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Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who moved to Britain in the late 1950s. He spent 5 years studying medicine before turning to the stage. He has written and produced numerous plays and is currently a producer for BBC Radio. In his new book, Negro with a a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey Grant looks at one of the most controversial figures in African-American history. Both worshiped and despised, Garvey led an extraordinary life as the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which had branches in more than 40 countries. In honor of W. E. B. Du Bois’s birthday, which is tomorrow, Grant has taken a closer look at the relationship between Du Bois and Garvey.

A great excitement swirled around the garden reception for W.E.B Du Bois in the grounds of the royal governor of Jamaica’s official residence. On 3 May 1915, the island’s representative men assembled to honor the Harvard-educated African American, feted by the local papers as a scholar who certainly ‘belonged to the aristocracy of intellect in America’. A stocky dark-skinned black man was one of the last in line to extend a proud hand of welcome. Du Bois later recalled his ‘remarkable intensity’ but other than that, little impression was made on him by the man who was destined, over the next decade, to become his nemesis: Marcus Garvey. (more…)

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Last week David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and author of Blogwars, took a look at whether book authors should blog. This week he investigates the influence of bloggers on “the people.” Be on the lookout for Blogwars which examines the rapidly burgeoning phenomenon of blogs and questions the degree to which blog influence–or fail to influence–American political life. Read Perlmutter’s other OUPblog posts here.

In Blogwars I compile much survey data that shows that people who blog about politics, as well as the readers and commenters—interactors—of political blogs, are not “the people.” That is, they are not a true cross-section of America: They tend to be male, white, upper income, higher education. But even if blogs are not vox populi, it does not follow that, as blog critics love to taunt, bloggers are the tinfoil-hatters of American political life. To the contrary, while bloggers may not be the people, there is growing evidence that they have an extraordinary and extra-proportional effect on the people, and on politics, campaigns and elections, public affairs, policy-making, press agendas and coverage, and public opinion. (more…)

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written and illustrated by Matt Faulkner Simon and Schuster 2008 LuLu and Jelly can't believe that Abbey saw a fountain in town that bubbled colored water; they have to see this for themselves. When their Uncle Jack needs to make a run into town the kids beg to go with so they can investigate. Oh, but this is the Deep South, and it's mid 1960's, and the town is crowded with freedom riders and

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Former Republican Congressman, founding trustee of the Heritage Foundation, and national chairman of the American Conservative Union, Mickey Edwards is the author of Reclaiming Conservatism: How A Great American Political Movement Got Lost- and How It Can Find It Way Back. Last night, Edwards attended the State of The Union address and below he shares his reactions. Read Edwards other OUPblog posts here.

To hear White House spinners tell it, George W. Bush has no intention of drifting quietly into the night. Much to do. Still driven. That sort of thing. And perhaps I might have believed it if I had missed the President’s State of the Union speech Monday night. Sadly, I didn’t; I was, in fact, in the House chambers, where I have watched some 20 previous such speeches. Fortunately, there is a pattern to such events, a ritual that involves standing and cheering whenever anybody of note enters the chamber – members of the Senate (that House members cheer for them is proof of how ritualistic, and meaningless, the ovations really are), members of the Cabinet, members of the Diplomatic Corps, members of the Supreme Court, and . . . the President, for whom the tradition requires sustained applause at entry, sustained applause at podium arrival, sustained applause at the Speaker’s formal introduction of the visitor from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. (more…)

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After a decade of work, on February 4th Oxford University Press and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute will publish the African American National Biography(AANB). The AANB is the largest repository of black life stories ever assembled with more than 4,000 biographies. To celebrate this monumental achievement we have invited the contributors to this 8 volume set to share some of their knowledge with the OUPBlog. Over the next couple of months we will have the honor of sharing their thoughts, reflections and opinions with you.

To kick things off we have AANB contributor Dr. Marybeth Gasman, an Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Gasman’s has published several books, including Charles S. Johnson: Leadership beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow, Supporting Alma Mater: Successful Strategies for Securing Funds from Black College Alumni, and Uplifting a People: African American Philanthropy and Education. In addition to these works, Dr. Gasman recently finished a book entitled Envisioning Black Colleges: A History of the United Negro College Fund (Johns Hopkins University Press). Recently Dr. Gasman was awarded the Promising Scholar/Early Career Award by the Association for the Study of Higher Education for her body of scholarship.  In the article below Gasman looks at criticism of Historically Black Colleges.

Public discussions of Black colleges’ troubles are often distorted by the tendency to attribute one institution’s shortcomings to the entire group. Furthermore, I have noticed that critics often base their critique on anecdote rather than evidence. As someone who works with and studies Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) on a daily basis, I find this practice to be deeply troubling. Let me offer a few examples. (more…)

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Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who moved to Britain in the late 1950s. He spent 5 years studying medicine before turning to the stage. He has written and produced numerous plays and is currently a producer for BBC Radio. In his new book, Negro with a a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey Grant looks at one of the most controversial figures in African-American history. Both worshiped and despised, Garvey led an extraordinary life as the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which had branches in more than 40 countries. In the article below Grant looks at Garvey through a modern lens, comparing him to Barack Obama.

During an outbreak of the unique American pastime of lynching in the 1920s, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People sent for its secret weapon: Walter White. The NAACP operative was so fair-skinned that he could travel to the South incognito, infiltrate the lynch mobs and investigate their actions without fear of molestation or loss of life. Nonetheless, this unenviable task exacted a psychological toll on his delicate mind. In his later years, White would recall how petrified he was of being uncovered by hateful, bigoted Southerners who had refined their own pseudo-scientific tests for unmasking blacks ‘passing’ for whites. Caught in conversation with one such man, White was bid to hold out his hands so that his finger nails might be examined: ‘Now if you had nigger blood,’ said the smiling Southerner, ‘it would show here on your half-moons.’ Walter White survived the inquisition; his cuticles did not betray him.

In some regards, Barack Obama has pulled off a similar coup. (more…)

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Unfortunately for many, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is simply a day off. This day off though, celebrates one of the most important men in American history, and we thought we would take a moment on the OUPblog to recognize his achievements. In the post below we have excerpted President Lyndon B. Johnson speech which announced the death of MLK Jr. to the American public, from our online resource the African American Studies Center.

Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, my fellow Americans:

Once again, the heart of America is heavy—the spirit of America weeps—for a tragedy that denies the very meaning of our land.

The life of a man who symbolized the freedom and faith of America has been taken. But it is the fiber and the fabric of the Republic that is being tested. (more…)

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Pat Aufderheide is a professor in the School of Communication at American University and is the author of Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. In the post below Aufderheide gets excited for the Academy Award nominations by recalling some of her favorite documentaries.

Ready to handicap the documentary short list for the Academy Awards?

I didn’t think so.

In fact, unless you go looking, you might never even find a mention of these films before the Oscars, much less watch them, even with new Academy rules requiring more theatrical showings than before. But before long, they’ll start creeping into circulation, and feeding the growing appetite for documentaries. (more…)

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The American Dialect Society has announced that the Word of the Year for 2007, as voted by members at its annual meeting, is subprime. It’s a sturdy choice, given how much media attention has circulated this past year about the financial crisis in the housing sector blamed on mortgage loans made to high-risk borrowers with credit ratings that are less than prime. Subprime (sometimes hyphenated as sub-prime) might not be as flashy as some previous selections by the ADS, such as truthiness in 2005 (comedian Stephen Colbert’s term for “truth from the gut” unencumbered by facts) or plutoed in 2006 (’demoted or devalued in the manner of Pluto losing planet status’). Nonetheless, the word has an intriguing history, even for people like me who aren’t terribly fascinated by the lending practices of banks.

(more…)

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Andrew Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink has written a piece for us which helps us truly understand the origins of Thanksgiving. Despite its solemn origins we hope you have a truly wonderful (and apple pie filled) holiday.

Every American knows the story of the First Thanksgiving: Seeking religious freedom, the Pilgrims established a colony at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Native Americans taught them how to plant corn and hunt. When the crops were harvested, the Indians joined the Pilgrims at the First Thanksgiving by jointly gobbling up turkeys, saucing cranberries, mashing corn, and squashing pumpkins to make pies. It was such a memorable event that Americans have honored this day ever since, or so goes the story.

No one would be more surprised at this modern day story than would the Pilgrims. (more…)

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It’s that time of the year again. It is finally starting to get cold (if you are worried about the global warming maybe you should become carbon-neutral) and the New Oxford American Dictionary is preparing for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore.

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation. (more…)

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

Now that we’re in November, it is only 12 months until the next American Presidential Election. With this in mind, I am thrilled to bring you this month’s VSI column on The American Presidency: A Very Short Introduction. Author Charles O. Jones is Hawkins Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. He is an expert on the American presidency, and has written or edited some 18 books.

OUP: The US has a President separately elected by the people and who does not necessarily come from the ruling Party. The political leader in the UK, the Prime Minister, is not chosen by the general electorate and does come from the Party in power. How would you compare the two systems? (more…)

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Andrew Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, wants to make sure you know what you are getting into this Halloween. In the post below Smith helps us understand the history of the holiday which inspires both cute bunny and naughty nurse costumes.

On the evening of October 31, an estimated 41 million children aged 14 and under, dress in costumes, and go house-to-house yelling, “Trick or treat.” Halloween derived from a Celtic holiday called Samhain, which celebrated the end of summer. Christianity established November 1 as All Saints Day, and its “eve” was celebrated the night. Halloween traditions were brought to American by Irish immigrants in the mid to late nineteenth century. (more…)

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The Oxford History of The United States series has won two Pulitzer Prizes, a Bancroft and a Parkman Prize. The newest addition, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, by Daniel Walker Howe, looks at the period from the battle of New Orleans to the end of the Mexican-American War. Howe’s narrative history shows how drastically America changed in thirty years. Below Howe, Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus, Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus, University of California, looks at how October 22nd resonated throughout America.

On October 22, 1844, somewhere between twenty-five and fifty thousand people gathered in groups all over the United States to watch the sky. They stayed up until after midnight, straining to see Jesus Christ coming out of the heavens. A Vermont farmer named William Miller, undeterred by his lack of knowledge of Hebrew or Greek, had applied his naive ingenuity to biblical study. Calculations based on prophecies in the Book of Daniel had convinced him and his disciples that the long-awaited Second Coming of Christ would occur on this day. (more…)

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

It’s time for the second of OUP blog’s new monthly Very Short Introductions columns. This month I spoke to L. Sandy Maisel, author of American Political Parties and Elections: A Very Short Introduction. Professor Maisel teaches at Colby College, Maine, and has written extensively on the American political system.

OUP: The US has a strictly two party system, in contrast to many European countries, which generally have multi-party systems. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this, and could America ever have a multi-party system? (more…)

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Margaret Fuller, the seminal female transcendentalist, was also a literary critic, teacher, editor, journalist, and political activist. In Margaret Fuller An American Romantic Life: The Public Years (the previous volume won the 1993 Bancroft Prize), Charles Capper focuses on Fuller’s struggles to establish her identity as an influential intellectual woman in the Romantic Age. The excerpt below details the beginning of Fuller’s trip out west, and paints a complex portrait of one of America’s most influential women. (more…)

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Michael J. Klarman, won the Bancroft Prize in 2005 for From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality. Brown v. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement, is an abridged, paperback edition of his original masterpiece, which focuses around one major case, Brown v. Board of Education. In the original essay below Klarman, who is the James Monroe Professor of Law and Professor of History at the University of Virginia, explores political backlash.

While we ordinarily think of Brown v. Board of Education (1954) as contributing to the creation of the modern civil rights movement, Brown’s more immediate effect was to crystallize the resistance of southern whites to progressive racial change, radicalize southern politics, and create a climate ripe for violence. Indeed, prominent Court decisions interpreting the U.S. Constitution have often produced political backlashes that undermine the causes that the rulings seem to promote. (more…)

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Rebecca OUP-US

People change jobs all the time, particularly in publishing, but this week someone who I have worked closely with since I started at OUP is leaving. I asked Dan Ozzi to do one last thing for before he left, write a blog entry. He choose to talk about one of his favorite artists who is featured in The Oxford Dictionary of American Art and Artists by Ann Lee Morgan. The dictionary is a wealth of information, with 945 alphabetically arranged entries contained in one-volume. Below are Dan’s thoughts on Chuck Close.

(more…)

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I found the most fun and creative gal who has a talent with food and I just have to share it with you here, here and here. Wishing you a happy 4th of July! God Bless America and pray for the safety of our troops until they can return home.

Originally uploaded by !a.k.a.Maggie!

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Rebecca  OUP-US

Happy Friday to you all! I am in Minneapolis this weekend for the American Association of University Presses Annual Meeting. If you are around you should come hear the panel I am speaking on at 3:30pm. We will be talking about my favorite topic, blogs. (more…)

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I recently entered a writing contest (a well-known one) and didn't make the short-list. No biggie, I learned a lot and made some good progress with my writing. Then I got a very encouraging letter from one of the contest judges (the chair), letting me know that I'd made the informal "long-list" of the top 20 entries and giving me some feedback on my submission. She didn't have to do this (the contest stated that feedback would only be given to short-listed folks), and made it clear she did it on her own behalf. This was very cool and much appreciated. My question is this...would it be okay to send her a short thank-you note care of her publisher? Just a "thanks for taking the time to do this, much appreciated" kinda deal? I'm not looking to come off as some psycho-stalker chick, so should I be grateful in silence, or is a brief note okay?

A short thank you note via the publisher is always in order.
You'd do better to email her from her website; publishers are notoriously slow about forwarding author mail.
You only come off as psycho-stalker chick if you send gifts, or more than one note.
Never send any object to an agent or an editor until you've signed a deal with them. Given the lunacy of this day and age, gifts from strangers mostly get thrown away still wrapped and unused.

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Your Snarkiness,

While lounging at the bookstore today, browsing through the tables of "Was $25, now $3.99" books, I wondered... who takes the loss on these huge discounts? The publisher has sent the books to the bookstore, but I know the bookstore can get its money back if it returns the books to the publisher. But if the bookstore instead sells them at what I presume is a loss, is it the bookstore that takes the hit? Or does the publisher somehow not get its full price?

Basically, I'm just hoping it's not the author, but I have a bad feeling...

My two cats send a wary greeting to Killer Yapp and wish him a pleasant afternoon, as far away from them as possible.

Killer Yapp is safely passed out cold on the sofa after a busy day at Grandmother Snark's gnawing on roast beast and fetching a red rubber ball that seemed to always be bouncing around (silly humans, losing things, you don't notice poodles losing their toys).

I think I know the answer to this but I'm going to foist it off on Ben at BleakHouse for his podcast.

Ben...would you school us all on remainders?

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You want to find out what goes on at a publishing company?
Here's your chance.

Ben at Bleak House books is doing a podcast a day about publishing.
Here's the link.

First thing I wanna know....
When's the new John Galligan book coming out?? I'm desperate here.

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Dear Miss Snark,

When you submit to Ballantine, for instance, and receive a rejection, do you then submit to other Random House family publishers like Knopf or Shaye Areheart? Or is one editor's opinion applied to the entire family? Random House, again just as an example, has a whole slew of imprints and divisions, and it appears that many of them overlap in type of books they publish--for instance, a bunch of them publish commercial women's fiction. Or is each imprint very precise in what it handles, even if that's not apparant to an outsider?

Precise?
Excuse me I think I fell off my chair laughing at that idea! KY is having a hilarity seizure at my feet. Where's the inhaler??

Now that we've restored what passes for order around here:
The big houses like Random, Penguin, Simon and Schuster, Holtzbrink and Hachette (formerly Warner) all have divisions within divisions, imprints within divisions and groups gathering many but not all under one VP. Confusing doesn't BEGIN to describe it.

I have maps to sort out who's where and reports to whom.

Just to make everything REALLY fun, some editors who work at a specific imprint can also acquire for other parts of a division. So, a guy who works for a science fiction division has lunch with me, mentions he likes cowgirl lit, and next thing you know I've sold him something that can be described as women's fiction but won't be cause it's going to be a western now.

I spend a good part of my day yapping with editors about what they are looking for and what they aren't. My colleagues and I exchange info so we can all try and stay up to speed on who's where and what they want.

I don't think any of this would be obvious or even fathomable to someone who isn't in the mix on a daily basis.

And just to keep us all on our toes, every imprint has different policies about whether no from one editor means no from everyone.

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Last week we asked you to comment on the quintessential culinary icon that never lived. This week, Andrew Smith, editor of The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink , has identified real American Culinary Icons. Who do you think is number 1? Julia Child, James Beard, Emeril Lagasse, Alice Waters or someone we didn’t mention? Be sure to let us know in the comments what you think! Check back on Thursdays throughout May for more great posts by Andrew Smith who teaches culinary history and professional food writing at The New School University, serves as Chair of the Culinary Trust and as a consultant to several food television productions.

(more…)

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