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 Brian Lehrer recently spoke with Randol Contreras, author of The Stickup Kids, for his show on WNYC. Now a sociology professor at Cal State Fullerton, Contreras came of age in the South Bronx during the 1980s, a time when the community was devastated by cuts in social services, a rise in arson and abandonment, and the rise of crack-cocaine.
For The Stickup Kids, he returns to the South Bronx with a sociological eye and provides an insider’s look at the workings of a group of Dominican drug robbers.
Touching on gun control, the crack epidemic, and Giuliani’s “broken window” theory of crime, Lerher and Contreras discuss the complex reasons behind the 20-year decline in violent crime in New York City. Listen now:
 We’re thrilled to announce that Lisa Jarnot’s book Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus (August 2012) has been shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle prize.
This definitive biography gives a brilliant account of the life and art of Robert Duncan (1919–1988), one of America’s great postwar poets. Jarnot takes us from Duncan’s birth in Oakland, California, through his childhood in an eccentrically Theosophist household, to his life in San Francisco as an openly gay man who became an inspirational figure for the many poets and painters who gathered around him.
Winners will be announced in New York on February 28, following a reading by the NBCC finalists on February 27.
Another bit of exciting poetry news: renowned beat poet and Of Indigo and Saffron author Michael McClure’s poem “Mephisto 20″ will run in this week’s New Yorker. Here on the New Yorker’s Page Turner blog, Rebecca Foresman interviews McClure about the themes in the poem.
 We are deeply saddened to share the news of the death of James H. Clark, Director of the University of California Press for twenty-five years (1977-2002), on January 14, 2013 at the age of eighty-one. Jim Clark had a lengthy and distinguished career in publishing – one characterized as much by his genius in finding and signing great books as by his warmth, integrity, and irresistible personal charm.
Jim began his publishing career in 1960 working as a sales representative for Prentice Hall in Northern California. “I got out of school at UC Berkeley and was working as a waiter,” he recalls. “One day, I was with a customer who was in publishing, and he said all you do is go around and talk to professors and send them free books. Well, it turned out to be a little bit more than that.”
Five years later, he was promoted to editor in the company’s New Jersey office. He acquired books in anthropology, sociology, drama, music, and art prior to his subsequent appointment in 1969 as editorial director of the College Division at Harper and Row. One year later, he was named the Division’s vice president and publisher.
In 1977, Jim returned to California as director of University of California Press. He spent the next 25 years building what would become one of the top university presses in the country – expanding both the scale and stature of its program. During Jim’s tenure, UC Press’s annual revenues increased from $3 million to $20 million; the number of new books published each year leapt from 80 to 180; and the journals program grew from 6 to 30 publications annually.
Jim oversaw the publication of The Plan of St. Gall, a beautifully illustrated three-volume work detailing the architecture and life of a Carolingian monastery – a landmark UC Press book. Throughout his directorship he never stopped working as an editor. Over the years, he acquired a wide range of books, including a stunning edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, Snakes: The Evolution of Mystery in Nature, and In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.
UC Press won a number of important awards during Jim’s directorship, including the top honor from the PEN Center USA West for publishing outstanding works of scholarship in 2000 and a special commendation from the State Legislature for publication of Literature of California, Volume 1 in 2001.
Among Jim’s other major achievements was to establish the UC Press Foundation, which raised over $8 million in long-term funds that support UC Press’s publishing programs. Under his direction, UC Press engaged in the first two of its three successful National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant campaigns.
Since his retirement in 2002, Jim has lived in Princeton, NJ with his wife, Isabelle Clark-Deces. In retirement, Jim continued work in scholarly publishing in a cherished new role – working with graduate students to revise and develop their dissertations for publication. He was an avid reader, swimmer, and audited classes at Princeton for the pure enjoyment of lifelong learning.
He is survived by his wife, Isabelle Clark-Deces, his children, Jim Clark and Garrette Clark (and son-in-law Robert Gould), his two granddaughters, Lea and Erica Gould, and his sister and brother-in-law Julie and Bob Fouts. He was deeply loved by his staff, his friends, his authors, and just about everyone he met.
 In the latest episode of the UC Press Podcast, Black Against Empire co-author Joshua Bloom talks about the political and cultural dynamics that gave birth to the Black Panther Party, why Oakland in particular was the perfect setting for a dawning revolutionary movement, and the lasting historical impacts of what the Panthers fought for.
Bloom is a Fellow at the Ralph J. Bunche Center, and editor of the Black Panther Newspaper Collection at UCLA, the pages of which inform the richly detailed history in the book. Black Against Empire analyzes key political questions, such as why so many young black people across the country risked their lives for the revolution, why the Party grew most rapidly during the height of repression, and why allies abandoned the Party at its peak of influence. Bold, engrossing, and richly detailed, this book cuts through the mythology and obfuscation, revealing the political dynamics that drove the explosive growth of this revolutionary movement, and its disastrous unraveling.
 Columbia history professor Hilary Hallett has been getting some wonderful advance praise for her new book, Go West, Young Women!, which explores the influx of women in early Hollywood and their role in the development of Los Angeles and the nascent film industry. The Huffington Post included Go West, Young Women! in their list of 10 Must-Read Books, noting that “university presses are publishing some of the best and most provocative books on film and film history.”
The book also appeared on The Page 99 Test, a blog that asks authors to publish the 99th page of their book and describe its significance. In Hallett’s entry, she looks at the meaning of the Horace Greeley quote that inspired the title for the book.
Last year, Hallett received the Western History Association’s prestigious Jensen-Miller Prize for Best Article in Women’s and Gender History for “Based on a True Story: New Western Women and the Birth of Hollywood”, which appeared in the Pacific Historical Review.
To read Hallett’s prize-winning article, subscribe to eNews in Sociology, History, California and the West, or Cinema. We’ll include a compliementary access token to the article through JSTOR, as well as a code to receive 20% off your next order. You’ll also receive updates on new releases in these areas, special discounts, and more. We hope you enjoy reading Go West, Young Women as much as we have!
The author of Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, W. Joseph Campbell, has rounded up 2012′s most prominent media-driven myths and errors. Visit Campbell’s blog, Media Myth Alert, for the year’s five top writeups, the first of which is excerpted below:
Calling out the New York Times on ‘napalm girl’ photo error (posted June 3)
The 40th anniversary of the famous “napalm girl” photograph — one of the most memorable images of the Vietnam War — fell in early June.
 Nick Ut/Associated Press In an obituary a few weeks before, the New York Times had referred to the photograph of terror-stricken Vietnamese children and claimed, erroneously, that it showed “the aftermath of one of the thousands of bombings in the countryside by American planes.”
That passage suggested U.S. forces were responsible for the aerial napalm attack that gave rise to the photograph, taken by Nick Ut of the Associated Press. I pointed this out in an email to the Times, noting that the bombing was a misdirected attack by the South Vietnamese Air Force, as news reports at the time had made clear.
The newspaper’s assistant obituary editor, Peter Keepnews, replied, and offered some baffling logic in doing so:
“You are correct that the bombing in question was conducted by the South Vietnamese Air Force. However, the obituary referred only to ‘American planes,’ and there does not seem to be any doubt that this plane was American –- a Douglas A-1 Skyraider, to be precise.”
As if the aircraft’s manufacturer was at all relevant in the attack.
Independent of my efforts, two former Associated Press journalists also called on the Times to correct its error about “American planes.”
The Times resisted doing so until late August, when it issued a sort-of correction that embraced Keepnews’ tortured reasoning and stated:
“While the planes that carried out that attack were ‘American planes’ in the sense that they were made in the United States, they were flown by the South Vietnamese Air Force, not by American forces.”
It was, I noted, a begrudging and less-than-forthright acknowledgement of error. It hardly was in keeping with the declaration by the newspaper’s then-executive editor, Bill Keller. He asserted in a column in 2011 that “when we get it wrong, we correct ourselves as quickly and forthrightly as possible.”
As the year comes to a close, allow us to brag a little bit on behalf of our authors, who absolutely knocked it out of the park this year when it came to awards. These 65 brilliant works won or were finalists for some 2012′s most prestigious prizes in publishing and academia. Congratulations to all, and we’ll see you next year!
The Hall of Fame Award, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards
The Cookbook Library: Four Centuries of the Cooks, Writers, and Recipes That Made the Modern Cookbook
Anne Willan
Best U.S. Chinese Cuisine Book, Gourmand World Cookbook Awards
The Hakka Cookbook: Chinese Soul Food from around the World
Linda Lau Anusasananan
Best Non-Fiction Book, Los Angeles Public Library
Blue Sky Metropolis: The Aerospace Century in Southern California
Edited by Peter J. Westwick
Leonard Bloomfield Book Award, The Linguistic Society of America
California Indian Languages
Victor Golla
Kovács Book and Essay Awards, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno
Miriam Bratu Hansen
Jensen-Miller Prize, Western History Association
Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood
Hilary Hallett
Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award, Western History Association
Pablo Tac, Indigenous Scholar: Writing on Luiseño Language and Colonial History, c.1840
Lisbeth Haas
Elliot P. Skinner Book Award, Association for Africanist Anthropology
Darkness before Daybreak: African Migrants Living on the Margins in Southern Italy Today
Hans Lucht
ALLA Book Prize, Association for Latina and Latino Anthropology
Performing Piety: Making Space Sacred with the Virgin of Guadalupe
Elaine A. Peña
The Gregory Bateson Book Prize, Society for Cultural Anthropology
Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present
Didier Fassin
ARSC Awards for Excellence, Association for Recorded Sound Collections
Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry
Clark Terry
ARSC Awards for Excellence, Association for Recorded Sound Collections
Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice
Tad Hershorn
Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing, The Society for Humanistic Anthropology
The Pastoral Clinic: Addiction and Dispossession along the Rio Grande
Angela Garcia
Rachel Carson Prize, Society of Social Studies of Science
Alien Ocean: Anthropological Voyages in Microbial Seas
Stefan Helmreich
Arthur J. Viseltear Prize, American Public Health Association
Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America
Leslie J. Reagan
Gradiva Awards, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis
Transforming Terror: Remembering the Soul of the World
Edited by Karin Lofthus Carrington and Susan Griffin
TWS Wildlife Publication Award, The Wildlife Society
Population Demography of Northern Spotted Owls
Eric D. Forsman et al.
TWS Wildlife Publication Award, The Wildlife Society
Greater Sage-Grouse: Ecology and Conservation of a Landscape Species and Its Habitats
Edited by Steven T. Knick and John W. Connelly
Joan Kelly Memorial Prize, American Historical Association
The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past
Gail Hershatter
Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, Society for Medical Anthropology
Dangerous Pregnancies: Mothers, Disabilities, and Abortion in Modern America
Leslie J. Reagan
World Food Prize, World Food Prize Foundation
Out of the Earth: Civilization and the Life of the Soil
Daniel Hillel
Chicago Folklore Prize, The American Folklore Society
Beyond the Borderlands: Migration and Belonging in the United States and Mexico
Debra Lattanzi Shutika
ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, American Society of Composers, Authors, & Publishers
Clark: The Autobiography of Clark Terry
Clark Terry
Award for Excellence in General Historical Research on Recorded Sound, Association for Recorded Sound Collections
Spoken Word: Postwar American Phonograph Cultures
Jacob Smith
Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award, Western History Association
Pablo Tac, Indigenous Scholar: Writing on Luiseño Language and Colonial History, c.1840
Lisbeth Haas
Stirling Prize for Best Published Work in Psychological Anthropology, Society for Psychological Anthropology
The Paradox of Hope: Journeys through a Clinical Borderland
Cheryl Mattingly
Awards for Excellence, American Academy of Religion
Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law
David M. Freidenreich
Awards for Excellence, American Academy of Religion
Spirits of Protestantism: Medicine, Healing, and Liberal Christianity
Pamela E. Klassen
Best Publication on the Body and Embodiment, ASA Section on Body and Embodiment
Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm
Rene Almeling
W.K. Hancock Prize, Australian Historical Association
Arab France: Islam and the Making of Modern Europe, 1798-1831
Ian Coller
One of the Ten Most Influential Books in Native American and Indigenous Studies in the First Decade of the Twenty-first Century, Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom
Tiya Miles
William E. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology, Society for the Anthropology of Europe
Casualties of Care: Immigration and the Politics of Humanitarianism in France
Miriam Ticktin
Norris and Carol Hundley Award, Pacific Coast Branch American Historical Association
Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West
Nayan Shah
Diana Forsythe Prize, American Anthropological Association
Sex Cells: The Medical Market for Eggs and Sperm
Rene Almeling
Finalist for the Louis Roederer International Wine Book of the Year, Louis Roederer International Wine Writers’ Awards
Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine
George Gale
Asia and Asian American Section, American Sociological Association
The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Beauty Service Work
Miliann Kang
Book of the Year, Jazz Journalism Association
Norman Granz: The Man Who Used Jazz for Justice
Tad Hershorn
Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism, Jazz Journalists Association
Digging: The Afro-American Soul of American Classical Music
Amiri Baraka
Oscar Kenshur Book Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Venice Incognito: Masks in the Serene Republic
James H. Johnson
International Migration Section Thomas and Znaniecki Book Award, American Sociological Association
Balancing Acts: Youth Culture in the Global City
Natasha K. Warikoo
International Latino Book Awards, Latino Literacy Now
Becoming Dr. Q: My Journey from Migrant Farm Worker to Brain Surgeon
Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, MD
ASFS Book Award, The Association for the Study of Food and Society
Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism
Julie Guthman
Donald Q. Innis Award for Research Excellence, Rural Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers
Agrarian Dreams: The Paradox of Organic Farming in California
Julie Guthman
California Book Awards, Commonwealth Club of California
Chuckwalla Land: The Riddle of California’s Desert
David Rains Wallace
Communication Policy Research Award, McGannon Center Research Awards
The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry)
Siva Vaidhyanathan
Finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems
Invisible Families: Gay Identities, Relationships, and Motherhood among Black Women
Mignon R. Moore
Finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems
Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism
Julie Guthman
Community Mobilization Award, Center for Disease Control
Instant Recess: Building a Fit Nation 10 Minutes at a Time
Toni Yancey, MD, MPH
Gold Medal in the category of Californiana, 81st California Book Awards presented by the Commonwealth Club of California
Chuckwalla Land: The Riddle of California’s Desert
David Rains Wallace
NCIBA Poetry Book of the Year Award, The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems
Michael McClure
NCIBA Regional Title of the Year Award, The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
The Left Coast: California on the Edge
Philip L. Fradkin and Alex L. Fradkin
Distinguished Scholarship Award, Pacific Sociological Association
Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala
Cecilia Menjívar
J.B. Jackson Prize, Foundation for Landscape Studies
Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape
Kirk Savage
Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, Eastern Sociological Society
Enduring Violence: Ladina Women’s Lives in Guatemala
Cecilia Menjívar
James M. Blaut Innovative Publication Award, The Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers
Weighing In: Obesity, Food Justice, and the Limits of Capitalism
Julie Guthman
Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal, National Academy of Sciences
Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree: Ecology and Adaptive Radiation of Anoles
Jonathan B. Losos
Finalist in History for the IACP Cookbook Awards, International Association of Culinary Professionals
Dying on the Vine: How Phylloxera Transformed Wine
George Gale
Shortlisted for the André Simon Book Award
The Finest Wines of Rioja and Northwest Spain: A Regional Guide to the Best Producers and Their Wines
Jesús Barquín, Luis Gutierrez, and Victor de la Serna
Shortlisted for the André Simon Book Award
Authentic Wine: Toward Natural and Sustainable Winemaking
Jamie Goode, and Sam Harrop, MW
J.B. Jackson Prize, 2012, Foundation for Landscape Studies
Monument Wars: Washington, D.C., the National Mall, and the Transformation of the Memorial Landscape
Kirk Savage
PROSE AWARD, Association of American Publishers, Inc.
Encyclopedia of Biological Invasions
Edited by Daniel Simberloff and Marcel Rejmánek
Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize, Association of Asian Studies
The Social Space of Language: Vernacular Culture in British Colonial Punjab
Farina Mir
Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Honor Books, Stonewall Book Awards 2012, American Library Association
Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories
Wanda M. Corn and Tirza True Latimer
Best First Book Award, Society for Cinema and Media Studies
Music Makes Me: Fred Astaire and Jazz
Todd Decker
Best Book 2009 – 2011, The Society for Economic Anthropology
Life Histories of the Dobe !Kung: Food, Fatness, and Well-being over the Life-span
Nancy Howell
 Suzanne Barston, subject of the popular web series, “A Parent Is Born,” found that, despite every effort, she couldn’t breastfeed her son, Leo. This difficult encounter with nursing—combined with the overwhelming public attitude that breast is not only best, it is the yardstick by which parenting prowess is measured—drove Barston to explore the silenced, minority position that breastfeeding is not always the right choice for every mother and every child.
Part memoir, part popular science, and part social commentary, Bottled Up probes breastfeeding politics through the lens of Barston’s own experiences as well as those of the women she has met through her popular blog, the Fearless Formula Feeder. In the latest installment of the UC Press Podcast, Barston talks with Chris Gondek about whether breastfeeding should remain the holy grail of good parenthood.
 Why do we rebuild our beaches, homes, and roads close to the shoreline only to see them washed away time and time again? Orrin H. Pilkey, emeritus professor of Earth Sciences at Duke University and author of The World’s Beaches, takes on this controversial subject in a recent op-ed for the New York Times. Pilkey addresses the impulse to “come back stronger and better” in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, arguing that “though empowering, [this] is the wrong approach to the increasing hazard of living close to the rising sea. Disaster will strike again. We should not simply replace all lost property and infrastructure. Instead, we need to take account of rising sea levels, intensifying storms and continuing shoreline erosion.”
Noting a personal connection to the havoc natural disasters wreak—his parents’ home in Mississippi was flooded and subsequently destroyed in two separate hurricanes—Pilkey writes:
That is madness. We should strongly discourage the reconstruction of destroyed or badly damaged beachfront homes in New Jersey and New York. Some very valuable property will have to be abandoned to make the community less vulnerable to storm surges. This is tough medicine, to be sure, and taxpayers may be forced to compensate homeowners. But it should save taxpayers money in the long run by ending this cycle of repairing or rebuilding properties in the path of future storms. Surviving buildings and new construction should be elevated on pilings at least two feet above the 100-year flood level to allow future storm overwash to flow underneath. Some buildings should be moved back from the beach.
Although local governments are spending millions of dollars replenishing beaches, he says, “this is not the time for a solution based purely on engineering.” Ultimately, Pilkey argues, “officials should seek advice from oceanographers, coastal geologists, coastal and construction engineers and others who understand the future of rising seas and their impact on barrier islands.”
Read the full article in the New York Times.
The University Press Week blog tour continues, delivering many wonderful, thought-provoking pieces. Indiana UP, who spearheaded this effort, has been running daily trivia contests; Scott Esposito wrote about literary critic Wayne Booth for the University of Chicago Press blog; MIT Editorial Director Gita Manaktala discussed current shifts in scholarship and reading; Princeton featured a post from the perspective of its authors, and is your go-to spot for round-ups of other UP blog activity. And while not technically part of the tour, we had to give a shout out to Oxford University Press’s blog for this amazing explanation of how they chose their word of the year, “GIF,” told through GIFs. You can follow the UP Week blog tour with this schedule or the hashtag #UPWeek on Twitter.
And now, UC Press’s own employees offer our thoughts on why we come to work every day. Why do university presses matter to you? Let us know in the comments below!
“Why do university presses matter? Human society needs places where maximizing knowledge is more important than maximizing shareholder value.”
—Jody Hart, Network Systems Manager
“In an era of information overload, it is still important to cultivate and produce peer reviewed scholarship. If we are going to have an educated and informed public, we need to start with information that is based on sound research and scholarship, and university presses exist to make this information accessible to everyone.”
—UC Press staff member
“So why should university presses ‘matter’ to libraries? In a nutshell: We are on your side. Not only as a publishers of key scholarly research but as a potential partners in new and innovative scholarly publishing. We remain independent, not driven by financial return.”
—Rachel Lee, Library Relations Manager
“University presses serve as arbiters, curators, and enablers of scholarly ideas and innovation. At a time when many publishers have curtailed or abandoned serious nonfiction, university presses provide a rare forum for engaged intellectual discussion and debate.”
—UC Press staff member
“By publishing books with intellectual rigor and integrity, university presses provide a vital link between scholars and the greater world. The best of what we publish translates cutting-edge research and new ideas for scholars, students, and the world beyond. Simply put, our books matter.”
—Kate Marshall, Editor
“Most of today’s publishing is ruled by modern conglomerate media or private investment companies with decisions of what to bring to market being driven totally by concerns around shareholder value. University presses stand apart and should be protected as a foundation for the promotion and exchange of ideas that are essential to civilization.”
—Pamela Polk, Senior Marketing Manager
“Any organization that gives expression to in-depth thinking and research is invaluable, whether or not it makes a profit. Without them, we as a society become backward.”
—Claudia Smelser, Senior Designer
“University presses matter because they offer alternatives. In a world increasingly dominated by the corporate agenda, university presses make possible the dissemination of controversial and specialized topics which publishers subject to corporate pressure may not be willing to support. In an increasingly homogenized world, university presses are ideally situated to focus on regional issues. Finally, university presses uphold the standards and traditions of scholarly publishing while also innovating in the brave new world of digital products, with scrupulous attention to editorial detail and physical design.”
—UC Press staff member
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