University Press Roundup

Our weekly roundup of recent blog posts and features from other academic presses (this week with a political focus):

As is fitting in a week where there were many excellent blog posts focusing on politics and the upcoming 2012 American elections, we’ll get things started this week with the latest entry in Princeton University Press’s Election 101 blog post series. This week, historian Christopher Loss takes on a topic that hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves: how education will affect the election in 2012.

At Duke University Press’s blog, guest blogger Priyamvada Gopal delves into the difficult issue of higher education in Britain with an excerpt from an article entitled “How Universities Die.”

The University of Illinois press examined the state of a particular political group in an interview with historian Jonathan Bell on American liberalism. Bell offers an account of liberal politics in the 21st century and gives Barack Obama some advice in his reelection bid.

At Beacon Broadside, Cynthia Cooper looks back at the last decade in American politics. She writes that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney need to “take the stand on war lies.”

Responding to a number of stories of industrial hazards that have come out over the last few months, Temple University Press features an article by Christopher Sellers explaining what these types of industrial dangers are, why they exist, and how people are trying to fix these hazards.

The OUPblog takes on a controversial and complex issue with a guest post by Mary Coleman asking, “is there an epidemic of autism?” Coleman, the Medical Director of the Foundation for Autism Research Inc., lays out the science behind autism and a plan for moving forward towards a medical therapy that reverses autism.

At the UNC Press Blog, Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian tell the stories behind their groundbreaking studies of life on Death Row. They make the case that capital punishment in the US is capricious, determined more by local politics, money, location, and the composition of appellate courts at the time of the trial rather than by the crime or the criminal.

Responding to the article by columnist John Derbyshire that led to his dismissal from the National Review, historian Andrew Kahrl takes a detailed look at integrated public leisure spaces over the last century in the Harvard University Press blog.

On a slightly less politically controversial note, Claire Rasmussen looks at the largest sporting event in New England: the Boston Marathon. She wonders why the event is so popular, and seeks the answer in the history of the marathon as an event.

Finally, at the Yale University Press Log, Sarah Underwood takes a look at food and nature in Katherine Larson’s poetry, from the mystery of hard-boiled eggs and the “synthesis” of bouillabaisse to the disturbing environmentalism behind the picture of a rotting sea lion carcass.

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