Chicago -
By SIU Press
In Vanishing Acts, Brian Barker cements his reputation as one of contemporary poetry’s great surrealists.
These prose poems read like dreams and nightmares, fables and myths. With a dark whimsicality, Barker explores such topics as extinction, power, class, the consequences of tyranny and war, and the ongoing destruction of the environment in the name of progress.
Posted on March 22, 2019
By Amanda Ros/The Conversation
For many years, the Library of Congress categorized many of its books under a controversial subject heading: “Illegal aliens.”
But then, on March 22, 2016, the library made a momentous decision, announcing that it was canceling the subject heading “Illegal aliens” in favor of “Noncitizens” and “Unauthorized immigration.”
However, the decision was overturned a few months later when the U.S. House of Representatives ordered the library to continue using the term “illegal alien.” They said they decided this in order to duplicate the language of federal laws written by Congress.
This was the first time Congress ever intervened over a Library of Congress subject heading change. Even though many librarians and the American Library Association opposed Congress’s decision, “Illegal aliens” remains the authorized subject heading today.
Cataloging and classification are critical to any library. Without them, finding materials would be impossible. However, there are biases that can result in patrons not getting the materials they need. I have worked in university libraries for over 20 years, and I’d like to highlight some issues of bias that you need to be aware of in order to find what you’re looking for.
Posted on March 21, 2019
By Daniel Golden/ProPublica
My 2006 book, The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges – and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, was intended as a work of investigative journalism.
But many of its more affluent readers embraced it as a “how-to” guide. For years afterward, they inundated me with questions like, “How much do I have to donate to get my son (or daughter) into Harvard (or Yale, or Stanford)?” Some even offered me significant sums, which I declined, to serve as an admissions consultant.
They may have been motivated by a tale I told in the book about a youth whose admission to Harvard appears to have been cemented by a $2.5 million pledge from his wealthy developer father.
The then-obscure Harvardian would later vault to prominence in public life; his name was Jared Kushner.
Posted on March 13, 2019
By Joshua Matz and Laurence Tribe/TakeCare
Basic Books released today a paperback edition of our latest book, To End A Presidency: The Power of Impeachment. The paperback version includes a new epilogue, from which this post is adapted.
Over the past two years, many of President Donald J. Trump’s critics have suggested that he can be impeached for some of his most alarming statements to senior advisors, on Twitter, and at campaign rallies. For instance, former White House Counsel Bob Bauer has argued that “[a] president who is a demagogue, whose demagoguery defines his style of political leadership, is subject for that reason to impeachment.” It is unappetizing to defend Trump with respect to these issues. But we are exceptionally wary of efforts to characterize Trump’s rhetoric taken in isolation as a “high Crime and Misdemeanor.” And ironically, a pattern of high-level insubordination has helped Trump avoid impeachment territory for demanding that his administration engage in abuse of power.
Posted on March 5, 2019
By PM Press
“David Ranney’s vivid memoir describes his work experiences between 1976 and 1982 in the factories of Southeast Chicago and Northwest Indiana.”
Trailer:
Posted on February 21, 2019
By SIU Press
SIU Press title The Gospel according to Wild Indigo has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature in Poetry.
“Consisting of two dynamic song cycles, Cyrus Cassells’s sixth poetry volume, The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, keeps the reader on edge with a timeless and beguiling feast of language that fuses together history, memory, and family,” SIU Press says.
Posted on February 20, 2019
pocket
Koh
https://www.nwitimes.com/entertainment/books-and-literature/book-review-signing-chicago-war-crime-journalist-hollywood-screenwriter-jewish/article_9a3c0102-300f-5d92-a338-18e726b2e7b3.html
https://abc7chicago.com/business/how-you-can-own-a-comic-book-store-for-free/5134857/
https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/westchester/white-plains/2019/02/19/aaron-schmink-first-crazy-love/2917296002/
https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/sc-fam-witchcraft-haus-home-design-0226-story.html
Posted on February 20, 2019
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jill-abramson-mistakes-merchants-of-truth_us_5c5f314de4b0eec79b23f5c6
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her resistance to more communication between the business and editorial sides of the newspaper, which an internal “innovation report” had found was necessary to succeed in the digital age. “The fate of the republic seemed to depend more than ever on access to honest, reliable information,” she writes, of our current moment. “But every news company was turning itself upside down to produce and pay for it in the digital age. I determined to capture this moment of wrenching transition–and to do it as a reporter, my first calling.”
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“I didn’t think technological change should sweep in moral change,” you write in the book, about your firing. At the beginning of 2019, has it?
Defining “moral” is somewhat difficult.
It’s your word. That’s why I chose it.
I know. It is my word and has everything to do with not putting somewhat misleading headlines to gain clickbait and scale audience, because that in turn brings advertising. I think that that is a kind of both journalistic and moral change that worries me. I don’t know. The way the news is presented, especially in headlines, is hyped for the same reasons–to track eyeballs and make money.
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that new yorker interview, geez
JA: No it isn’t. You know when I started my career as an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal in the relative stone age, our culture and our rhythms were completely governed by the printing press.
KP: I sort of wonder what what we did with all of our time.
JA: Well I know what I did. I was out reporting and hunting for documents and meeting face to face with nervous sources and attending hearings on issues. That to me is that the biggest worry. The atrophying of local journalism and reporting and the disappearance of so many local newspapers means that’s the news that’s closest to people and knows the people, the news organizations that know the people in the community the best, are gone. I don’t think that that’s incidental to why the news media by and large missed the huge anger bubbling up in the middle of the country.
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I want to say seriously that it pains me that there were any mistakes. In a 500-page book I fear it’s inevitable that there are going to be some and the most important thing you can do as a good journalist is correct them ASAP.
KP: You hired a fact checker for the book?
JA: I did.
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KP: The stuff that I found most interesting about the Times was the sort of continuing, ongoing tension around the business side’s effort to find other sources of revenue. They sort of saw news as a potential area to exploit.
JA: Well I think exploit is too strong a word but The New York Times is a for-profit company. I had grown up in a newspaper culture where there was an extremely bright line between the newsroom and the business side. What I experienced was that the business leaders of the Times wanted less of a separation and believed that the journalists in the newsroom had to be heavily involved. I did not want the journalists in the newsroom to be preoccupied with revenue-producing proposals on how to save the Times. I mean no one wanted to save the Times more than me. It’s an irreplaceable institution in America. But it worried me.
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JA: Well that’s probably true. I had given speeches saying how terrible I thought brand advertising and native advertising were because I thought it could sow confusion in readers’ minds. I was told by the new CEO of the Times that the Times just absolutely needed to do native advertising and set up a native advertising studio and that I couldn’t stand in the way.
Posted on February 19, 2019
By The South Side Story Club
The family you have is sometimes the family you make. And sometimes it’s just the family you have. In the frosty cold of Chicago’s ice-hell, let’s hear stories about how people got close, were always close, or just how to crochet a really good sweater. I mean, it’s cold out there.
Posted on February 12, 2019
By SIU Press
In a culture of profit-driven media, demagoguery is a savvy short-term rhetorical strategy. Once it becomes the norm, individuals are more likely to employ it and, in that way, increase its power by making it seem the only way of disagreeing with or about others. When that happens, arguments about policy are replaced by arguments about identity – and criticism is met with accusations that the critic has the wrong identity (weak, treacherous, membership in an out-group) or the wrong feelings (uncaring, heartless).
Posted on January 25, 2019
