Solove for their story on the rise of shame sites for bad tippers, aggressive drivers, adulterers, and more.
• The San Francisco Chronicle profiled Joanne McNabb of the California state Internet Security Office, who, after reading "adviser" Daniel Solove's book, is changing California laws based upon his book's suggestions.
• In TechNewsWorld's article on the increase in self-Googling, Solove explains the new definition of privacy.
• In Newsweek's Periscope section, Daniel Solove is consulted for an article on college campus gossip sites.

Today from 4:30 to 5:30, at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Solove will give the Distinguished Lecture in Law and Technology. This event is free and open to the public. If you can't make it, then you can instead catch the live webcast at http://law.case.edu/lectures. Click here for more information.

Read an excerpt from The Future of Reputation, or browse the table of contents, or visit Solove's website or blog.

Writing for The New Republic, Jed Perl lists "half a dozen remarkable books about the visual arts published during the year." Two of his six favorites were published by Yale University Press this past year: Second Diasporist Manifesto: A New Kind of Long Poem in 615 Free Verses by R. B. Kitaj, and Calder Jewelry edited by Alexander S. C. Rower and Holton Rower. "Each is a book," says Perl, "that I expect I'm going to be returning to in 2008--and in the years beyond."

Perl calls Kitaj's Second Diasporist Manifesto "a wonderfully idiosyncratic book." He goes on to say that "the book is niftily laid out, with Kitaj's drawings and paintings reproduced in a black-and-white that suggests the brevity of tabloid imagery, and shots of red ink added to underscore the vehemence of Kitaj's drumroll pronouncements."

This book, a follow up to Kitaj’s influential First Diasporist Manifesto (1989), is a personal reflection on the Jewish Question in contemporary art as it is lived and painted and imagined by one of today's most innovative and controversial artists. In 615 distinct propositions that deliberately echo the Commandments of Jewish Law, Kitaj here channels his ideas for a new Diasporist art in a daring stream of consciousness. Including 41 images of the artist’s work chosen by him to accompany the text, this beautifully crafted volume is a unique and fascinating look into an artist’s unusual life and work.

Calder Jewelry, says Perl, "adds yet another level of delightful complication to our understanding of an American artist whom too many people still take for granted." He calls the book an "opulent volume," and praises Maria Robledo's photographs, which "bring us very close to the jewelry, until we feel as if we are actually touching these miniaturized fantasies, taking them in our hands, trying them on."

Calder Jewelry features around 300 bracelets, brooches, necklaces, and rings, all of which are exquisitely reproduced in newly commissioned photographs. Also included are examples of Calder's inventory drawings; the boxes he made to store the jewelry; historic photographs of his jewelry worn by notable patrons, art collectors, and artists (for instance, Peggy Guggenheim and Georgia O’Keeffe); and a chronology. Essays by Mark Rosenthal and Jane Adlin discuss the relationship of these objects to the artist’s other endeavors and in relation to the history of jewelry.

Click here to read the rest of Perl's article.

"Do you understand the reality of entrepreneurship or do you believe the myths?"

That question has piqued the interest of many news aggregates and bloggers, who took this quiz to find out where they stand. The quiz was designed by author Scott A. Shane, whose new book, The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By, answers many of those questions in the quiz.

All over the web, bloggers who took the quiz are posting their thoughts--and their scores. Among those bloggers is Guy Kawasaki, a "managing director of Garage Technology Ventures, ... a columnist for Entrepreneur Magazine," and a former "Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc." Kawasaki scored "a whopping 40%" on Shane's quiz, and a few days later Shane wrote a guest post for his blog, How to Change the World.

Jeremy Hanks of Adventures in Entrepreneurship bought the book after getting only a 45%. Small Business Trends took the quiz, and then posted that they want to get Shane for an interview. Startup Addict Musings also took the quiz and posted about it. The quiz has also been seeded on Newsvine, and picked up by web aggregates like Small Business Brief, Small Business Radar, MyBlogLog, and Blog Catalog. Buzzoodle listed four reasons why it's generating so much buzz, including the fact that "Guy Kawasaki was impressed." See below for a list of more blogs that picked up on the buzz around Scott Shane.

The Illusions of Entrepreneurship shows that the reality of entrepreneurship is decidedly different from the myths that have come to surround it. Scott Shane, a leading expert in entrepreneurial activity in the United States and other countries, draws on the data from extensive research to provide accurate, useful information about who becomes an entrepreneur and why, how businesses are started, which factors lead to success, and which predict a likely failure.

Scott A. Shane is A. Malachi Mixon III Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. He is the author or editor of eleven books and more than sixty scholarly articles on entrepreneurship and innovation management. He lives in Shaker Heights, OH.

If you want to read more from Shane before you buy your copy of The Illusions of Entrepreneurship, here are some places to start:

http://www.escapefromcubiclenation.com/get_a_life_blog/2008/01/test-your-knowl.html

http://www.businessopportunitiesandideas.co.uk/537/do-you-think-you-know-more-about-entrepreneurship-than-guy-kawasaki

http://upandrunning.entrepreneur.com/2008/01/15/top-ten-myths-of-entrepreneurship/

http://smarteconomy.typepad.com/entrepreneurship_and_inno/2008/01/the-illusions-o.html

http://blog.weatherby.net/2008/01/entrepreneurshi.html

http://www.thefrankpetersshow.com/

http://thinkbeta.com/blog/?p=933

http://thedailychallengesofanentrepreneur.blogspot.com/2008/01/test-to-see-how-good-your-knowledge-is.html

http://blog.case.edu/case-news/2008/01/09/shanebook

Choice, a publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries, recently announced its 2007 Outstanding Academic Titles list. This list, released on January 1, "reflects the best titles reviewed by Choice in 2007 and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community." Yale University Press appears on this prestigious list 26 times among the 646 titles in 54 disciplines and subsections. Here is a list of the titles chosen from Yale Press:

John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, by Arthur H. Cash

Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, by David Alan Brown and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden

Britannia and Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars, by Natalya Abramova and Irina Zagarodnaya

On Political Equality, by Robert A. Dahl

Art in the Making: Rembrandt, by David Bomford, Jo Kirby, Ashok Roy, Axel Rüger, and Raymond White

Caesar: Life of a Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy

The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible, by Allen Dwight Callahan

The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. by Fred R. Shapiro

On Opera, by Bernard Williams

The Unfree French: Life Under the Occupation, by Richard Vinen

Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, by Samuel Truett

Saul Steinberg: Illuminations, by Joel Smith

Wagner and the Art of the Theatre, by Patrick Carnegy

A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion, by Catherine L. Albanese

The Nonprofit Sector: A Research Handbook, ed. by Walter W. Powell and Richard Steinberg

John Singer Sargent: Figures and Landscapes, 1874-1882; Complete Paintings: Volume IV, by Richard Ormond and Elaine Kilmurray

Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, ed. by Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen and Donald Albrecht

Claude Lorrain--The Painter as Draftsman: Drawings from the British Museum, by Richard Rand

Thinking in Circles: An Essay on Ring Composition, by Mary Douglas

William Powell Frith: Painting in the Victorian Age, by Mark Bills and Vivien Knight

The Case for Literature, by Gao Xingjian

Shakespeare the Thinker, by A. D. Nuttall

Robert Rauschenberg: Cardboards and Related Pieces, by Yve-Alain Bois

The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece, ed. by Gary M. Radke

The Last Human: A Guide to Twenty-Two Species of Extinct Humans, created by G. J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak; text by Esteban Sarmiento, G.J. Sawyer, and Richard Milner

Russia's Islamic Threat, by Gordon M. Hahn

For more information on Choice, click here.

So the movie version of Neil Gaiman's Coraline could be really good, or really, really bad. Either way, here's a preview, courtesy of his website.



I kinda want to pull Coraline's face into alignment, but other than that, it looks appropriately creepy and atmospheric, with a great little eeky shiver at the end. What do you think? Weigh in in the comments!

Check here for a higher-res Quicktime version, if you're lucky enough to have a computer that plays nice with Quicktime.

Thanks to Child_Lit for passing it on.

In another blog for The Huffington Post, Yale Press author Amitai Etzioni discusses "The Immigration Hypocrisy." He begins:

The United States is spending scores of billions of dollars to build fences and to train and enlarge the border patrol in an effort to stop illegal immigrants from entering the country, especially from south of the border. However, if an immigrant has few extra bucks and a bit of know-how, he or she can avoid the hot desert, the dangerous coyotes, and possible confrontations with the Minutemen or border patrol agents. They can simply fly to the US, enjoying complimentary drinks and munchies on one of the numerous airlines, and, once their visa has expired, they can just stay. No one knows exactly how many of the 300 million (I kid you not) visitors who came to the US simply refuse to leave when their time is up, but the number is very substantial. (Estimates vary between 60% to "only" 40% of all illegal immigrants).

Continue reading "The Immigration Hypocrisy."

Yale University Press recently released Amitai Etzioni's Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy.

Few would argue against the need for change in American foreign policy, but what approach would be best? Amitai Etzioni here proposes a foreign policy that is both pragmatic and morally sound—one in which basic security is the first priority. His ideas ring with the sound of reason, and his book should be required reading for every leader, policy maker and voter in America.

Amitai Etzioni is a Professor of International Relations at the George Washington University. Among his books are From Empire to Community, Political Unification Revisited, Winning Without War, and The Common Good. He served as a Senior Aid to the White House and as President of the American Sociological Association. He taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Berkeley. He was listed as one of the top 100 American intellectuals in Richard Posner’s book Public Intellectuals.

In light of continued media coverage about the U.S.'s relationship with Iran, Trita Parsi's attention-grabbing Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States was reviewed by both Salon and Bloomberg News. Gary Kamiya of Salon calls it "an important new book," addressing a "fundamental misunderstanding of the country" of Iran. Celestine Bohlen of Bloomberg News admires the book for "tackling the complex question of Israel's role in what has become a triangular relationship" between Iran, the U.S., and Israel.

Read an excerpt, view the table of contents, or listen to an interview with the author on the Yale Press Podcast.

Slate and Seattle Times have recently praised In the Company of Crows and Ravens by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell, released earlier this year in paperback.

This intriguing book examines the often surprising ways that crows and ravens and humans interact. Featuring more than 100 striking illustrations, the book recounts lively stories about crows and ravens throughout history and around the world, and the authors challenge us to reconsider our thinking not only about these compelling birds but also about ourselves.

Slate contributor Tyler Cowen named it as one of "the best books of 2007," calling it "the unheralded science book of the year." He additionally wrote about this "fascinating book" on his blog, Marginal Revolution.

For their holiday gift list, Seattle Times suggests the "terrific" In the Company of Crows and Ravens, citing the numerous honors given to the book, including "rave reviews for this blend of science, art and anthropology" and "a first prize in book illustration and an overall prize for best work in the Victoria and Albert Museum's illustration contest."

Read an excerpt of the book, or view the table of contents.

In an article on "their favorite books of 2007," New York Times art and architecture critics write "there is more to art books than gorgeous illustrations."

As an example of a book that is more than just "gorgeous illustrations, they name Yale's The Gates of Paradise: Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance Masterpiece, edited by Gary M. Radke. Art critic Roberta Smith calls the book "a handsome and unusually handy (because narrow) catalog that may be the first book in English devoted exclusively to this masterpiece." She praises The Gates of Paradise, saying that it "brims with research gleaned from a newly completed 25-year conservation process and has essays by a dozen American and Italian scholars, leading off with an especially inspired one by Andrew Butterfield, a writer and Renaissance sculpture expert." Read more about this favorite and others here.

In an article for the Holiday issue of the New York Times Style Magazine, Carol Kino praises another art book recently released by Yale Press, Calder Jewelry, edited by Alexander S. C. Rower and Holton Rower. Kino says that "leafing through the book feels like taking a trip through art history." You can read more from this beautifully illustrated article, or see more images from the book.

Featuring around 300 bracelets, brooches, necklaces, and rings––along with inventory drawings and historic photographs––this stunning book examines Alexander Calder’s captivating jewelry.

Benjamin Genocchio of the New York Times reviewed Art and Emancipation in Jamaica: Isaac Mendes Belisario and His Worlds as a "fine exhibition," for which Yale Press released the catalogue by Tim Barringer, Gillian Forrester, and Barbaro Martinez Ruiz. Genocchio went on to call it "undoubtedly the largest exhibition at the [Yale Center for British Art] in some time" and noted that "the displays and research yield fascinating stories, not only about art’s relation to history but also about the appalling cruelty that humans inflict upon one another." Read the entire review here.

And Edward Rothstein wrote an article on the opening of the Museum at Eldridge Street, after 20 years of reconstruction. He talked to the "knowledgeable" Annie Polland about what used to be the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Polland's YUP-released book, Landmark of the Spirit, is forthcoming.

Amitai Etzioni, author of Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy, was a recent guest blogger for The Huffington Post. The article, called "An Honesty Test for Politicians," begins:

In the course of this campaign season many questions have been raised about the character of the various candidates for public office. We are sure to hear much more about their personal integrity and the veracity of specific claims they make. The test I recommend is simple: It asks whether a person who is seeking to lead us has the courage to come clean with the American people and tell one and all that we must take a bitter medicine--namely, that we must impose a hefty tax on oil. He or she can soften the blow by listing all the good things that would follow from such a tax, but would have to add that we also must give up on our romance with the automobile.

Continue reading "An Honesty Test for Politicians."

Amitai Etzioni is a Professor of International Relations at the George Washington University. Among his books are From Empire to Community, Political Unification Revisited, Winning Without War, and The Common Good. He served as a Senior Aid to the White House and as President of the American Sociological Association. He taught at Columbia, Harvard, and Berkeley. He was listed as one of the top 100 American intellectuals in Richard Posner’s book Public Intellectuals.

Claudia Gryvatz Copquin's newly released The Neighborhoods of Queens is receiving lots of positive attention this week.

The New York Daily News ran an article on the book's release, saying "Look out, Queens, because your bible is coming. A 265-page book with intricate maps, historic photos and fascinating tidbits about the nation's most diverse county is already racking up requests on Amazon.com."

The New York Post calls the book "excellent" and the New York Observer says it's "one of those books where you can open it to any page and find something interesting."

As previously posted, Book Culture in Manhattan will host "An Evening with Claudia Gryvatz Copquin" on Thursday, December 6 at 7 p.m. She will discuss the book and her childhood in Queens, with a Q&A, book signing, and reception.

And on Saturday, December 8, at 1:30 p.m., there will be a book party at the Queens Museum of Art, Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Along with Copquin herself, speakers will include Kenneth T. Jackson, General Editor of Yale's Neighborhoods of New York City series, and Peter H. Kostmayer, President of Citizens Committee for New York City.

If you can't get to any of these events, you don't have to miss out. You can read Copquin's interview with Kerri Fivecoat-Campbell, the blogger behind K.C.'s Write For You, where Copquin discusses Queens, her book, and life as a writer.

Claudia Gryvatz Copquin is an award-winning freelance journalist who immigrated to Queens from South America with her family in the late 1960s. She now resides on Long Island.

Jack Balkin, the professor and author behind the popular blog Balkinization, invited Yale author Russell Korobkin to write a guest post and talk about his new book Stem Cell Century: Law and Policy for a Breakthrough Technology:

A couple of weeks back, Jack invited me to guest blog about my new book, Stem Cell Century: Law and Policy for a Breakthrough Technology, just out from Yale University Press. The book examines a broad range of legal and policy issues raised by stem cell research, starting with the issues that garner significant media attention, such as President Bush’s restrictive federal funding policy, but going substantially beyond to consider issues concerning cloning research, the patenting of stem cells, innovation policy as related to stem cells, issues of research subject protection and tissue donor compensation, and questions of regulation by the FDA and the tort system.

Korobkin's post, which continues here, has sparked a lot of discussion in the comments section. Read an excerpt from Stem Cell Century, or view the table of contents.

Here is just a sample of some titles that editors and websites have picked in their year-end lists.

William Grimes at the New York Times assembled a gift guide of 15 perfect books for this holiday season, including Bears: A Brief History by Bernd Brunner. Grimes warmly recommends "this little gem."

The Washington Post put out their list of the best books of 2007, featuring four YUP titles. They called Hugh Brogan's Alexis de Tocqueville a monumental achievement. West from Appomattox, an "engaging" book by Heather Cox Richardson, also made the list. Ali A. Allawi brings "a valuable new voice to the ongoing debate" in The Occupation of Iraq, they said. And they praise Janet Malcolm's Two Lives as a "lucid and elegant meditation on literature and morality."

In addition, the Washington Post rounded up a list of art gift books. Among them are Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art by Jeffrey Spier, and George Stubbs, Painter, the catalogue raisonne by Judy Egerton.

Library Journal has named Hotel: An American History, by A. K. Sandoval-Strausz a December Best Book Pick. Along with having a "sound historical method," Sandoval-Strausz writes with "that rare blend of erudition and clarity that most of us can only dream of possessing."

Also, the Yale Holiday Sale has been extended. Free shipping is available for all web orders through December 31, 2007, and select titles are 50% off. And don't forget to check out our Holiday Selections.

If you're looking for the best books of the year or the perfect gifts for the season, Amazon.com, the New York Times, the Washington Post and others have put together some year-end book lists. Yale University Press books have ranked highly on many of those lists, from arts to science to current events. Here is just a sample of some titles that editors and websites have picked.

Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games by Tennent H. Bagley made the Amazon.com Editors' Picks: Top 100 Books, coming in at number 76. Also, YUP titles made strong showings in a number of the editors' category-based Top 10 lists.

• In the Arts and Photography category, the #1 book of the year is The Sculpture of Louise Nevelson, edited by Brooke Kamin Rapaport. In addition, Balenciaga and His Legacy by Myra Walker was #9.
• Janet Malcolm's Two Lives ranked #4 in the Gay and Lesbian category, as well as #5 in Biography.
• In the Current Events category, The Occupation of Iraq by Ali A. Allawi was listed as #9.
• And in the Science category, The Last Human by G. J. Sawyer and Viktor Deak ranked as #8.

See the rest of the Amazon.com Editors' Picks.

Also, the Yale Holiday Sale has been extended. Free shipping is available for all web orders through December 31, 2007, and select titles are 50% off. And don't forget to check out our Holiday Selections.

James Prosek, author and illustrator for Yale University Press' recently released Tight Lines: Ten Years of the Yale Anglers' Journal, wrote a short essay for the Outdoors section of the New York Times. The piece, published on November 28th, describes in painterly prose his trip to Alaska with an old mentor:

When I was 14, I was caught fishing illegally in a drinking-water reservoir by a game warden named Joe Haines. Instead of giving me a ticket, he took me under his wing.

I learned a lot of things from Haines: how to find edible mushrooms in the woods or four-leaf clovers in the yard; how to catch blue crabs and find razor clams; and how to spear, skin and cook eels.

To continue reading the piece, click here.

In addition, Prosek and Alexis Surovov came on WNPR's Where We Live to talk about fly fishing, the Yale Anglers' Journal, and Tight Lines. To listen to that show, click here.

Prosek also came into the studio for the Yale Press Podcast, which you can hear by clicking here.

Christopher Lane, author of Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, wrote an op-ed for the November 6 edition of the Washington Post. The piece, titled "Shy? Or Something More Serious?," has generated strong responses online. Here is an excerpt from "Shy? Or Something More Serious?":

If anyone in my parents' generation had argued that shyness and other run-of-the-mill behaviors might one day be called mental disorders, most people would probably have laughed or stared in disbelief. At the time, wallflowers were often admired as modest and geeks considered bookish. Those who were shy might sometimes have been thought awkward -- my musically gifted mother certainly was -- but their reticence fell within the range of normal behavior. When their discomfort was pronounced, the American Psychiatric Association called it "anxiety neurosis," a psychoanalytic term that encouraged talk-related treatment.

Click here to keep reading "Shy? Or Something More Serious?"

Lane also wrote an op-ed, "Shy on Drugs," for the College section of the New York Times this past September. You can read that piece here.

Christopher Lane is Herman and Beulah Pearce Miller Research Professor, Northwestern University, and the recent recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship to study psychopharmacology and ethics. He is the author of many essays and several books on psychoanalysis, psychiatry, and culture, including Hatred and Civility: The Antisocial Life in Victorian England.

Yale University Press is proud to announce that three of our books have been chosen by the New York Times for their list of 100 Notable Books of 2007. Those books are Hugh Brogan's Alexis de Tocqueville: A Life, Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, and Tim Jeal's Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer.

For their annual Holiday Books edition, the New York Times Sunday Book Review selects 100 "outstanding works from the last year." These three YUP books were selected from all of the books reviewed by the NYT since last year's list was printed on December 3, 2006. A print version of the list will run in the December 2, 2007 edition of the Book Review.

Read the NYT reviews for Alexis de Tocqueville, Two Lives, and Stanley. See the entire list here. Hear the Yale Press Podcast of Hugh Brogan discussing his book here.

In last year's 100 Notable Books of 2006, NYT chose Francis Fukuyama's America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy. You can read their review for that book here.