Indiana University Press blog

Interview: Jeffrey Gurock

During the week of November 1-7, a compelling interview with Professor Jeffrey S. Gurock, author of Orthodox Jews in America, will air on Shalom TV, America's National Jewish Cable Network. Although several books have studied aspects of Orthodox Judaism in contemporary times, no one had written an overview of how Orthodoxy has evolved over the centuries, until Gurock. In Orthodox Jews in America, Gurock examines how Orthodox Jewish men and women have coped with the personal, familial, and communal challenges of religious freedom, economic opportunity, and social integration. His forthcoming Shalom TV interview will explore this fascinating history.

Shalom TV is Free Video on Demand. To view this interview, visit www.shalomtv.com and click "Find Us" on the menu bar to learn which cable providers carry Shalom TV.

About the author
Jeffrey S. Gurock is Libby M. Klaperman Professor of Jewish History at Yeshiva University, former Associate Editor of American Jewish History, and former chair, Academic Council, American Jewish Historical Society. He is author of Judaism's Encounter with American Sports (IUP, 2005).

Book review: Searching for Cioran

"Zarifopol-Johnston ... was in many ways ideally placed to understand her subject. Not only was she Cioran's translator ... and profoundly familiar with his Romanian background, she was an exile herself. Her feelings towards the place Cioran left thirty years before her are not unlike his. The book's unfinished quality and fragility resonates with Cioran's own precariousness and especially with his illness and death..." —Times Literary Supplement

Book review: Tyrannosaurus rex, the Tyrant King

"In all, 'Tyrannosaurus rex, the Tyrant King' is an interesting read. It provides food for thought about a number of controversial topics in dinosaurian biology, and definitive evidence in support of even more hypotheses. For the professional palaeontologist, it holds abundant data, and will undoubtedly be a frequently cited reference. For students, it may serve as a valuable point of reference for understanding the diversity of palaeontological studies. For the general reader, the book illuminates the complexity of the quintessential carnivorous dinosaur, recasting it as more than just a gargantuan skeleton." —PalArch

Interview: Hank Nuwer

Hank Nuwer, author of Wrongs of Passage and The Hazing Reader, was recently interviewed by Carl Brizzi on his Crime Beat show about hazing. Listen here.

Interview: Ed Comentale (The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies)

Ed Comentale, co-editor of The Year's Work in Lebowski Studies, discusses the philosophy of The Big Lebowski in a interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal. Read the interview here.

Book review: Postcolonial African Cinema

"Every now and again a single book changes a discipline. Richard Harvey did this in geography; C. Wright Mills preceded him in sociology. And now Ken Harrow has done it for cinema studies." —African Studies Review

Book review: Made in Mexico

"In Made in Mexico, W. Warner Wood takes the reader on a tour of Zapotec textiles unlike any other Oaxacan tour. ...His tour is one that challenges the reader to rethink what Zapotec textiles are and who weaves them." —Museum Anthropology Review

Book review: UN Ideas That Changed the World

"In this impressive volume, the project's directors argue that there are really three United Nations: the formal arenas of interstate diplomacy, the UN staff and operations, and the closely associated nongovernmental organizations, experts, and consultants. ...As the book makes clear, the UN is important as a site—or as a sort of ecological environment—for not just the exercise of power but also the exercise of imagination." —G. John Ikenberry, Foreign Affairs

Book wins prize from Central Eurasian Studies Society

Congratulations to Jeff Sahadeo whose book Russian Colonial Society in Tashkent won the Central Eurasian Studies Society Book Prize for Best Book in History and Humanities.

The CESS Book Award and a monetary prize of $500 is presented to the author of the research monograph that represents the most important contribution to Central Eurasian studies, or that holds the greatest potential for furthering scholarship on the Central Eurasian region.

Book review: Gender and War in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe

"This excellent collection of 11 articles advances the thriving English-language historiography on gender, wars and the military into the too often neglected territories of twentieth-century Eastern Europe." —Anders Ahlbäck, European History Quarterly