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A wonderful, informative interview in the Iowa Independent with our own Kelly Herold, even if they did leave off the Fantasy and Science Fiction category.

Many thanks to Libby Gruner from our Fantasy & Science Fiction panel for her thoughtful article on the Cybils over at Literary Mama. She introduces us to a whole new audience of smart, savvy and bookish Moms--exactly the sort of folks we hope to reach as we spread word of the great books we got to read this year.

Thanks, Libby!

Happy snowy Friday to all! Grab a cup of hot cocoa, snuggle up with a blanket and your laptop and start surfing these links.

Don’t look now but your media job may just be running for the hills.

Sing it loud Egan so Steve Jobs can hear you, books are not dead!

The Best of the Bookers.

Curious about art theft?  A reformed stolen-art dealer tells all. (more…)

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This legal look at Sweeney Todd is by Oxford Law Division Editorial Assistant Michelle Lipinski.

The legend of Sweeney Todd has been trimmed and altered with the passage of time. The characters have also changed and their narratives fleshed-out. One point, though, remaining fairly static in the legend is the presence of lawmakers and legal defenders – starting with the creation of Sweeney Todd in The String of Pearls: A Romance, and all the way up to director Tim Burton’s newest cinematic installment based upon Sondheim’s musical adaptation, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. (more…)

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Whether you're coming here from SLJ's Extra Helpings or today's FuseNews, we hope you'll make yourself welcome. Click here for our list of 2007 winners, which we announced last week.

There's loads of fun stuff in our sidebars, from a printable list of finalists to links to our organizers and judges.

Have a blog of your own? We'll be soliciting judges for next year's contest in early August.

Thanks for stopping by!

David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. In the post below they look at Huckabee’s recent attack on the press.

With John McCain looking to wrap up the Republican Party presidential nomination, challenger Mike Huckabee is just looking for a way to remain relevant. Earlier this week, Huckabee tried going on the attack against a familiar target: the press.

At a breakfast meeting with reporters from the Christian Science Monitor, Huckabee decried journalists’ focus on his religious background, saying: “There has been an attempt to ghettoize me for a very small part of my biography. The last time I was in the pulpit was 1991.” (more…)

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I actually drew this as a Valentine for my dog Sunshine, but it fits the theme "Theory", and I am not sure I will find time to complete another drawing this week. So I wanted to share it with you all.
Scientific studies have shown the benefits of keeping a pet. They lower your blood pressure, raise your sense of well being, and caring for an animal can give a person a sense of purpose and love. Dogs and cats are used for all kinds of therapy, and there are programs which bring animals into retirement homes for visits.
My dog and I are inseparable. She really does make me laugh everyday...I'd say she has been very good for my sense of well being!
©Kathleen Rietz
For all of you who have pets to hug today.
Happy Valentine's Day. (my original message from the original posting on Valentine's Day)

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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Good morning everyone. I thought I would share some of what I learned at the first day of Tim O’Reilly’s Tools of Change Conference. I took an enormous amount of notes but to be honest the most important thing I heard all day was that Publisher’s Weekly has partnered with Netgalley to allow publishers to send and track galleys electronically. This is huge. Galley production is not only expensive but it is also wasteful. Many if not all galleys end up in the garbage and it is, therefore, difficult to know if they are actually reaching the desks of reviewers. Hopefully, with Netgalley, publishers will be able to cutback on the amount of paper they waste creating galleys and further encourage the publishing industry to go green.

There is your public service announcement for the day. (more…)

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Evan’s post last week, Do I Believe in Ebooks?: Part One, stimulated some interesting conversation in the blogosphere and I hope that Part Two, his bold recommendation, will encourage all of us to reconsider the potential of ebooks. I will be at the Tools of Change conference today and I hope some of my fellow attendees will share their opinions with me both in person and in the comments section below.

By Evan Schnittman

In my last posting I promised to delve into my vision of the evolution of ebooks and in doing so offer a dramatic proposal to make them more mainstream and more widely used. I propose that an ebook license be granted as part of the purchase price to anyone who buys a new print book. Yes, you read correctly; the ebook is free with a new print book purchase. (more…)

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Leon Neyfakh’s article Mr. Silvers, Will You Peek at My Books? strikes home for those of us in the publicity department at OUP. Each visit to Mr. Silvers requires preparation and much mental fortitude. If you aren’t completely prepared you may find yourself embarrassed, for example:

“I remember one time, ” said Christian Purdy of Oxford University Press, “I was suggesting a reviewer to him, and he said, ‘But Purdy, that person is dead.’ I was embarrassed and felt so stupid and said, ‘Jeez, no one told me!’ Every time I’ve suggested a reviewer since, I’ve checked.”

Yup, that’s my boss! I’ll be sure to remind him of that episode the next time I spell an author’s name wrong on the blog. The lesson Purdy learned that day though resonates, preparing for your visit with Silvers, prepares you for the entire season.

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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 Its Way Back. In the post below Edwards refutes the claim that John McCain is not a real conservative.   Read more posts by Edwards here.

(Please note: I know Romney well, having worked in his gubernatorial campaign and later joining him frequently at Republican fundraising events in Massachusetts. I know McCain, too, having served with him in Congress. I have not, however, endorsed any candidate in this year’s presidential primaries.)

With Mitt Romney out of the race for President, the narrow circle of self-designated “spokesmen” for conservatism will find themselves growing ever more frantic in their desperate search for a candidate who can somehow stop John McCain’s march to the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. McCain’s apostasy, they contend, is that he is not a conservative and, in the words of Mr. Romney, “outside the Republican mainstream.” (more…)

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By Kirsty OUP-UK

With Oscar season in full swing it seems fitting that this month’s Very Short Introduction column comes from Patricia Aufderheide, author of Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction. Patricia is a professor in the School of Communication at American University, Washington DC, and in the past has served as a Sundance Film Festival juror and as a board member of the Independent Television Service. Regular OUPblog readers will also have read Patricia’s previous posts for OUPblog here, here and here.

(more…)

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It’s not everyday I have an author who has written about blogs agree to post on the OUPblog! Today,  David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications, and author of Blogwars, lets us know how truly bizarre it is to transition from penning a book to penning a blog post.  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.

I begin my new OUP book Blogwars by claiming, only half facetiously, that there are good reasons not to write a book on blogs. New stuff is happening so fast, that it’s hard to keep up.

But that is the point: A blogger’s work is never done, nor, I hope, is that of a student of blogs. Bloggers cannot coast or rest on their laurels; their readers will abandon them or, worse, ask why they are failing them. Blogs are always unfinished, their work always to be continued, revised, and extended later. Books are supposed to be different. In a sense all books are orphans. Only in some screwball comedy movie is it possible for an author to change his mind and run into bookstores and add new material. (more…)

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Philip Davis professor of English literature at Liverpool University, author of Bernard Malamud: A Writer’s Life, and editor of The Reader, wrote the post below which originally appeared on Moreover. Inspired by George Steiner, who has written a book about the books he never wrote, Philip Davis meditates on his own missteps–those hiccups of betrayal and slips of cowardice. Now he wants your stories, too …

George Steiner had a very good idea when he wrote “My Unwritten Books“–a new book about the seven books he never wrote. The comic possibilities for the rest of us are endless. Only seven, George? I gotta hundred of ‘em. Plus all the other things I never did. I could have been a contender…

What interests me is something more limited: the split-second when something could have happened, or should have been done, and then wasn’t. (more…)

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By Evan Schnittman

Recently I was on an airplane reading an article in the New York Times when the woman in the seat next to me leaned over and asked what I was holding. I told her it was a Kindle, Amazon’s new ebook reader. I showed her how it worked, explained e-ink, walked her through my collection of titles and subscriptions, and showed how I could look up words in the built in Oxford dictionary. Her response; “That is really cool, but I prefer the feel and smell of a real book.” (more…)

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David Domke is Professor of Communication and Head of Journalism at the University of Washington. Kevin Coe is a doctoral candidate in Speech Communication at the University of Illinois. They are authors of the The God Strategy: How Religion Became a Political Weapon in America. To learn more about the book check out their handy website here, to read more posts by them click here. In the post below they look at Obama’s success in South Carolina.

In winning the Iowa caucuses and the South Carolina primary, Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama carried virtually every demographic group. (more…)

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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.  In the post below Edwards considers the Republican nominees and the voters who may elect them.  Read Edwards other OUPblog posts here.

John McCain’s victory in Florida’s Republican presidential primary (or, more accurately, Mitt Romney’s loss and Mike Huckabee’s distant fourth-place finish) illustrate once again – as did Rudy Giuliani’s once dominant lead in earlier national polls – that many outside observers, including most of the nation’s most prominent political reporters, have no clue as to the party’s real electoral base. (more…)

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Sotirios A. Barber is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame and James E. Fleming is The Honorable Frank R. Kenison Distinguished Scholar in Law at Boston University School of Law. Together they have written Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions which examines the fundamental inquiries that arise in interpreting constitutional law. Below they respond to a Stanley Fish article about their new book.

As the authors of Constitutional Interpretation: The Basic Questions, we thank Professor Stanley Fish for his generous reference to the book as a guide through the long-standing debate on approaches to constitutional interpretation. (“Does Constitutional Theory Matter?”) We write to express more than gratitude, however, for we are puzzled by two elements of Fish’s piece: his denial that theories of interpretation matter and his description of our position in the debate. (more…)

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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. He attended the State of the Union address Monday night and shared his reaction with us yesterday. Today Edwards wonders why the Republican members of Congress were so enthusiastic at the SOTU Monday. Read Edwards other OUPblog posts here.

For Republican members of Congress, the man who delivered a State of the Union speech Monday night was not merely a President of the United States – the head of one of the other branches of the federal government – but, more importantly, he was their team captain. (more…)

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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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On January 29, 7:30pm the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas will host a panel on “Military Blogging and America’s Wars.” The guests will include John Donovan, one of America’s leading milbloggers (who was invited to meet President Bush in the White House); Ward Carroll, a retired Navy Commander who flew F-14s and editor of www.Military.com; and Charles J. “Jack” Holt, chief of New Media Operations for the Department of Defense. David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications , and author of Blogwars, will moderate the session.

In Blogwars Perlmutter examines the rapidly burgeoning phenomenon of blogs and questions the degree to which blog influence–or fail to influence–American political life. In the post below Perlmutter introduces us to Military Blogs.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is supposed to have said that “war is the father of all things.” It is absolutely true that where we live, the language we speak, the flags we fly, the beliefs we hold, the land we live on, and even our genetic heritage have been affected by who won and lost wars. Likewise, much of our technology was created for or improved toward making war. (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 reports back from Sundance.

Whew! It’s finally over, the longest 10 days of the year. The Sundance Film Festival awards have been announced, and all 50,000 of us festival-goers have cleaned up our condos, slipped on our Uggs for what we hope is the last time this season, and begun to make sense of the blizzard of business cards we’ve collected.

I want my I Survived Sundance T-shirt. (more…)

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In this show: Joel Mark Witt at PodcampEDU