Indiana University Press blog

Staff recommendations for 50% off spring book sale

Today is the first day of spring, and we're celebrating with a 50% off book sale! It can be a daunting task to make a selection from our 2,000+ titles, so we surveyed our staff to see which books they recommend to jump-start your spring reading. We hope you find something you like from the list below, which includes a wide range of interests from American History to Women's Studies! Check out the IU Press website for a complete list of books. Our sale ends March 22, so don't delay purchasing your favorite titles at half off!

American History

• Defeating Lee
  Dave Hulsey, Director of Sales and Marketing
• The Darkest Dawn
  Rich Pierce, Systems Analyst/Programmer
• Somebody’s Darling
  Bernie Zoss, Production Director
• Dillinger: The Untold Story
  Rhonda Vander Dussen, Sales and Marketing Assistant
• A Life is More Than a Moment
  Mary Lou Shelly, Senior Customer Service Representative

Anthropology

• Connected in Cairo
  Angela Burton, Managing Editor
• The Art of Loving Krishna
  Marvin Keenan, Project Manager

Art & Photography

• Contemporary Quilt Art
  Linda Bannister, Journals Marketing Manager
• Saving the Big Cats
  Kate Matthen, Marketing and Sales Coordinator
• Real Stories of Big Cat Rescues
  Mary Beth Haas, Sales Manager

Education

• Searching for Hope
  Mandy Clarke, Trade Marketing and Publicity Manager
• Conversations with Great Teachers
  Rebecca Tolen, Sponsoring Editor

Film & Media

• The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies
  Dan Pyle, Production Coordinator and Vendor Liaison
• The Magazine Article
  Joy Andreakis, Electronic and Serials Publishing Manager

Literature & Essays

• Earth Works
  Laura Baich, Electronic Marketing Manager
• Rural Free
  Jennifer Witzke, Marketing Designer
• Petersburg
  Peter Froehlich, Rights Manager

Books from the Global African Voices series:

• Little Mother
  Dee Mortensen, Senior Sponsoring Editor
• Life and a Half
  June Silay, Project Manager
• Murambi, The Book of Bones
  Jennifer Coyle, Customer Service Representative

Book from the Break Away Books series:

• The Glimpse Traveler
  Sarah Jacobi, Assistant Sponsoring Editor

Book from the Library of Indiana Classics series:

• A Girl of the Limberlost
  Kathy Stout, Accounting Associate

Music

• Debussy Redux
  Raina Polivka, Sponsoring Editor
• Beethoven in America
  Pam Rude, Senior Book Designer

Nature

• Wildflowers and Ferns of Indiana Forests
  Linda Oblack, Sponsoring Editor
• 101 Trees of Indiana
  Nancy Lightfoot, Project Manager
• Fishes of Indiana
  Steve Carter, Warehouse Manager
• Mammals of Indiana
  Laura Hohman, Production Assistant
• Perennials Short and Tall
  Dan Nichols, Operations Director
• The Natural Heritage of Indiana
  Tony Brewer, Composition Coordinator

Politics

• Richard G. Lugar, Statesman of the Senate
  Janet Rabinowitch, Director

Railroads

• Moonlight in Duneland
  Mary Blizzard, Book Designer
• The Indiana Rail Road Company
  Jamison Cockerham, Book Designer

Science

• Dinosaurs of Eastern Iberia
  Bob Sloan, Editorial Director
• Why You Can Never Get to the End of the Rainbow And Other Moments of Science
  Ted Boardman, Technology Director

Women’s Studies

• A Home of Her Own
  Judith Caldwell, Journals Production Manager
• To Write Like a Woman
  Darja Malcolm-Clarke, Project Manager

World History

• Last Folio
  Mollie Ables, Marketing Services Coordinator
• The Style of Paris
  Theresa Halter, Publicity Coordinator

New IUP book coincides with 90th anniversary of first American bat mitzvah

On March 18, 1922, the first American bat mitzvah was celebrated in New York City. While the idea may have been slow to catch on at first, in the 21st century, Jewish girls in North America alone will celebrate some 40,000 bat mitzvahs each year, and the number is growing because every sub-group of Judaism, including Orthodox, recognizes some form of bat mitzvah ceremony.

Today I Am a Woman: Stories of Bat Mitzvah around the World is an ideal gift book for Jewish girls to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the first American bat mitzvah and to discover different Jewish communities around the world. The book offers several fascinating stories that uncover how this milestone is celebrated on six different continents.

Narrations of the first bat mitzvah at the only synagogue in Indonesia, a moving bat mitzvah memory of World War II Italy, and an American bat mitzvah shared with girls in a Ukrainian orphanage are a few of the rich testimonies from both the past and present in this collection.

In celebration of the 90th anniversary of the bat mitzvah, you can save 40% off Today I Am a Woman. Use code BDAY40 at checkout. Hurry, offer valid today only! Shop now

Book review: Mother Is Gold, Father Is Glass

"[Author Lorelle D.] Semley provides historical depth and historiographical sophistication to this study of Yoruba women in West Africa and the Atlantic World." —The International Journal of African Historical Studies

Women's History Month interview with Sylvia D. Hoffert

In honor of Women's History Month, I'm taking a closer look at Sylvia D. Hoffert's new biography, Alva Vanderbilt Belmont: Unlikely Champion of Women's Rights.

As a New York socialite, Alva was known to be domineering, temperamental, and opinionated. In the later half of her life, she converted to feminism and became the most generous donor to the National Woman's Party.

I talked with Professor Hoffert about the history of the women's rights, how issues have changed (or, how they haven't), and how Alva became a remarkable promoter of the women's social movement.

This year’s theme for Women’s History Month is “Women’s Education—Women’s Empowerment.” In your personal experience and professional studies, how have you seen women’s education change?

The changes have been dramatic. When I applied for admission to college in 1961, many elite colleges including the University of North Carolina, the University of Virginia, and the Ivy League schools did not admit women as undergraduates. Now they all do. 

One of the accomplishments of second wave feminism was to force the introduction of courses about women across the liberal arts curriculum—in such fields as history, sociology, anthropology, communication, political science. ... And female scholars created programs and departments in women’s studies... Essentially there was a re-evaluation of what constituted an appropriate focus of study. The result was an inclusiveness that was unprecedented. 

That is not to say that those changes came easily or that women were treated well when they invaded what had previously been almost exclusively male professional space. ...Remember, if you will, that within the last ten years Larry Summers, President of Harvard University, was fired partly because he publicly denigrated the ability of women to excel in science.

Continuing with this year's theme, do you believe that women's empowerment is a direct result of education? How else can young women feel empowered?

The only way for women to achieve power in American society is through education and organization. Education provides them the intellectual tools they need to identify the structural barriers that prevent women from achieving justice and equality and from controlling their own bodies and lives. Organizing provides them with the strength in numbers needed to challenge those structural barriers and destroy them.

How has the women's rights movement progressed in the past century?

Originally, feminists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton had a fairly broad agenda for improving the status of women in the United States. The Declaration of Sentiments signed at the 1848 Seneca Falls [New York] Woman’s Rights Convention contained provisions for advancing the status of American women in all aspects of economic, social, political, legal, and religious life. By the time Alva Belmont became a feminist in the early twentieth century the agenda had been reduced to the right to vote.

What issues should modern-day feminists pay attention to?

The issues haven’t changed much. At all levels of society and in all aspects of economic, political, and religious life, women are still second class citizens. Many women are still denied the right to control their bodies. Many women are still the victims of abuse. Many women and their children still don’t have adequate health care. Women are still underrepresented in male dominated fields such as engineering, chemistry, and physics. Most women still make less money than most men. Fortune 500 companies still do not typically appoint women to be their CEOs or to serve on their boards of directors. There are still denominations that refuse to allow women to become full-fledged ministers. Only a few members of congress are female. I could go on and on.

In your book, you discuss how all biographies have a sense of autobiography to them, since the biographer reads their subject’s life through their own lens of personal experiences. Could you expand on this?

It is impossible to spend the time necessary to write a biography and not develop some sort of personal relationship with the subject of your work. You may end up liking or disliking that individual. You may respect or not respect what they did and approve or not approve of the way they did it. It takes years to do the research for a biography and then write it. By the time you have finished, you have an opinion about such matters. 

The point I was trying to make is that we inevitably see the world through our own lens and interpret the actions of others through our own experience. Thus the issue is not whether what we write is true but whether our representation of the life of someone else is based solidly on the evidence available to us. That’s as close to the truth as we are ever going to get.

In addition to her generous financial support to the women’s suffrage movement, Alva’s celebrity status was an important part of the social campaign’s success. Would those donations have been as impactful without Alva’s socialite reputation?

Money, and lots of it, always has an impact whether or not it is attached to a celebrity. Alva’s celebrity was important to the woman’s rights movement because it served as an incredibly important form of free advertising. She was a public relations executive’s dream.

Finally, what words of wisdom do you have for the future generations? Or, what do you suppose Alva would say if she saw the world today?

As for words of wisdom—never assume that women will gain and then maintain their rights without a struggle. There has always been and will continue to be a backlash against women’s progress that is supported and organized by those whose interests are served by women’s subordination. 

I think Alva would still support women’s rights and be willing to give money to women’s causes. And, given her incredible ego, I think she would still be trying to take credit for the advances that women have been able to gain for themselves.

March author events for Jo Paoletti

Pink and Blue author Jo Paoletti has several events lined up for March:

March 5

Paoletti will give a lecture about Pink and Blue at 6 p.m. at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in Washington, D.C. Attendees can purchase copies of the book at the event, and Paoletti will be available to sign them. The lecture is free and open to the public.

March 11

Paoletti will be a member of the panel titled "The Science of Gender" at the Tucson Festival of Books. The panel will begin at 11:30 a.m. in Room 218 of the Henry Koffler Building on the University of Arizona campus. This event is free and open to the public, and will be broadcast live on BookTV. Visit the Tucson Festival of Books website to learn more.

March 25

The National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. will hold a Pink and Blue booksigning with Paoletti at noon.

March 29

Paoletti will give a reading and sign copies of Pink and Blue at Atomic Books in Baltimore, MD. The event begins at 7:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

For more information on these events, visit Paoletti's blog.

Ivy Tech hosts art exhibit and reception for two IU Press photographers

A current exhibit at the Ivy Tech Gallery of Art & Design in Columbus, IN, features work from two IU Press photographers' books, Darryl Jones's New Harmony Then and Now and Kendall Reeves's A Home of Her Own. Entitled "Harmony and Home," the exhibit runs from now until March 9. The gallery is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. for public visits.

On February 22, the Ivy Tech Gallery will hold an artist reception for Jones and Reeves from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Books will be available for purchase from Viewpoint Books, and the photographers will be on hand to sign them. For more information about the exhibit and the reception, visit Ivy Tech's website or contact Lloyd Brooks at (812) 374-5139 or by email.

Book reviews: A Home of Her Own

"Hiller charts the stories of 18 women for whom a house is more than just a roof over their heads. The tales of how these women managed to create distinctive spaces in the face of (and often spurred by) life's challenges are as relatable as they are inspiring." —Old House Journal

"[A Home of Her Own] tells the stories of 18 women living solo, mostly in Indiana, each re-creating and ultimately asserting her identity through her home in the wake of personal crisis. Lavish photos by Bloomington photographer Kendall Reeves depict houses that couldn't be more different. ... Yet all exude the homeyness and personal expression that many people strive—and struggle—to create." —Indianapolis Monthly

"Nancy Hiller links together an age-old desire—to build a home of your own—with a democratic idea that anyone should be able to do it. ... [A] delightful, brave and original book..." —Grey Matters

Book review: Today I Am a Woman

"Today I am a Woman is filled with lyrical accounts of being a bat mitzvah in such exotic places as Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Tegucigalpa, Honduras. ... All the vignettes are accompanied by a well-researched history of the Jewish community in the area." —Jewish Book Council

'Gender and Jewish History' wins 2011 National Jewish Book Award

Today the Jewish Book Council announced the winners of its 61st annual National Jewish Book Awards. Two IU Press books are among the winners and finalists. Gender and Jewish History edited by Marion A. Kaplan and Deborah Dash Moore was selected winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the category of Anthologies and Collections. Olga Borovaya's book Modern Ladino Culture was named finalist in the category of Sephardic Culture. The awards will be presented March 14 at 8 p.m. during a gala ceremony held at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. Congratulations to the authors of these books for their contributions to Jewish studies scholarship!

To see a complete list of award winners and finalists, visit the Jewish Book Council's website.

New book on Bosnian genocide and Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut relate

In July 1995, the Army of the Serbian Republic killed around 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in and around the town of Srebrenica—the largest mass murder in Europe since World War II. New in theaters is Angelina Jolie’s forceful directorial debut, In the Land of Blood and Honey, set against the backdrop of this war and seen through the eyes of a Bosnian woman.

In a new book, Surviving the Bosnian Genocide, 60 female survivors of the massacre share their disturbing testimonies of this tormenting time. These women, many of whom still live in refugee camps, tell of their lives before the Bosnian war, the events of the massacre, and the ways they have attempted to cope with their fate. Drawing on their memories, though fragmented by trauma, the women tell of life and survival under extreme conditions, while recalling a time before the war when Muslims, Croats, and Serbs lived together peaceably.

By giving them a voice, this book looks beyond the rapes, murders, and atrocities of that dark time to unearth these women both during and after the war and their fight to uncover the truth of what happened at Srebrenica and why.

Selma Leydesdorff is Professor of Oral History and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. She is author of We Lived with Dignity: The Jewish Proletariat of Amsterdam, 1900-1940 and editor (with Nanci Adler, Mary Chamberlain, and Leyla Neyzi) of Memories of Mass Repression: Narrating Life Stories in the Aftermath of Atrocity.

Kay Richardson is a retired editor with 30 years of experience in international scholarly publishing. During her 13 years of residence in the Netherlands, she gained fluency in Dutch and developed an abiding interest in Dutch history and culture.

For digital or print review copies and interview requests contact: Mandy Clarke, Trade Marketing and Publicity Manager, mlclarke@indiana.edu, or 812-855-4522.