UI Press spring 2013 catalog

spring 2013*

where great writing begins

IOWA

On the Shoreline of KnowledgeI r i s h Wa n d e r i n g s

chris arthur

On the Shoreline of Knowledge

Biography 16Book Studies 8Graphic Design 8Health 5History 11–12, 19Iowa / Regional 11–13, 19Literary Criticism 2, 14–18, 20

Literature 1Memoir 4–6, 9Nature 13Poetics 18, 20Poetry 2–3, 7Psychology 4Writing 10

index by subjectSpring 2013 Titles 1–18New in Paper 19–20New Regional & Iowa Titles 11–13, 19Bestselling Backlist 21–23Order Form 24Sales Information 25

contents

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from Iowa’s Best Known Homemaker

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“ I loved this book — Evelyn Birkby is a National Treasure.” — Fannie Flagg

Evelyn Birkby

Stories by

CHAD SIMPSON

Tell Everyone I Said Hi

D E TA I L I N GT R A U M A

A P O E T I CA N AT O M YArianne Zwartjes

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Acclaimed poet Susan Wheeler, whose last individual collection predicted the spiritual losses of the economic collapse, turns her attention to the most intimate of subjects: the absence or loss of love. One read, and the meme “Should I stay or should I go?” will be altered in your head forever.

“In Meme, the traditional elegy dissolves into excited bursts of imitated idiomatic speech interwoven with writing from a different register—the coolly removed, selfinsightful lyric. That the elaborately constructed edifice that is personality can be reconstructed with such fascinating economy and delightful indirection is amazing. These poems are pure poetic genius.” Mary Jo Bang author, The Bride of E

“Meme is a haunted work. We are ushered in by the disembodied voice of a mother figure, scolding and teasing in the timestamped slang of past decades. The anachronism is both funny and terribly sad. ‘Don’t come in here all brighteyed and bushytailed,’ the voice says. And it turns out that’s fair warning. This cracked Virgil leads us into a consciously Dantean underworld (‘Had you entered the thicket in darkness / . . . Had you been midlife, not in haze but in crisis?’). Wheeler has created a total (and to me terrifying) linguistic environment in which hell is the introjected voices of other people, the hungry ghosts of our recent past.” Rae Armantrout author, Money Shot

P R A I S e f O R P R e V I O u S B O O k S“Wheeler accomplishes something no one has done before, bringing all her interests and influences together to make poems that reflect an America no one else has seen . . . of how love in America might work: we never get enough, and . . . what we need is distraction, busywork, stuff to consume.” Craig Morgan Teicher Yale Review

“As the years and books mount, Wheeler’s verse feels increasingly grounded, without sacrificing rhetorical force.” Boston Review

S u S A n W H e e l e R is the author of the poetry collections Bag ‘o’ Diamonds, which received the norma farber first Book Award of the Poetry Society of America; Smokes, which won the four Way Books Award; Source Codes; Ledger, winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Assorted Poems. Her novel, Record Palace, was published in 2005. She teaches at Princeton university, where she also directs the Creative Writing Program.

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march164 pages . 8 illustrations . 5 x 7 1/4 inches $21.00 cloth, 978-1-60938-151-6$21.00 e-book, 978-1-60938-152-3literature

Wm & H’ryLiterature, Love, and the Letters between William and Henry Jamesby J. C. HallmanMuse Books: The Iowa Series in Creativity and WritingRobert D. Richardson, series editor

“J. C. Hallman’s cogent and imaginative musing on this fertile, conflicted, and brilliant literary correspondence . . . is rich in detail and important for our understanding of both William and Henry James.”—John J. McDermott, general editor, The Correspondence of William James

“J. C. Hallman’s Wm & H’ry is an insightful, thorough analysis of Henry and William James’s letters, a delightfully intelligent and intimate study of their work, mutual influence, and the profound impact of the masters’ legacy through these self-portraits.”—Hélène Cardona, actor, James scholar, and author, Dreaming My Animal Selves

readers generally know only one of the two famous James brothers. Literary types know Henry James; psychologists, philoso-phers, and religion scholars know William James. In reality, the brothers’ minds were inseparable, as the more than eight hundred letters they wrote to each other reveal. In this book, J. C. Hallman mines the letters for mutual affection and influence, painting a mov-ing portrait of a relationship between two extraordinary men. Deeply intimate, sometimes antagonistic, rife with wit, and on the cutting edge of art and science, the letters portray the brothers’ relation-ship and measure the manner in which their dialogue helped shape, through the influence of their literary and intellectual output, the philosophy, science, and literature of the century that followed.

William and Henry James served as each other’s muse and critic. For instance, the event of the death of Mrs. Sands illustrates what H’ry never stated: even if the “matter” of his fiction was light, the minds behind it lived and died as though it was very heavy indeed. He seemed to best understand this himself only after Wm fully fleshed out his system. “I can’t now explain save by the very fact of the spell itself . . . that [Pragmatism] cast upon me,” H’ry wrote in 1907. “All my life I have . . . unconsciously pragmatised.”

Wm was never able to be quite so gracious in return. In 1868, he lashed out at the “every day” elements of two of H’ry’s early stories, and then explained: “I have uttered this long rigmarole in a dogmatic manner, as one speaks, to himself, but of course you will use it merely as a mass to react against in your own way, so that it may serve you some good purpose.” He believed he was doing H’ry a service as he criticized a growing tendency toward “over-refinement” or “curli-ness” of style. “I think it ought to be of use to you,” he wrote in 1872, “to have any detailed criticism fm even a wrong judge, and you don’t get much fm. any one else.” For the most part, H’ry agreed. “I hope you will continue to give me, when you can, your free impression of my performance. It is a great thing to have some one write to one of one’s things as if one were a 3d person & you are the only individual who will do this.”

J. C. Hallman is the author of several books, including The Chess Artist, The Devil Is a Gentleman, The Hospital for Bad Poets, and In Utopia.

“The relationship of brothers William and Henry James is one of the great mysteries of American literature. Short of reading the dozens of volumes of their correspondence, there was little hope of understanding it. J. C. Hallman has read all of them, and has distilled and illuminated their exchanges in this insightful and suspenseful story-essay. The work of William James is having a critical renaissance in our post-Freudian, post-Jungian, postmodern age, and it is breath-taking to read here how the modern novel and postmodern philosophy were shaped in the James crucible.”—Andrei Codrescu, author, So Recently Rent a World: New and Selected Poems

“J. C. Hallman, with wit and wisdom, maps the now flashing, now somber streams of thought coursing through the correspon-dence of the James brothers, two of the undisputed geniuses in American letters. . . . In Hallman’s able hands, Wm and H’ry come dazzlingly alive as well-seasoned guides through the depths and shoals of the writing life and of everyday living.”—Eric G. Wilson, author, My Business Is to Create: Blake’s Infinite Writing

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Literature, Love, and the Letters between william & henry james

by j. c. hallman

may214 pages . 6 x 9 inches $22.00 paper original, 978-0-9859325-2-7$22.00 e-book, 978-0-9859325-3-4Distributed by University of Iowa Presspoetry

Coming CloseForty Essays on Philip Levineedited by Mari L’Esperance and Tomás Q. Morín

This collecTion of essays pays tribute to Philip Levine as teacher and mentor. Throughout his fifty-year teaching career, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Levine taught scores of younger poets, many of whom went on to become famous in their own right. These forty essays honor and celebrate one of our most vivid and gifted poets.

Whether in Fresno, New York, Boston, Detroit, or any of the other cities where Levine taught, his students benefited from his sharp, humorous honesty in the classroom. In these personal essays, poets spanning a number of generations reveal how their lives and work were forever altered by studying with Levine. The heartfelt tributes illuminate how one dedicated teacher’s intangible gifts can make a vast difference in the life of a developing poet, as well as provid-ing insight into the changing tenor of the poetry workshop in the American university setting.

Here, poets as diverse as Nick Flynn and David St. John, Sharon Olds and Larry Levis, Ada Limon and Mark Levine, Malena Morling and Lawson Fusao Inada are united in their deep regard for Philip Levine. The voices echo and reverberate as each strikes its own hon-oring tone.

Mari L’Esperance is a poet and a licensed marriage and family thera-pist. She holds an MA in literature and creative writing from New York University and is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, The Darkened Temple, and a chapbook, Begin Here. Tomás Q. Morín is a senior lecturer in English at Texas State University. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Texas State University and is the author of the poetry collection A Larger Country.

“You might change someone’s life (read for the better) through a chance encounter as you walk to the corner store for bread. If you choose to teach the writing of poetry, however, you increase your chances of experiencing this privilege. But even within this category of poet-teacher, when it comes to changing lives, Philip Levine, by all accounts, has surpassed all probabil-ity. Gathered here are a handful of essays that speak of his (not always immediately appreciated) honesty, his commitment to poetry and to his students, his hu-mor, and his generosity. These essays are love letters—thank-you notes for some of the great gifts. These former students un-derstand what Larry Levis calls ‘the invisible great good luck’ of having had Phil as a teacher.”—from the introduction by Jane Mead

Prairie lighTs Books

conTriBuTorsAaron Belz . Ciaran Berry . Paula Bohince . Shane BookB. H. Boston . Xochiquetzal Candelaria . Colin Cheney Michael Clifton . Michael Collier . Nicole Cooley Kate Daniels . Blas Manuel de Luna . Kathy Fagan Andrew Feld . Nick Flynn . Edward Hirsch . Sandra Hoben Ishion Hutchinson . Lawson Fusao Inada . Dorianne Laux Joseph O. Legaspi . Mark Levine . Larry Levis . Ada Limón Elline Lipkin . Jane Mead . Dante Micheaux . Malena Mörling John Murillo . Daniel Nester . Sharon OldsJanuary Gill O’Neil . Greg Pape . Kathleen Peirce Sam Pereira . Jeffrey Skinner . Tom Sleigh David St. John . Brian Turner . Robert Wrigley

Coming CloseForty Essays on Philip Levine

edited by mari l’esperance & tomÁs q. morÍn

university of iowa press . spring 20132

april64 pages . 5 5/8 x 9 1/4 inches $17.00 paper, 978-0-9859325-0-3$17.00 e-book, 978-0-9859325-1-0Distributed by University of Iowa Presspoetry

Sweet Willpoems by Philip Levine

PuliTzer Prize–winning PoeT Philip Levine published Sweet Will, his eleventh volume of poems, in 1985. His last book with Ath-eneum, it has been unavailable for many years. Because of its subdued and thoughtful nature, it was seen as a transitional book for Levine, one that presaged the tone of much that was to come. Peter Stitt, writing in the Kenyon Review, called it “the quietest book that Philip Levine has ever written,” concluding that “though the river that glides through it is still on the surface, the sweetness of its will runs deep indeed.” And Dave Smith, writing in Poetry, delighted in the poems of “emergent tenderness and faith,” and claimed that “linking himself to Wordsworth, who loved this world uncommonly in uncommon poetry, Philip Levine has lifted his moral tale to the level of joyful celebration.”

The poems in Sweet Will are set in Detroit, California, New York, Eu-rope, and the country of memory. Their aim is to bring the overlooked events of daily life into a sharper focus that transcends the ordinary. At the time of its original publication, the book was seen as an attempt to bring together the themes and methods of Levine’s early, ground-breaking work: the anger of They Feed They Lion, the family concerns of 1933, the characters of The Names of the Lost, and the hopes of One for the Rose. Yet it is clearly a mid-career book composed by a poet who can begin to look back in tranquility at a tempestuous life.

The poems, including the long meditation of more than five hun-dred lines, “A Poem with No Ending,” are beautiful and essential. Restored to print, they will resonate with readers who love both the earlier and the later work of one of our most important poets.

Philip Levine was born in Detroit to Jewish immigrant parents. He was educated in the Detroit public schools and worked as a young man at car manufacturing plants in the city. Later he came to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied with John Berryman and Robert Lowell. After earning his MFA in 1957, he taught at California State University in Fresno until his retirement in 1992. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for The Simple Truth in 1995 and the National Book Award for Poetry for What Work Is in 1991. From July 2011 to July 2012, he served as the poet laureate of the United States.

Excerpt from “A Poem with No Ending”

There is a song, bird song or wind song,or the song old rooms sing when no oneis awake to hear. For a moment Ialmost catch the melody we makewith bare walls, old iron sagging beds,and scarred floors. There is onedeep full note for each of us.This is the first night of my lifeI know we are music.

Praise for Philip Levine: “His poems are personal, love poems, poems of horror, poems about the experi-encing of America.”—Stephen Spender, New York Review of Books

“He is one of those poets whose work is so emotionally intense, and yet so controlled, so concentrated, that the accumulative effect of reading a number of his related poems can be shattering.”—Joyce Carol Oates, American Poetry Review

“Levine’s poems are important because in them we hear and we care.”—Richard Hugo, American Poetry Review

Prairie lighTs Books

Philip LevineSweet Will

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march164 pages . 5 3/4 x 9 1/4 inches $18.00 paper original, 978-1-60938-153-0$18.00 e-book, 978-1-60938-172-1memoir / psychology

Stories We Tell Ourselves “Dream Life” and “Seeing Things”by Michelle HermansighTline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary NonfictionPatricia Hampl & Carl H. Klaus, series editors

The Two ThoughT-Provoking, extended essays that make up Stories We Tell Ourselves draw from the author’s richly diverse experi-ences and history, taking the reader on a deeply pleasurable walk to several unexpectedly profound destinations. A steady accumu-lation of fascinating science, psychoanalytic theory, and cultural history—ranging as far and wide as neuro-ophthalmology, ancient dream interpretation, and the essential differences between Jung and Freud—is smoothly intermixed with vivid anecdotes, entertaining digressions, and a disarming willingness to risk everything in the course of a revealing personal narrative.

“Dream Life” plumbs the depth of dreams—conceptually, biologi-cally, and as the nursery of our most meaningful metaphors—as it considers dreams and dreaming every whichway: from the haruspicy of the Roman Empire to contemporary sleep and dream science, from the way birds dream to the way babies do, from our longing to tell them to the reasons we wish other people wouldn’t.

“Seeing Things” recounts a journey of mother and daughter—a Holmes-and-Watson pair intrepidly working their way through the mysteries of a disorder known as Alice in Wonderland Syndrome—even as it restlessly detours into the world beyond the looking glass of the unconscious itself. In essays that constantly offer layers of sur-prises and ever-deeper insights, the author turns a powerful lens on the relationships that make up a family, on expertise and unsatisfying diagnoses, on science and art and the pleasures of contemplation and inquiry—and on our fears, regrets, hopes, and (of course) dreams.

Michelle Herman is the author of the novels Dog and Missing, the novella collection A New and Glorious Life, and The Middle of Everything: Memoirs of Motherhood, which was a finalist in the autobiography/memoir category for the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award in 2006. Other awards and honors include grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Greater Colum-bus Arts Council, and the Michener-Copernicus Society, as well as major teaching awards from Ohio State University, where she has taught fiction and creative nonfiction writing for many years and directs the MFA program in creative writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she also directs a summer program for teenage writers and a graduate interdisciplinary program in the arts.

“The whole is seamless, beautifully crafted; the subject matter is universal; the weave of self and other—Herman and scientists, Herman and her daughter—is masterful.”—Scott Raab, author, The Whore of Akron

“This persistently amusing and endearingly eccentric book demonstrates the elasticity and élan of the personal essay in the hands of a consummate practitioner, as well as the plentiful resources of its author’s conscious-ness.”—Phillip Lopate, author, Art of the Personal Essay

“Stories We Tell Ourselves is a marvelous inquiry into what dreams can tell us about ourselves—in short, that some vast part of our experience, cut off from us and made unconscious, can be plumbed by anyone who is curious and persistent enough to pursue the enigmatic language of dreams.”—Annie Rogers, author, The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma

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march164 pages . 5 3/4 x 9 1/4 inches$18.00 paper original, 978-1-60938-154-7$18.00 e-book, 978-1-60938-155-4memoir / health

The Mythical BillA Neurological Memoirby Jody McAuliffesighTline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary NonfictionPatricia Hampl & Carl H. Klaus, series editors

“An extremely skillful piece of writing, a story told in juxtapositions and counterpoints, with a time scheme that leaps effectively back and forth. . . . This is a reading experience of rare depth and range.”—Don DeLillo

“Jody McAuliffe has written a vivid work whose ostensible subject is her relation to a troubled, puzzling father who was ill; but the book, explor-ing the hidden depths in one family, seems a reminder that every life is ephemeral and ultimately unfathomable, and that loss is sometimes redeemed in the complicated act of remembering.”—Colette Brooks, author, In the City: Random Acts of Awareness

ParT Medical MysTery, part war story, and part social and family history, The Mythical Bill is the story of how one man’s physical and mental pain radiates outward into the life and mind of each member of his family. Weaving together diary entries, correspondence, and scrupulous research, Jody McAuliffe examines her father’s life before, during, and after WWII, seeking answers to the questions of what really happened to Bill McAuliffe and what caused his disintegration. His initial postwar diagnosis was torticollis: a condition of persistent involuntary contraction of the neck muscles, causing the head to be twisted to an abnormal position. But torticollis was only the begin-ning of Bill’s suffering and his daughter’s efforts to understand it. The condition becomes a metaphor for things that refuse to fall into place: the body not in accord with the mind, the head that turns away from reality.

From this drama of dislocation and disjointed truths, two braided selves emerge: the I of Jody and the I of Bill. Through this double-ness, the writer probes a set of questions about how much we shape ourselves and how much we are shaped by forces beyond our control.

The Mythical Bill, a moving and unusual book, is for people who suffer the devastating effects of combat on the psyche, for those who encounter any debilitating disease, and for those who grow up with a father only partially present. McAuliffe’s ear-catching, evocative, and often breathtaking writing forces readers to confront the most terrify-ing question posed by a parent’s mental illness: will I get it too? Her narrative voice is searching, compassionate, and self-deprecating, but cut through with welcome bits of humor in this daughter’s story of confusion, sadness, and loss.

An award-winning professor of theater studies and Slavic and Eur-asian studies, Jody McAuliffe is a director, writer, and translator who has directed new plays at theaters across the United States, including the Mark Taper Forum, where she was a National Endowment for the Arts directing fellow. She is the author of two earlier works, My Lovely Suicides and Plays, Movies, and Critics, and the coauthor with Frank Lentricchia of Crimes of Art and Terror.

“Jody McAuliffe has written a brave, pain-fully candid, and loving memoir about her powerfully realized, imposing father. The literary honesty is plain, often harsh, and almost cathartic on every page. Charting the amazing life of her mythic Bill is also an act of cultural timekeeping and rebuilding a family’s moral compass. For McAuliffe, DNA is part of a Proustian commitment and, in her filial reflection, memory is flawed destiny. In short, this is a wonderful book.”—Allan Havis, professor of theatre and provost at Marshall College, University of California, San Diego

“This is great work—a gothic drama, a monologue of a book, a mysterious book, not a ‘who done it?’ mystery, a ‘what on earth could have done it?’ mystery—what cataclysm, what stroke of fate.”—Lee Breuer, co-artistic director, Mabou Mines Theater, New York

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Jody McAuliffe


april144 pages . 5 3/4 x 9 1/4 inches$19.95 paper original, 978-1-60938-160-8$19.95 e-book, 978-1-60938-163-9memoir / essays

The Fluency of LightComing of Age in a Theater of Black and Whiteby Aisha Sabatini SloansighTline Books: The Iowa Series in Literary NonfictionPatricia Hampl & Carl H. Klaus, series editors

“One of the most original, startling memoirs I have seen in the past ten years, Sabatini Sloan’s The Fluency of Light charts an entirely fresh course through the tangled territory of race and class in modern-day America. Each page offers fresh insight, unexpected information, crystal-clear thinking on the current cultural moment—a nation about to turn more brown than white, more mixed than ‘pure.’”—Dinty W. Moore, author, Between Panic & Desire

“Aisha Sabatini Sloan is interested in the moments and events when a single lifeline crosses through the concentration points of one’s times. She identifies the echo and images emanating from gesture, from dra-ma, and—open-eyed—speaks to and for many.”—Barbara Cully, author, Desire Reclining

in These inTerTwined essays on art, music, and identity, Aisha Sabatini Sloan, the daughter of African American and Italian Ameri-can parents, examines the experience of her mixed-race identity. Em-bracing the far-ranging stimuli of her media-obsessed upbringing, she grasps at news clippings, visual fragments, and lyrics from past and present in order to weave together a world of sense.

Art in all forms guides the author toward understanding concepts like blackness, jazz, mortality, riots, space, time, self, and other with-out falling prey to the myth that all things must exist within a system of binaries. Recalling her awkward attempts at coolness during her childhood, Sabatini Sloan evokes Thelonious Monk’s stage persona as a metaphor for blackness. Through the conceptual art of Adrian Piper, the author is able to understand what is so quietly menacing about the sharp, clean lines of an art gallery where she works as an assistant. The result is a compelling meditation on identity and representation.

Aisha Sabatini Sloan earned her MA in cultural studies and studio art at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and her MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. She taught writing at the University of Arizona for six years and is currently studying to become a yoga instructor.

“The Fluency of Light makes a very valuable contribution to the literature of mixed-race identity in America. First of all, the child-hood described is sane, happy, and loving. The downbeats and shadows belong to oth-ers who endured great difficulty but kept on working. These include Thelonius Monk, Ana Mendieta, Adrian Piper, and others the author encounters on her artistic and intellectual journey. Sabatini Sloan braids the lives of artists she admires with her own adventures and this way illuminates the generation of the eighties, particularly in LA, who came out of the post–Civil Rights period when grown-ups were still idealistic about integration and affirmative action, but carried suspicion around the house. She doesn’t pretend to have any solutions to the entrenched (because entirely visual) nature of racial separation, but the way she keeps going, herself, as a photographer, throughout the story underscores the message that doing art is essential to sur-vival.”—Fanny Howe

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april64 pages . 5 x 8 1/2 inches$18.00 paper original, 978-1-60938-164-6$18.00 e-book, 978-1-60938-165-3poetry

The Messengerby Stephanie Pippin2012 iowa PoeTry Prize

“These quiet poems stunned me: direct and vivid, they delve deeply into the complex relationships between the natural, human, and spiritual worlds. . . . We are reminded of the limitation and dangers of our often self-defeating intellectual powers.”—Jane Mead, judge, 2012 Iowa Poetry Prize contest

in Thrilling PoeMs of metamorphosis and birth, death and dissolution, Stephanie Pippin’s debut collection returns us to a world unshorn of wildness. Delivering accident and hunger, love and grief, nature in these poems is beautiful and brutal, “a hellish magnifi-cence” that both invites and denies the meanings we project onto it. Refusing the domesticated comfort of our usual myths, Pippin reminds us of our place as creatures among others in a world where “what isn’t dead / is dying,” and where the thrill of predatory flight commingles with the desperation of the prey.

This mesmerizing and astonishingly assured collection offers a message as harrowing as it is essential. Faced with the hard master of necessity—“angel stinking of his own / excitement”—and bare before what Mallarmé called “the horror of the forest,” we are help-less, finally, to do anything to save what we love. Our sole task, these poems insist, is to look on while we can, and to love harder.

Stephanie Pippin lives in St. Louis. Her poems have appeared in the Boston Review, the Iowa Review, and Ploughshares.

Morning

A bird is loose in the room. I am thinking of accidents of timing, the slightest change in a body as final. I speak of need, meaning panic. Outside, the grip of winter thins. Outside, the thickening trees.

What I can’t understand is the hold this has on me: that it will hit and fall eventually, that after the bird is down, my mind will confuse its pain with my own.

“These fierce poems form a Darwinian com-pendium with speakers who empathically merge with everything feathered and furred. There’s an odd democracy here. The fresco swan on the Pompeii wall and the clamp of a falcon digging its talons into a glove both speak equally of mystery, fragility, and the future we stand to lose when we turn our backs on nature: ‘The weight of this / is more than you imagined.’ These poems have a Keatsian beauty to them, and a Keatsian truth. In other words, everything we need to know.”—Mary Jo Bang

T H E M E S S E N G E R

i o w a p o e t r y p r i z e

Stephanie Pippin


june304 pages . 248 illustrations . 8 x 10 inches$29.95 paper original, 978-1-60938-175-2book studies / graphic design

Aspects of Contemporary Book Designedited by Richard Hendel

“Rich Hendel begins Aspects of Contemporary Book Design by floating the proposition that ‘these may be the final days of book design.’ Don’t believe him. For he then proceeds to prove himself wrong, chapter after chapter. Throughout this learned and insightful series of interviews, Hendel and his fellow designers both reaffirm and celebrate the endur-ing role played by design in uniting the ideas of authors with the enthusi-asms of readers. Along the way we enjoy stories and lessons served up by some of the best designers in publishing. The result is a great tour of the very lively art of book design.”—Peter Dougherty, director, Princeton University Press

in This ManifesTly practical book, Richard Hendel has invited book and journal designers he admires to describe how they approach and practice the craft of book design. Designers with interesting and varied careers in the field, who work with contemporary technology in today’s publishing environment, describe their methods of managing the challenges presented by specific types of books, presented side by side with numerous images from those books. Not an instruction manual but a unique, on-the-job, title page–to–index guide to the ways that professional British and American designers think about design, Aspects of Contemporary Book Design continues the conversation that began with Hendel’s 1998 classic, On Book Design.

Contributing designers who focus on solving problems posed by nonfiction, fiction, cookbooks, plays, poetry, illustrated books, and journals include Cherie Westmoreland, Amy Ruth Buchanan, Mindy Basinger Hill, Nola Burger, Ron Costley, Kristina Kachele, Barbara Wiedemann, and Sue Hall, as well as a host of other designers, type-setters, editors, and even an author or two. Abbey Gaterud attempts to define the conundrum that the e-book presents to designers; Kent Lew describes the evolution of his Whitman typeface family; Charles Ellertson reflects upon the vital relationship between the typesetter and the designer; and Sean Magee writes about the uneasy alliance between designers and editors. In an extended essay that is as frank and funny as it is illuminating, Andrew Barker takes the reader deep into the morass—excavating the fine, finer, and finest details of working through a series design.

At the heart of this copiously illustrated book is the enduring need for design that clarifies the way for the reader, whether on the printed page or on the computer screen. Blending his roles as designer, author, interviewer, and editor, Hendel reaches across both sides of the drafting table—both real and virtual—to create a book that will appeal to aspiring and seasoned book designers as well as writers, editors, and readers who want to know more about the visual presen-tation of the written word.

Author of On Book Design and coauthor of the Glossary of Typesetting Terms, Richard Hendel has been a book designer and art director at the University of Massachusetts Press, the University of Texas Press, Yale University Press, and the University of North Carolina Press; he now maintains a vigorous freelance career. His work has won Association of American University Presses, AIGA, Print magazine, Chicago Book Clinic, Leipzig Book Fair, and National Book awards, among others.

“Richard Hendel follows On Book Design with another fresh and incredibly informative book focusing on the book design process and philosophies of leading contemporary designers. The book’s range is impressive. Essays are clear in the issues designers confront while working with different kinds of manuscript material and thoroughly address budget, marketing, and editorial considerations that might affect a book’s design. Interspersed is a brief history of type and bookmaking, along with many specific illustrations to clarify and illuminate the text. Because technology is changing so rapidly, this book is an invaluable resource for either novice or professional designer, helping each navigate and shape design challenges and choices in the making of books, from print to digital.”—Anita Walker Scott, retired design and production man-ager, Johns Hopkins University Press

“In Aspects of Contemporary Book Design, Rich Hendel interviews a number of leading book designers who tell all and show all. The result is a wonderful and inspiring com-pendium of current book design. Whether you are a student or a professional, you will glean valuable insights to the world of type and book design. Sharply observed, these words are worthy of many readings.”—Tony Crouch, retired director of design and production, University of California Press

9www.uiowapress.org

april364 pages . 27 photos . 10 drawings . 6 x 9 inches$22.50 paper, 978-1-60938-179-0$22.50 e-book, 978-1-60938-180-6memoir

NolaA Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madnessby Robin Hemley

“In this candid, revealing family scrapbook, Robin Hemley, a fiction writer and essayist, assiduously investigates the ways in which truth and fable shape identity. . . . Ultimately Nola becomes a chronicle of a literary period, a story about a gifted family and, most of all, an examina-tion of Robin Hemley’s evolution as son, brother, husband, father, and writer.”—Chicago Tribune

The evidence aT hand: an autobiography—complete with their mother’s edits—written by his brilliant and disturbingly religious sister; a story featuring actual childhood events, but published by his mother as fiction; the transcript of a hypnotherapy session from his adolescence; and perjured court documents hidden in a drawer for decades. These are the clues Robin Hemley gathers when he sets out to reconstruct the life of his older sister Nola, who died at the age of twenty-five after several years of treatment for schizophrenia. Armed with these types of clues, Hemley quickly discovers that finding the truth in any life—even one’s own—is a fragmented and complex task.

Nola: A Memoir of Faith, Art, and Madness is much more than a re-membrance of a young woman who was consumed her entire life by a passion for finding and understanding God; it is also a quest to understand what people choose to reveal and conceal, and an exami-nation of the enormous toll mental illness takes on a family. Finally, it is a revelation of the alchemy that creates a writer: confidence in the unknowable, distrust of the proven, tortuous devotion to the fine print in life, and sacrifice to writing itself as it plays the roles of confessor, scourge, and creator.

Upon its first release in 1998, Nola won ForeWord’s Book of the Year Award for biography/memoir, the Washington State Book Award for biography/memoir, and the Independent Press Book Award for autobiography/memoir.

Robin Hemley is the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He is the author of numerous books, includ-ing the story collection Reply All; the memoir Do Over; the craft guides Turning Life into Fiction and A Field Guide for Immersion Writing: Memoir, Journalism, and Travel; a book of investigative reportage, Invented Eden: The Elusive, Disputed History of the Tasaday; and the novel The Last Stude-baker. His many awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from the Chicago Tribune, the George Garrett Award for Fiction from Willow Springs, the Hugh J. Luke Award from Prairie Schooner, and three Pushcart Prizes.

“A diagnosed schizophrenic, Nola Hemley died in 1973 of a medication overdose at the age of 25. In this affecting, highly inventive memoir, Hemley’s younger half-brother . . . attempts to understand what led his gifted sister down the path toward mental illness, drawing on her journals and artwork as well as his own memories of her. There are, he discovers, no obvious answers. . . . In the end, Hemley’s strikingly, often fascinatingly, postmodern narrative tells us more about the challenges and ramifications of writing a personal memoir than about its subject’s life. . . . [T]hose interested in writing as a process will find his articulate musings am-ply rewarding.”—Publishers Weekly

“[Nola] is an important text because it unites story and essay, as well as letters, self-declared fictions and reflection, almost effortlessly at the crossroads where nonfic-tion as the fourth genre is most controver-sial: the junction between truth and lie. . . . Nola is not just a life-and-death narrative of the author’s brilliant and disturbed sister, but it’s also a complex narrative of Hemley himself, of his mother as writer and editor, and finally it is the story of how he makes meaning out of his own connections with his difficult, eccentric, and excruciatingly liter-ary family. . . . Couple the inventive format with a writing style that is deeply reflective, utterly honest, and sensitive to the issues of writing nonfiction in this way, and you have a colossal memoir.”—ForeWord Reviews

Nola robin hemley

a memoir of faith, art, and madness


march184 pages . 6 x 9 inches$19.95 paper original, 978-1-60938-156-1$19.95 e-book, 978-1-60938-157-8writing

Vivid and ContinuousEssays and Exercises for Writing Fictionby John McNally

Taking off froM The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide, John McNally’s relentlessly blunt, bracingly cheerful, and immensely helpful map to being a writer, Vivid and Continuous is an equally blunt, cheerful, and helpful map to learning to be a writer. While acknowledging that many fine books cover such essentials of fiction writing as point of view, characterization, and setting, McNally sets out in this new book—intended as a supplement to beginning fiction-writing classes or as the sole text for upper-level or graduate courses—to solve the tricky second-tier problems that those books cover only in footnotes.

Vivid and Continuous takes its inspiration from John Gardner, whose essential truths in On Becoming a Novelist clarified McNally’s goal of communicating a “vivid and continuous dream” with his own writ-ing. In fifteen concise, energizing chapters, he dispenses advice gained from almost thirty years of studying, writing, and teaching. How do you avoid the pitfalls inherent in the most common subjects for stories? How do you create memorable minor characters? What about managing references to pop culture without distracting your readers, revising a story to bring its subtext into focus, or exploring the twenty most common craft-related quirks that lessen immediacy for your readers? How do you keep from overdosing on similes and metaphors or relying on too many flashbacks to provide necessary backstory? How do you learn to listen when your story tries to talk to you? Finally, how can you resist “John McNally’s Sure-Fire Formula for Becoming Funnier in 30 Days”?

McNally cites many novels and short stories as examples that best illustrate the lessons he wants to impart, the writer’s life, or the writer’s craft, as well as his own favorite authors’ novels and short story collections. Exercises at the end of each chapter reinforce its point and serve as practical catalysts for new writings and directions.

Just blunt enough to get your attention but not blunt enough to crush you, challenging but not discouraging, personal but not ego-ridden, snarky but not mean, John McNally will prompt you to think more deeply about a variety of issues that will push you toward writing more meaningful, more accomplished work.

John McNally is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories, including Troublemakers (Iowa, 2000), The Book of Ralph, and After the Workshop, as well as The Creative Writer’s Survival Guide: Advice from an Unrepentant Novelist (Iowa, 2010). A graduate of the Iowa Writ-ers’ Workshop, he teaches creative writing at Wake Forest University and in Pacific University’s low-residency MFA program.

saMPle exercise Take a story you’ve already written and rewrite the opening page from the perspective of each character. If there are 10 characters, you should have 10 different openings.

“John McNally’s Vivid and Continuous will be an excellent addition to any writer’s library of craft books. Written with the hard-earned wisdom of a long-time practitioner, this book is the voice of a teacher with much to tell us about aspects that other books avoid or skirt. All of the nuts and bolts of technique are here in addition to fine discussions of issues such as the like-ability of a narrator, the use of pop culture, and the importance of a writer’s humility. Written in an accessible style, this book comes from the guy on the bus who wants to talk to you. It just so happens that he’s a writer, and he’s offering you some short-cuts on your own writer’s journey. Listen to him. Not only is he entertaining, he knows what he’s talking about.”—Lee Martin, author, Such a Life and The Bright Forever

“Vivid and Continuous is smart, extremely helpful, and—unlike most books about how to write—very funny. I guffawed and nodded my head in agreement as I read the chapter on subject matter to avoid. John McNally’s engaging voice beguiled me in every essay, offering up wisdom gleaned from years of experience as a dedicated teacher and successful writer. This book is one of a kind. I can’t wait to assign it to my fiction-writing students.”—Elizabeth Stuckey-French, author, The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, and coauthor, Writing Fiction: A Guide to the Narrative Craft

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11www.uiowapress.org

march344 pages . 10 photos . 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches$20.00 paper, 978-1-60938-146-2$20.00 e-book, 978-1-60938-161-5Originally published by Spenser-Hoyt, 2007, isbn 978-097923-190-2history

The Best Specimen of a TyrantThe Ambitious Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand and the Wisconsin Insane Hospitalby Thomas Doherty

in 1847, young Dr. Abraham Van Norstrand left Vermont to seek his fortune in the West, but in Wisconsin his business ventures failed, and a medical practice among hard-up settlers added little to his pocketbook. During the Civil War he organized and ran one of the army’s biggest hospitals but resigned when dark rumors surfaced about him. Back home, he accepted with mixed feelings the one prestigious position available to him: superintendent of the state’s first hospital for the insane.

Van Norstrand was a newcomer to the so-called “Hospital Move-ment,” perhaps the boldest public policy innovation of its time, one whose leaders believed that they could achieve what had long been regarded as impossible, to cure the insane. He was a driven man with scant sympathy for those he considered misfits or malingerers. Even so, early observers were impressed with his energetic, take-charge manner at the hospital. Here at last was a man who stood firm where his predecessors had weakened and foundered. But others began to detect a different side to this tireless ruler and adroit politician. It was said that he assaulted patients and served them tainted food purchased with state money from his own grocery store. Was he exploiting the weak for personal gain or making the best of a thank-less situation? Out of this fog of suspicion emerged a moral crusader and—to all appearances—pristine do-gooder named Samuel Hast-ings, a man whose righteous fury, once aroused, proved equal to Van Norstrand’s own.

The story of Abraham Van Norstrand’s rise and fall is also the story of the clash between the great expectations and hard choices that have bedeviled public mental hospitals from the beginning.

Thomas Doherty lives in Madison, Wisconsin. His short stories have appeared in the Iowa Review, the Laurel Review, the Mississippi Valley Re-view, and other literary journals. His nonfiction has also appeared in a variety of publications from the Saigon Post to the Wisconsin Magazine of History. He won the 2008 Wisconsin Historical Society’s Book Award of Merit for The Best Specimen of a Tyrant.

“The Best Specimen of a Tyrant [is] the story of one driven and unlucky man. In it, the reader also sees the attitudes toward mental illness in the latter half of the 19th century and the impact of the Civil War on the mental states of its veterans. . . . It’s an absorbing read, one with themes—includ-ing treatment of veterans, post-traumatic stress disorder, and corrupt actions by high-ranking officials—that resonate sharply today.”—Linda A. Falkenstein, Isthmus Books Quarterly

“. . . a fascinating character study of a complex and influential physician, as well as . . . an illuminating account of hospital psychiatry during a far more rudimentary age.”—Kenneth C. Casimir, M.D., The Wisconsin Psychiatrist


may206 pages . 10 photos . 6 x 9 inches$19.95s paper original, 978-1-60938-149-3$19.95s e-book, 978-1-60938-170-7history / iowa

On Behalf of the Family FarmIowa Farm Women’s Activism since 1945by Jenny Barker Devineiowa and The MidwesT exPerienceWilliam Friedricks, series editor

“Devine redefines midwestern farm women’s activism after World War II by tracing the subtle and powerful shifts in gender relationships in rural America. On Behalf of the Family Farm brings a fresh look at the complexi-ties of how farm women shaped their organizations, claimed public space, and redefined their identities.”—Carolyn Sachs, Pennsylvania State University

On Behalf of the Family Farm traces the development of women’s ac-tivism and agrarian feminisms in the Midwest after 1945, as farm women’s lives were being transformed by the realities of modern agriculture. Author Jenny Barker Devine demonstrates that in an era when technology, depopulation, and rapid economic change dramatically altered rural life, midwestern women met these chal-lenges with their own feminine vision of farm life. Their “agrarian feminisms” offered an alternative to, but not necessarily a rejection of, second-wave feminism.

Focusing on women in four national farm organizations in Iowa—the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, the National Farm Organi-zation, and the Porkettes—Devine highlights specific moments in time when farm women had to reassess their roles and strategies for preserving and improving their way of life. Rather than retreat from the male-dominated world of agribusiness and mechanized production, postwar women increasingly asserted their identities as agricultural producers and demanded access to public spaces typi-cally reserved for men.

Over the course of several decades, they developed agrarian feminisms that combined cherished rural traditions with female empowerment, cooperation, and collaboration. Iowa farm women emphasized working partnerships between husbands and wives, women’s work in agricultural production, and women’s unique ways of understanding large-scale conventional farming.

An assistant professor at Illinois College, Jenny Barker Devine has won several prizes for her research, including the Zaffarano Prize for Graduate Student Research at Iowa State University (she was the first nonscientist to win it), the Carrie Chapman Catt Prize for Research on Women in Politics, the Phi Alpha Theta Doctoral Scholarship, and the Ernest G. Hildner, Jr., Faculty Award of Illinois College. She has also received research grants from the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Richard S. Brownlee Fund of the State Historical Society of Missouri, and the State Historical Society of Iowa.

“This is a concise, carefully researched, cogently argued, and engagingly written study that fills a significant gap in our understanding of rural America and partic-ularly of rural activism. Devine convincingly argues that farm women activists consti-tuted a different kind of feminist, but were feminists nonetheless.”—Melissa Walker, Converse College, author, All We Knew Was to Farm: Rural Women in the Upcountry South, 1914–1941

“In this very readable book, Jenny Barker Devine shows that rural women who dis-dained feminism behaved like ‘agrarian feminists.’ Banding together to confront rapid and all-encompassing changes, women in Iowa in the decades after World War II navigated between the demands of a patriarchal society built around land, agriculture, and family and a strong sense of pride in themselves as mothers, wives, and women. This study will provoke more than its share of spirited conversation among Iowans as well as academics.”—Andrew Cayton, Miami University

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The Raptors of Iowapaintings by James F. Landenbergeressays by Dean M. Roosa, Jon W. Stravers, Bruce Ehresman, and Rich Pattersona Bur oak BookHolly Carver, series editor

“To pioneer homesteaders, a hawk in the sky was reason to reach for a gun. Now, with our better understanding of the raptors’ ecological importance and of their perilous future, a wheeling red-tail against the sun is something to cherish, not kill. In The Raptors of Iowa, artist and authors have given to all who are interested in midwestern birds a book that will set the standard for years to come.”—J. Fenwick Lansdowne

This long-awaiTed collection of James Landenberger’s paintings of Iowa birds of prey presents thirty-two full-page, full-color species, from the common turkey vulture to the red-shouldered hawk of Mis-sissippi River woodlands to the little northern saw-whet owl. Four naturalists who have devoted their lives to conserving wilderness habitats and species have written essays to complement the paintings.

Thanks to state and federal laws and a shift in public attitude, birds of prey are no longer seen as incarnations of ferocity but as creatures superbly attuned to their lives and surroundings. Although Iowa unfortunately leads the way in the amount of wildlife habitat that has been destroyed, conservation organizations and state agencies have also led the way toward successful raptor restoration projects, among them a roadside nest box program for the American kestrel, a project to restore peregrine falcons to their historic eyries, and a relocation program that should ensure a sustainable population of ospreys. The recent spectacular recovery of the bald eagle, whose nests had vanished from the state for seventy years, is particularly encouraging.

There can be no substitute for seeing thousands of broad-winged hawks soaring high overhead during migration, a great horned owl perching in silhouette at dusk, or a Cooper’s hawk plunging toward its prey along the roadside. But Jim Landenberger’s meticulously detailed paintings go a long way toward conveying the remarkable beauty of the American kestrel and other falcons, the grace of the swallow-tailed kite, the immaculate mystery of the snowy owl and its fellow owls, the glistening head feathers of an adult bald eagle, and the piercing defiance so characteristic of our larger hawks.

Wildlife artist James Landenberger (1938–2003) was the first three-time winner of the Iowa outdoor stamp design contests; his original watercolors and limited-edition prints are a lasting legacy to his craft. Dean Roosa was Iowa’s state ecologist from 1975 to 1992; he is coau-thor of Iowa Birds, The Vascular Plants of Iowa (Iowa, 1994), Wildflowers and Other Plants of Iowa Wetlands, and Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie (Iowa, 2010). Jon Stravers is Driftless Area Coordinator for the Na-tional Audubon Society’s Mississippi River Initiative, founder of the Big Blue Sky music project, and coauthor of Gladys Black: The Legacy of Iowa’s Bird Lady and Sylvan T. Runkel: Citizen of the Natural World. Bruce Ehresman is avian ecologist for the Iowa Department of Natural Re-source’s Wildlife Diversity Program. Rich Patterson has been director of the Indian Creek Nature Center since 1978.

may128 pages . 34 paintings . 6 x 8 inches$29.95 paper original, 978-1-60938-166-0$29.95 e-book, 978-1-60938-167-7nature / iowa

The BirdsTurkey Vulture, Cathartes auraOsprey, Pandion haliaetusSwallow-tailed Kite, Elanoides forficatusMississippi Kite, Ictinia mississippiensisBald Eagle, Haliaeetus leucocephalusNorthern Harrier, Circus cyaneusSharp-shinned Hawk, Accipiter striatusCooper’s Hawk, Accipiter cooperiiNorthern Goshawk, Accipiter gentilisRed-shouldered Hawk, Buteo lineatusBroad-winged Hawk, Buteo platypterusSwainson’s Hawk, Buteo swainsoniRed-tailed Hawk, Buteo jamaicensisFerruginous Hawk, Buteo regalisRough-legged Hawk, Buteo lagopusGolden Eagle, Aquila chrysaetosAmerican Kestrel, Falco sparveriusMerlin, Falco columbariusGyrfalcon, Falco rusticolusPeregrine Falcon, Falco peregrinusPrairie Falcon, Falco mexicanusBarn Owl, Tyto albaEastern Screech-owl, Megascops asioGreat Horned Owl, Bubo virginianusSnowy Owl, Bubo scandiacusNorthern Hawk Owl, Surnia ululaBurrowing Owl, Athene cuniculariaBarred Owl, Strix variaGreat Gray Owl, Strix nebulosaLong-eared Owl, Asio otusShort-eared Owl, Asio flammeusNorthern Saw-whet Owl, Aegolius acadicus

Paintings by James F. Landenberger

Essays by Dean M. Roosa, Jon W. Stravers, Bruce Ehresman, and Rich Patterson

The Raptors of Iowa


april184 pages . 6 x 9 inches$39.95s paper original, 978-1-60938-147-9$39.95s e-book, 978-1-60938-148-6literary criticism

Violet AmericaRegional Cosmopolitanism in U.S. Fiction since the Great Depressionby Jason ArthurThe new aMerican canon: The Iowa Series in Contemporary Literature and CultureSamuel Cohen, series editor

“A significant intervention in the field of critical regionalism, Violet America refigures the relations between the local and the global in ways which allow us to go beyond the conventional red state/blue state po-larities toward a more integrated and interdependent vision of national belonging.”—Loren Glass, University of Iowa

Violet America takes on the long habit among literary historians and critics of thinking about large segments of American literary produc-tion in terms of regionalism. Jason Arthur argues that classifying broad swaths of American literature as regionalist or “local color” writing brings with it a set of assumptions, informed by longstanding habits of thought about American culture, that marginalize important literary works and deform our understanding of them. Moreover, these assumptions reinforce our ideas about the divisions between city and country, coast and center, cosmopolitan and provincial that lie behind not only our literature, but our politics.

Against this common view, Violet America demonstrates just how cosmopolitan the regional impulse can be. In the works of James Agee, Jack Kerouac, Maxine Hong Kingston, Russell Banks, and Jonathan Franzen, the regional impulse yields narratives about the interdependence between privilege and poverty, mainstream and margin, urban and rural. These narratives counteract the polarizing cultural lens that, when unquestioned, sees the red-state/blue-state geography of twenty-first-century America as natural. Tracking the evolution of this impulse to depolarize, Violet America develops a liter-ary history of “regional cosmopolitanism,” a key urge of which is to represent the interconnectedness of the local, the national, and the global. Writers incorporating this perspective redress the blight of America’s neglected places and peoples without also falling victim to the stigmas of being purely regional in their scope and interest. Rather than simply celebrating regional difference, the regional cos-mopolitan fiction that Arthur discusses blends the nation’s cultural polarities into a connected, interdependent America.

Jason Arthur is an assistant professor of English at Rockhurst Uni-versity. His articles about contemporary regional American literature and culture have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies and College Literature.

“Jason Arthur’s Violet America offers a fresh take on how U.S. literature maps the rela-tionship between place and identity. Using literary coordinates ranging from Agee to Steinbeck to Kerouac to Kingston, he re-invigorates the multiple connections be-tween different orders of texts and different modes of classifying them, and in doing so, breathes new life into literary studies of the local.”—Stephanie Foote, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“A vital contribution to the ongoing effort to rethink U.S. literary regionalism, Violet America operates with dialectical subtlety to depolarize periphery and metropole, mar-gin and mainstream, red state and blue, from James Agee to Jonathan Franzen.”—Eric Lott, University of Virginia


july270 pages . 16 illustrations . 6 x 9 inches$42.50s paper original, 978-1-60938-177-6$42.50s e-book, 978-1-60938-178-3literary criticism

Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790–2010by Paula T. Connolly

“It is no mean feat to cover more than two hundred years of literature in a single book. An analysis of shifting representations of slavery within chil-dren’s culture, Connolly’s text dazzles in its scope and insights. Students and scholars of American culture and children’s literature need to know this story.”—Katharine Capshaw Smith, author, Children’s Literature of the Harlem Renaissance

long seen By wriTers as a vital political force of the nation, children’s literature has been an important means not only of my-thologizing a certain racialized past but also, because of its intended audience, of promoting a specific racialized future. Stories about slavery for children have served as primers for racial socialization. This first comprehensive study of slavery in children’s literature, Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790–2010, also historicizes the ways generations of authors have drawn upon antebellum literature in their own re-creations of slavery. It examines well-known, canonical works alongside others that have ostensibly disappeared from con-temporary cultural knowledge but have nonetheless both affected and reflected the American social consciousness in the creation of racialized images.

Beginning with abolitionist and proslavery views in antebellum children’s literature, Connolly examines how successive generations reshaped the genres of the slave narrative, abolitionist texts, and plantation novels to reflect the changing contexts of racial politics in America. From Reconstruction and the end of the nineteenth century, to the early decades of the twentieth century, to the civil rights era, and into the twenty-first century, these antebellum genres have continued to find new life in children’s literature—in, among other forms, neoplantation novels, biographies, pseudoabolitionist adventures, and neo-slave narratives.

As a literary history of how antebellum racial images have been re-created or revised for new generations, Slavery in American Children’s Literature ultimately offers a record of the racial mythmaking of the United States from the nation’s beginning to the present day.

Paula T. Connolly, associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, is the author of Winnie-the-Pooh and the House at Pooh Corner: Recovering Arcadia.

“The book is a tour de force. Slavery in American Children’s Literature is the most comprehensive treatment ever written about slavery in literature for children. . . . As literary history, it is accessible and thor-ough; as literary criticism, it is perceptive and elegant. Most important, as a contri-bution to American children’s studies, it offers significant analytical insights into how childhood has been used ideologically for centuries to construct race as a function of national identity.”—Roberta Seelinger Trites, author, Twain, Alcott, and the Birth of the Adolescent Reform Novel

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march292 pages . 12 illustrations . 6 x 9 inches $45.00s paper original, 978-1-60938-162-2$45.00s e-book, 978-1-60938-174-5biography / literary criticism

Garland in His Own TimeA Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associatesedited by Keith NewlinwriTers in Their own TiMeJoel Myerson, series editor

“Meticulously documented, Garland in His Own Time offers a deeper understanding of Hamlin Garland, the man and the writer, set within the context of the times. These letters and reminiscences are interesting not only in what they divulge about Garland, from the radical youth to the mellow sage, but are fascinating reading in themselves.”—Susanne George Bloomfield, author, Impertinences: Selected Writings of Elia Peattie, a Journalist in the Gilded Age

in his heyday, Hamlin Garland had a considerable reputation as a radical writer whose realistic stories and polemical essays agitating for a literature that accurately represented American life riled the na-tion’s press. Born in poverty and raised on a series of frontier farms, Garland fled the rural Midwest in 1881 at age twenty-one. When his stories combining the radical economic theories of Henry George with realistic depictions of farm life appeared as Main-Travelled Roads in 1891, reviewers praised his method but were disturbed by the bleak subject matter. Four years (and eight books) later, his frank depiction of sexuality in his novel of the New Woman, Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly (1895), made Garland even more controversial.

After realizing he couldn’t make a living from such realistic works, Garland turned first to biography, then to critically panned but com-mercially popular romances set in the mountain west, and eventually to autobiography. In 1917 he published A Son of the Middle Border, a remarkable autobiography in which he combined the story of his life to 1893 with the story of U.S. westward expansion, to considerable critical acclaim and large sales. Its 1921 sequel, A Daughter of the Middle Border, received the Pulitzer Prize for biography.

Although the author eventually wrote no fewer than eight auto-biographies, he showed little awareness of the effect of his strong personality upon others. The sixty-six reminiscences in Garland in His Own Time offer an essential complement to his self-portrait by giving the perspectives of family, friends, fellow writers, and critics. The book offers the contemporary reader new reasons to return to this fascinating writer’s work.

Keith Newlin is professor of English at the University of North Caro-lina at Wilmington. He is the author of Hamlin Garland, A Life, editor of The Oxford Handbook of American Literary Naturalism, A Summer to Be, a Memoir by the Daughter of Hamlin Garland, and two reprints of books by Hamlin Garland, and the coeditor with Joseph B. McCullough of Selected Letters of Hamlin Garland.

“Keith Newlin’s Garland in His Own Time provides a much needed and often fascinat-ing complement to Hamlin Garland’s own voluminous autobiographical writing. Its ac-counts of Garland’s activities and personal-ity from his teens to his last years, by figures ranging from Walt Whitman and Theodore Roosevelt to Garland’s older daughter, are both revealing and incisive in rendering the strengths and weaknesses of this important figure in American literary history. The book will be indispensable for anyone interested in the dimensions and nature of Garland’s career.”—Donald Pizer, Pierce Butler Professor of English Emeritus, Tulane University

“Keith Newlin has judiciously selected more than sixty reminiscences that help scholars and general readers to better understand Garland’s life, personality, and work. Newlin’s excellent introduction and headnotes contextualize the reminiscences, often revealing how they complement or counter Garland’s own autobiographical ac-counts. Although an aged Garland lamented his ‘waning fame,’ Newlin, the preeminent scholar on Garland today, has cemented Garland’s legacy in American literary histo-ry. No one working on Garland in the future can afford to ignore this collection.”—Paul Sorrentino, Clifford A. Cutchins III Professor of English, Virginia Tech

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may244 pages . 9 photos . 6 x 9 inches$45.00s paper original, 978-1-60938-158-5$45.00s e-book, 978-1-60938-159-2literary criticism

James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapesby Noelle Morrissette

James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes provides an evocative and meticulously researched study of one of the best known and yet least understood authors of the New Negro Renaissance era. Johnson, familiar to many as an early civil rights leader active in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and an intention-ally controversial writer on the subject of the significance of race in America, was one of the most prolific, wide-ranging, and yet elusive authors of twentieth-century African American literature.

Johnson realized early in his writing career that he could draw attention to the struggles of African Americans by using unconven-tional literary methods such as the incorporation of sound into his texts. In this groundbreaking work, literary critic Noelle Morris-sette examines how his literary representation of the extremes of sonic experience—functioning as either cultural violence or creative force—draws attention to the mutual contingencies and the inter-dependence of American and African American cultures. Moreover, Morrissette argues, Johnson represented these “American sounds” as a source of multiplicity and diversity, often developing a framework for the interracial transfer of sound. The lyricist and civil rights leader used sound as a formal aesthetic practice in and between his works, presenting it as an unbounded cultural practice that is as much an interracial as it is a racially distinct cultural history.

Drawing on archival materials such as early manuscript notes and drafts of Johnson’s unpublished and published work, Morrissette explores the author’s complex aesthetic of sound, based on black expressive culture and cosmopolitan interracial experiences. This aesthetic evolved over the course of his writing life, beginning with his early Broadway musical comedy smash hits and the composition of Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), and developing through his “real” autobiography, Along This Way (1933). The result is an in-novative new interpretation of the works of one of the early twentieth century’s most important and controversial writers and civil rights leaders.

Noelle Morrissette is an assistant professor of English at the Uni-versity of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is the coeditor of En-cyclopedia of Africa and the Americas: History, Culture and Politics and the author of the 2007 critical introduction to James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man and Other Writings.

“Noelle Morrissette brings to the forefront an undervalued aspect of Johnson’s amaz-ing career—his attempt to bridge the separation between black political activism and black popular culture. Impressively in-formed but quite accessible and engaging, James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes is an authoritative reconsideration of criti-cal approaches to Johnson. I expect it to be quickly established as one of the essential books for anyone interested in Johnson, and an important methodological model for any scholar working in this period of American cultural history.”—John Ernest, University of Delaware

“An engaging, thought-provoking manu-script. This is an important work in African American literary studies, American studies, and the growing field of sound studies.”—Miriam Thaggert

“A timely and much needed book on James Weldon Johnson, an African American Renaissance man who bridges the gap be-tween Reconstruction and the New Negro Movement.”—Dolan Hubbard

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may256 pages . 6 x 9 inches$42.00s paper original, 978-1-60938-150-9$42.00s e-book, 978-1-60938-171-4literary criticism / poetics

Among FriendsEngendering the Social Site of Poetryedited by Anne Dewey and Libbie RifkinconTeMPorary norTh aMerican PoeTry seriesAlan Golding, Lynn Keller, & Adalaide Morris, series editors

PhilosoPhers and TheorisTs have long recognized both the subversive and the transformative possibilities of friendship, the in-timacy of which can transcend the impersonality of such identity cat-egories as race, class, or gender. Unlike familial relations, friendships are chosen, opening a space of relative freedom in which to create and explore new identities. This process has been particularly valuable to poets marginalized by gender or sexuality since the second half of the twentieth century, as friendship provides both a buffer against and a wedge into predominantly male homosocial poetic communities.

Among Friends presents a richly theorized evocation of friendship as a fluid, critical social space, one that offers a vantage point from which to explore the gendering of poetic institutions and practices from the postwar period to the present. With friendship as an optic, the essays in this volume offer important new insights into the gender politics of the poetic avant-garde, since poetry as an institution has continued to be transformed by dramatic changes wrought by second-wave feminism, sexual liberation, and gay rights. These essays reveal the intimate social negotiations that fight, fracture, and queer the conventions of authority and community that have long constrained women poets and the gendering of poetic subjectivities.

From this shared perspective, the essays collected here investigate a historically and aesthetically wide-ranging array of subjects: from Joanne Kyger and Philip Whalen’s trans-Pacific friendship, to Patti Smith’s grounding of her punk persona in the tension between her romantic friendships with male artists and her more professional connections to the poets of the St. Mark’s scene, and from the gender dynamics of the Language School to the Flarf network’s reconception of poetic community in the digital age and the Black Took Collective’s creation of an intimate poetics of performance. Together, these explo-rations of poetic friendship open up new avenues for interrogating contemporary American poetry.

Anne Dewey teaches English at Saint Louis University, Madrid Cam-pus. She is the author of Beyond Maximus: The Construction of Public Voice in Black Mountain Poetry and the translator of Reyes Mate’s Memory of the West: The Contemporaneity of Forgotten Jewish Thinkers. Libbie Rifkin teaches English at Georgetown University. She is the author of Career Moves: Olson, Creeley, Zukofsky, Berrigan, and the American Avant-Garde.

conTriBuTorsMaria Damon . Andrew Epstein . Ross HairDuriel E. Harris . Daniel Kane . Dawn Lundy MartinPeter Middleton . Linda Russo . Lytle ShawAnn Vickery . Barrett Watten . Ronaldo V. Wilson

“Among Friends is a fresh, suggestive and lively anthology whose focus on sociality, gender, affiliation, and friendship enriches current literary study. Personable and original, this anthology is full of scintillating information about contemporary people and poems, and it analyzes, theorizes about, and even performs the meanings and excitements of friendship in the literary field.”—Rachel Blau DuPlessis, professor emer-ita at Temple University, author of Purple Passages: Pound, Eliot, Zukofsky, Olson, Creeley, and the Ends of Patriarchal Poetry

“The essays collectively reaffirm an experi-mental/avant-garde poetic tradition and deftly demonstrate that gender, far from representing an ‘add on’ or ‘supplement’ to the study of postwar American poetics, is a means of speaking to the very core of a poet’s artistry and self-conception.”—Brian M. Reed, University of Washington, Seattle, author of Phenomenal Reading: Essays in Modern and Contemporary Poetics


march276 pages . 50 photos . 2 maps . 2 charts . 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches$19.95s paper, 978-1-58729-572-0$19.95s e-book, 978-1-60938-176-9iowa / history

Esther’s Townby Deemer Leea Bur oak BookHolly Carver, series editor

esTher’s Town could be “Any Town, U.S.A.,” for the equals of its cast of characters can be found in any small town. And here, as usual, was the town newspaper editor, the observing eye of all the foibles and peccadillos that form any town’s history. Remembering all the years with love and humor, editor Deemer Lee chronicled the forty-four years he gathered and wrote news—forty-one of them as editor and publisher of his town’s newspaper.

He dug into old records, recalled old times, and talked with old-timers. He illuminated the transition of a town, from Estherville’s pioneer settlement to the busy, active town it is today.

The excitement and fun begin with a story of bootleggers, Chautau-qua meetings, and an accomplished arsonist—who achieves in less than two months the impressive score of burning seven barns and one feed store, with an unsuccessful attempt on the Methodist church. Scandinavians move in, build crude shelters for the first winter, and add their special characteristics to the town. The Irish arrive and stamp their mark on the whole territory. The circus comes to town and entrances everyone with its ancient pageantry. The railroads come through and add a rowdy element to the population. The Depression begins and farms see 11-cent corn, 108-degree heat, and a twister.

All these events, plus adventures with a massive meteorite and haunting river tragedies, create the drama and flow of small-town life, story by story, in a fascinating revelation of Americana.

Deemer Lee (1905–1979) was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune dur-ing the Roaring Twenties. He moved back to his home in Estherville, Iowa, in 1930, founding the Estherville Daily News, which he edited and published until his retirement in 1968.

Back in PrinT

Esther’s Townby deemer lee


june346 pages . 36 b&w photos . 8-page color insert6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches$27.50s paper, 978-1-60938-169-1literary criticism / poetics

Frank O’HaraThe Poetics of Coterieby Lytle ShawconTeMPorary norTh aMerican PoeTry seriesAlan Golding, Lynn Keller, & Adalaide Morris, series editors

“Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of Coterie is an outstanding study of a remark-able, underrated poet and critic. Combining incisive reading of specific poems and critical pieces with astute insistence on more general theoret-ical issues involving historical context and rhetorical positioning, Shaw calls into question not only previous—often trivializing—evaluations of O’Hara and his work but also revises crucial mid-twentieth-century literary and artistic concepts like that of ‘coterie’ itself.”—Linda Nochlin, Wallace Professor of Modern Art, New York University Institute of Fine Arts

in This sTiMulaTing and innovative synthesis of New York’s ar-tistic and literary worlds, Lytle Shaw uses the social and philosophical problems involved in “reading” a coterie to propose a new language for understanding the poet, art critic, and Museum of Modern Art curator Frank O’Hara (1926–1966).

O’Hara’s poems are famously filled with proper names—from those of his immediate friends and colleagues in the New York writ-ing and art worlds (John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Grace Hartigan, Willem de Kooning, and many musicians, dancers, and filmmakers) to a broad range of popular cultural and literary heroes (Apollinaire to Jackie O). But rather than understand O’Hara’s most commonly referenced names as a fixed and insular audience, Shaw argues that he uses the ambiguities of reference associated with the names to invent a fluid and shifting kinship structure—one that opened up radical possibilities for a gay writer operating outside the structure of the family.

As Shaw demonstrates, this commitment to an experimental model of association also guides O’Hara’s art writing. Like his poetry, O’Hara’s art writing too has been condemned as insular, coterie writ-ing. In fact, though, he was alone among 1950s critics in his willing-ness to consider abstract expressionism not only within the dominant languages of existentialism and formalism but also within the cold war political and popular cultural frameworks that anticipate many of the concerns of contemporary art historians. Situating O’Hara within a range of debates about art’s possible relations to its audience, Shaw demonstrates that his interest in coterie is less a symptomatic offshoot of his biography than a radical literary and artistic invention.

Lytle Shaw’s books of poetry include Cable Factory 20, The Lobe, and several collaborations with artists. His essays and reviews have ap-peared in Cabinet, Artforum, and Parkett and in catalogs for the DIA Center for the Arts, the Drawing Center, and the Sculpture Center. He lives in New York City, where he is assistant professor of English at New York University.

new in PaPer

“In Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of Coterie . . . Lytle Shaw . . . attempt[s] to show that O’Hara’s work was actually engaged with a much larger audience than the one for which he is usually given credit. In doing so, Shaw’s book becomes one of the more im-portant recent additions to the literature on O’Hara.”—Journal of Modern Literature

“Lytle Shaw’s Frank O’Hara . . . confirm[s] O’Hara’s position as a charismatic and ir-resistible figure in discussions of postwar American poetry. . . . Shaw’s arguments signal a subtle but perceptible reorientation in our thinking about individual subjects and the impingements of the dominant culture. These arguments suggest that we turn to intimate communities—groups of friends and close-knit literary allies—as a way of grounding our thinking about the self in social context, or about individual agency in relation to larger systems.”—Criticism

9

AnthropologiesA Family Memoirby Beth Alvarado$19.95 pb 978-1-60938-037-3

Brave New WordsHow Literature Will Save the Planetby Elizabeth Ammons$20.00 pb 978-1-58729-861-5

When War Becomes PersonalSoldiers’ Accounts from the Civil War to Iraqedited by Donald Anderson$22.00s pb 978-1-58729-680-2

Power Balladsby Will Boast$16.00 pb 978-1-60938-042-7

Midnight AssassinA Murder in America’s Heartlandby Patricia L. Bryan & Thomas Wolf$19.95 pb 978-1-58729-605-5

The Legacy of David Foster Wallaceedited by Samuel Cohen & Lee Konstantinou$19.95 pb 978-1-60938-082-3

How to Leave Hialeahby Jennine Capó Crucet$16.00 pb 978-1-58729-816-5

Between the HeartbeatsPoetry and Prose by Nursesedited by Cortney Davis & Judy Schaefer$20.00s pb 978-0-87745-517-2

Sarah’s SeasonsAn Amish Diary and Conversationby Martha Moore Davis$14.50 pb 978-0-87745-742-8

Samuel Cohen and Lee Konstantinou

Americanthenew canon

[ The Legacy of ]

[ Edited by ]

David Foster Wallace

Family Bibleby Melissa J. Delbridge$17.00 pb 978-1-58729-874-5

Chasing the White WhaleThe Moby-Dick Marathon; or, What Melville Means Todayby David Dowling$24.95 pb 978-1-58729-906-3

The Farm at Holstein DipAn Iowa Boyhoodby Carroll Engelhardt$22.00 pb 978-1-60938-117-2

Oneota FlowThe Upper Iowa River and Its Peopleby David S. Faldet$27.50 pb 978-1-58729-780-9

Poems from GuantánamoThe Detainees Speakedited by Marc Falkoff$16.95 cl 978-1-58729-606-2

Field Guide to Wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains Second Edition by Jon Farrar $39.95 pb 978-1-60938-071-7

James Van AllenThe First Eight Billion Milesby Abigail Foerstner$24.95 pb 978-1-58729-795-3

The Guide to Oklahoma Wildflowers by Patricia Folley $39.95 pb 978-1-60938-046-5

The Indians of Iowaby Lance M. Foster$16.95 pb 978-1-58729-817-2

The

Upper Iowa River

& Its People

Dav i d S . Fa l d e t

A M E R I C A N L A N D & L I F E S E R I E S

Oneota f low

An Iowa Schoolma’amLetters of Elizabeth “Bess” Corey, 1904–1908edited by Philip L. Gerber & Charlotte M. Wright$25.00s pb 978-1-58729-960-5

Unbeknownstby Julie Hanson$17.00 pb 978-1-58729-964-3

The AtticA Memoirby Curtis Harnack$19.95 pb 978-1-58729-546-1

Gentlemen on the PrairieVictorians in Pioneer Iowaby Curtis Harnack$24.00s pb 978-1-58729-967-4

We Have All Gone Awayby Curtis Harnack$19.95 pb 978-1-58729-969-8

The Ecology and Manage ment of Prairies in the Central United Statesby Chris Helzer$29.95 pb 978-1-58729-865-3

A Potter’s Workbookby Clary Illian$26.00 pb 978-0-87745-671-1

Against the GallowsAntebellum American Writers and the Movement to Abolish Capital Punishmentby Paul Christian Jones$35.00s pb 978-1-60938-048-9

Cloud of Inkby L. S. Klatt$17.00 pb 978-1-58729-971-1

An Iowa Schoolma’amL E T T E R S O F

Elizabeth “Bess” Corey, 1904-1908

EDITED BY

PHILIP L. GERBER

AND

CHARLOT TE M. WRIGHT

Readers everywhere fell for Elizabeth Corey, the irrepress-ible, independent, and fearless Bachelor Bess, whose letters home to Iowa gave us a first-hand account of her adventures on a South Dakota homestead from 1909 to 1919. Now, through the letters she wrote home between 1904 and 1908, readers can make the acquaintance of a younger Bess facing the realities of teach-ing in an Iowa country school system with energy, enthusiasm, and ambition.

An Iowa Schoolma’am stands on its own as a lively story of early twentieth-century teaching in addition to providing the essential background to Bachelor Bess. Elizabeth Corey’s vivid and funny letters provide a unique viewpoint on life in turn-of-the-century, small-town Iowa. The casual reader will enjoy Corey’s let-ters on their own merits, while scholars interested in women’s history, the history of education, and the rural Midwest will find the letters useful as well. If nothing else, An Iowa Schoolma’am should sim-ply be read for the fun of it!”— Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State University

Bess Corey started out teaching in a one-room Iowa school with only a ninth-grade education. Her letters home show how hard she worked as she jousted with reluctant students, planned performan-ces for the entire community, and suf-fered the vicissitudes of boarding with

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Letters of E

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various landlords. Despite her travails, Bess dedicated herself to giving ‘some of the younger ones the chance I always wanted but couldn’t have.’ She tells won-derful stories of eccentric characters and local political squabbles in her letters home. In an age before e-mail, texts, and tweets, when even phone calls were a garbled rarity, handwritten letters were the vital link to one’s kin. How Bess’s family must have looked forward to the letters collected in this volume—she was frank, a lively storyteller, and quite a folk humorist.”— Judy Nolte Temple, University of Arizona

philip gerber (1923–2005) was Distinguished Professor of English at the State University of New York at Brockport and the editor of Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909–1919 (Iowa, 1990). charlotte wright is managing editor at the University of Iowa Press and the author of Plain and Ugly Janes: The Rise of the Ugly Woman in Contem-porary American Fiction (Iowa paper-back, 2000).

university of iowa presswww.uiowapress.org

Cover art: Classroom photograph from Shelby County Historical Society. Photo of Bess from a portrait of the Corey children, courtesy Special Collections, State Historical Society, Iowa City.

american history / women’s studies a bur oak book

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BesTselling BacklisT9


The Made-Up SelfImpersonation in the Personal Essayby Carl H. Klaus$19.95s pb 978-1-58729-913-1

Essayists on the EssayMontaigne to Our Timeedited by Carl H. Klaus & Ned Stuckey-French$25.00 pb 978-1-60938-076-2

Sunday Afternoon on the PorchReflections of a Small Town in Iowa, 1939–1942photographs by Everett W. Kuntztext by Jim Heynen$29.95 cl 978-1-58729-653-6

A Practical Guide to Prairie Reconstructionby Carl Kurtz$14.00 pb 978-0-87745-745-9

In Earshot of WaterNotes from the Columbia Plateauby Paul Lindholdt$19.00 pb 978-1-58729-984-1

A Bountiful HarvestThe Midwestern Farm Photographs of Pete Wettach, 1925–1965by Leslie A. Loveless$36.00 cl 978-0-87745-813-5

Up on the RiverPeople and Wildlife of the Upper Mississippiby John Madson$19.95 pb 978-1-58729-975-9

Where the Sky BeganLand of the Tallgrass Prairieby John Madson$19.95 pb 978-0-87745-861-6

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The Creative Writer’s Survival GuideAdvice from an Unrepentant Novelistby John McNally$19.95 pb 978-1-58729-920-9

The Emerald HorizonThe History of Nature in Iowaby Cornelia F. Mutel$27.50 pb 978-1-58729-632-1

A Watershed YearAnatomy of the Iowa Floods of 2008edited by Cornelia F. Mutel$19.00 pb 978-1-58729-854-7

The Elemental PrairieSixty Tallgrass Plantsby George Olson & John Madson$34.95 cl 978-0-87745-942-2

Cobble Circles and Standing StonesArchaeology at the Rivas Site, Costa Ricaby Jeffrey Quilter$26.00s pb 978-0-87745-893-7

First We Read, Then We WriteEmerson on the Creative Process by Robert D. Richardson$19.95 cl 978-1-58729-793-9

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Where Do Birds Live? Claudia McGehee

Wildflowers of Iowa WoodlandsSecond Editionby Sylvan T. Runkel & Alvin Bull$29.95 pb 978-1-58729-823-3

Wildflowers of the Tallgrass PrairieThe Upper Midwest Second Editionby Sylvan T. Runkel & Dean M. Roosa$29.95 pb 978-1-58729-796-0

A Dictionary of Iowa Place-Namesby Tom Savage$19.95 pb 978-1-58729-531-7

Iowa Past to PresentThe People and the Prairie Revised Third Editionby Dorothy Schwieder, Thomas Morain, & Lynn Nielsen$39.95s pb 978-1-60938-036-6

Confessions of a Left-Handed ManAn Artist’s Memoirby Peter Selgin$19.95 pb 978-1-60938-056-4

Restoring the Tallgrass PrairieAn Illustrated Manual for Iowa and the Upper Midwestby Shirley Shirley $20.00s pb 978-0-87745-469-4

The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Prairie Restoration in the Upper Midwestby Daryl Smith, Dave Williams, Greg Houseal, & Kirk Henderson$27.50 pb 978-1-58729-916-2

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Raptors in Your PocketA Guide to Great Plains Birds of Preyby Dana Gardner$9.95 978-0-87745-974-3

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Iowa Gems and Minerals in Your Pocketby Paul Garvin & Anthony Plaut$9.95 978-1-60938-085-4 Butterflies in Your PocketA Guide to the Butterflies of the Upper Midwestby Steve Hendrix & Diane Debinski$9.95 978-0-87745-843-2

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Trees in Your PocketA Guide to Trees of the Upper Midwestby Thomas Rosburg$9.95 978-1-60938-123-3

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a bur oak guide

A Guide to Trees of the Upper Midwest

thomas rosburg

in yourpocket

Frogs and Toads in your pocketA Guide to Amphibians of the Upper Midwest

By Terry VanDeWallePhotographs by Suzanne L. Collins

a bur oak guide

Forest and Shade Trees of IowaThird Editionby Peter J. van der Linden & Donald R. Farrar$34.95 pb 978-1-58729-994-0

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Democratic VistasThe Original Edition in Facsimileby Walt Whitmanedited by Ed Folsom$24.95 pb 978-1-58729-870-7

Leaves of Grass, 1860The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Editionby Walt Whitmanedited by Jason Stacy$24.95 pb 978-1-58729-825-7

Poets on TeachingA Sourcebookedited by Joshua Marie Wilkinson$29.95s pb 978-1-58729-904-9

The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Seed and Seedling Identification in the Upper Midwestby Dave Williams & Brent Butler$14.00 pb 978-1-58729-902-5

Nothing to Do but StayMy Pioneer Motherby Carrie Young$16.00 pb 978-0-87745-329-1

The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Seed and

Seedling Identification in the Upper Midwest

by dave williams | illustrated by brent butler

nature | gardening a bur oak guide

Thislavishlyillustratedguidetoseedsandseedlings,craftedbyTallgrassPrairieCenterbotanistDaveWilliamsandillustratorBrentButler,willinsurethateveryonefromurbangardenerstograsslandmanagerscanproperlyidentifyandgerminateseventy-twospe-ciesoftallgrasswildflowersandgrassesineasternNorthDakota,easternSouthDakota,southwesternMinnesota,southwesternWisconsin,northernIllinois,northwesternIndiana,Iowa,easternNebraska,easternKansas,northwesternMissouri,andeasternOklahoma.AnyoneintheUpperMidwestwhowishestopreservethenativevegetationofprairieremnantsorreconstructatallgrassprairieofwhateversizewillbenefitfromthehundredsofphotographsanddrawingsandtheprecisetextinthisguide.

“Foridentificationofplants,mostbooksrelyuponcharacteristicsoftheflowersandfruits.Eventhen,someplantsmayprovetobetrickytoidentify.DaveWilliamshaswrittenamostinnovativebookonhowtoidentifyprairieplantsintheirseedlingstages.Whowouldhavethoughtthispossible?Williamspresentseasilyworkablekeystotheseedlingsofseventy-twospecies,includingbothforbsandgrasses,accompaniedbysuperbphotographsthatusecirclesandtrianglesasbulletpointsforthedistinctivefeaturesofeachseedling.Informationonhowtodistinguishaparticularspeciesfromlook-alikesisalsoveryuseful.Anyonewishingtoidentifyprairieplantsintheirseedlingstagesmusthavethisfinework.”—Robert H. Mohlenbrock,distinguishedprofessoremeritusofbotany,SouthernIllinoisUniversity

“Seedlingidentificationpresentsmanydifficultchallenges,buthelpisnowavailableifyouareworkingwithmidwesternprairiespecies.The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Seed and Seedling Identification in the Upper Midwestutilizescolorphotographsandlinedrawingstohighlightkeycharacteristicsoftheseedlingsofseventy-twodifferentforbsandgrassesoftenusedinprairiereconstructions.Eachspeciesispresentedonafullpagewithillustrationsthatprovidebothanoverviewandaclose-upexaminationofidentifyingfeatures.Theguideexcelsinhelpingusersvisualizethesubtletiesofmor-phologythathelpdistinguishspeciesfromoneanother.Thisinitselfmakestheguideavaluableresource;addinitsdescriptionsofseedgerminationbiologyandhabitatinformation,andyouhaveanindispensableresourceforprairiereconstructionists.”—Thomas Rosburg,professorofbiology,DrakeUniversity

Dave Williams,programmanagerforthePrairieInstituteattheTallgrassPrairieCenter,UniversityofNorthernIowa,hasbeenactivelyengagedinprairierestorationandre-constructionsince1989.ThegraphicdesignerfortheTallgrassPrairieCentersince2006,artistBrent Butlerhasproducedmanypublicationsonprairieconservation.

Coverart:PhotosforprairiesmokeseedlingsbyDaveWilliamsandDavidO’Shields,drawingbyBrentButler;lowerphotoofprairiesmokebyLindaandRobertScarth;(back)photoofprairiesmokeseedbyDaveWilliamsandDavidO’Shields

$14.00

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ide to seed and seedlin

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williams/butler_cover proof.indd 1 4/20/10 11:44:15 AM

Forest and Shade Trees of IowaPet e r J. va n de r L i n de n a n d Dona l d R. Fa r r a r

Thir d Edition

Forest and Shade Trees of IowaPet

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er Lin

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an

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R. Far

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A complete guide to Iowa’s trees, both native and intro- duced, full of hundreds of color photos, this third edition of Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa will be useful to arborists,

foresters, horticulturists, landscape archi tects, gardeners, and all midwesterners who appreciate the beauty and value of trees and want to learn more about them.

“Amateur naturalists, professional scientists, and landown - ers in Iowa and beyond — in fact, tree lovers everywhere — will enjoy this much-anticipated update of a widely used classic. There is no better way to learn about the surprising diversity of trees in our prairie state than to have a copy of this book in your library or preferably in your hands while exploring woods, fields, backyards, and roadsides. Peter van der Linden and Donald Farrar have once again combined their talents, knowledge, and love of natural history to renew this enduring reference.” — John Pearson, ecologist, Iowa Department of Natural Resources

“Since it was first published in 1984, Forest and Shade Trees of Iowa has been the definitive reference for Iowa’s trees and larger shrubs. In this third edition, the book’s information has been expanded, freshly rearranged, and augmented with all-color photographs, making it even more accessible to the lay public as well as professional botanists. With the increasing attention now being paid to Iowa’s woodland communities and their ecological importance, this book belongs on the desk of everyone who works —or plays —with trees and shrubs in Iowa.” — Cor nelia F. Mutel, author,

The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa

Peter van der Linden worked in arboretums and botanical gardens in Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan before becoming executive director of Iowa Lakeside Lab in 2007. Donald Farrar, professor emeritus in the Department of Evolu-tion and Organismal Biology at Iowa State University, is a specialist in the reproductive biology of ferns.

Natu r e | A Bu r Oa k Gu ide

PR INTED IN CHINA $34.95

University of Iowa Presswww.uiowapress.org

Cover photos: Cedar on bluff overlooking the Mississippi River, Effigy Mounds National Monument, Iowa © Clint Farlinger; Photos of bur oak leaf and cockspur hawthorn fruit by Donald Farrar. (and credit for photo added to back) iowa

Iowa Gems and Minerals

a bur oak guide

in your pocketpaul garvin and anthony plaut

9


Arthur, Jason 14Connolly, Paula T. 15Devine, Jenny Barker 12Dewey, Anne 18Doherty, Thomas 11Ehresman, Bruce 13Hallman, J. C. 1Hemley, Robin 9Hendel, Richard 8

Among Friends 18Aspects of Contemporary Book Design 8The Best Specimen of a Tyrant 11Coming Close 2 Esther’s Town 19 The Fluency of Light 6Frank O’Hara 20Garland in His Own Time 16James Weldon Johnson’s Modern Soundscapes 17The Messenger 7

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Herman, Michelle 4Landenberger, James F. 13Lee, Deemer 19L’Esperance, Mari 2Levine, Philip 3McAuliffe, Jody 5McNally, John 10 Morín, Tomás Q. 2Morrissette, Noelle 17

The Mythical Bill 5Nola 9On Behalf of the Family Farm 12The Raptors of Iowa 13Slavery in American Children’s Literature, 1790–2010 15 Stories We Tell Ourselves 4 Sweet Will 3Violet America 14Vivid and Continuous 10Wm & H’ry 1

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order toll-free 800/621-2736fax toll-free 800/621-8476university of iowa press . www.uiowapress.org . spring 2013

Newlin, Keith 16Patterson, Rich 13Pippin, Stephanie 7Rifkin, Libbie 18Roosa, Dean M. 13Shaw, Lytle 20Sloan, Aisha Sabatini 6Stravers, Jon W. 13

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This catalog describes new and recently pub-lished books from the University of Iowa Press. Publication dates, prices, and discounts are based on information available as this catalog goes to press and are subject to change without notice.

Booksellers: Books marked “s” are subject to our short discount; all other books are trade discount. Books may be ordered from wholesalers or directly from the Press. Inquiries regarding discounts, co-op availability, and author appearances should be directed to Jim McCoy.phone 319/335-2013 . fax 319/335-2055e-mail [email protected]

Libraries: We make every attempt to insure that our books are printed on acid-free paper. The University of Iowa Press is a cip publisher.

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New York state & western PennsylvaniaBailey Walsh, University of Chicago Pressphone 608/218-1669fax 608/218-1670e-mail [email protected]

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South & south central: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West VirginiaThe Morrison Sales Group, Inc.phone 336/775-0226fax 336/775-0239e-mail [email protected]

West Coast & New York City: Arizona, California, Nevada, New York City, TexasGary Hart, University of Chicago Pressphone 818/956-0527fax 818/243-4676e-mail [email protected]

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United Kingdom, Europe, Middle East, & Africa: Eurospan Group, c/o Turpin Distribution phone +44 (0) 1767 604972 fax +44 (0) 1767 601640 e-mail (orders and customer service) [email protected] (all other information)[email protected], individuals and institutions may order from Eurospan’s online bookstore: www.eurospanbookstore.com

Western states, Canada, & other territories not listed above: Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, WyomingJim McCoy, University of Iowa Pressphone 319/335-3440fax 319/335-2055e-mail [email protected]

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Cover art by James F. Landenberger

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Please mail your order to:University of Iowa Press c/o Chicago Distribution Center 11030 South Langley Avenue Chicago IL 60628

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UI Press spring 2013 catalog

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Transcript of UI Press spring 2013 catalog