#Knopf Publishing Group

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

January 8th is the birthday of Frank Nelson Doubleday (1862-1934) who at age ten bought his own printing press to create advertisements and local Brooklyn news circulars and seventy-five years later was known as the co-founder of the largest publisher in the United States. At fifteen years old, Doubleday went to work at Charles Scribner’s Sons, eventually publishing Scribner’s Magazine and heading their subscription book department. After eighteen years, Doubleday left the company and partnered with Samuel Sidney McClure (1857-1949) to open their own publishing venture Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897. 

Over the years, Doubleday & McClure Company worked with numerous notable authors and would evolve through a dizzying number of partnerships, acquisitions, and name changes while it grew into an international communications company, eventually settling into a merger with Knopf Publishing Group under Penguin Random House in the early 2000s. In its infancy, still known as Doubleday & McClure, the company found great success with Rudyard Kipling’s (1865-1936) bestseller The Day’s Work. 

Published in 1898, The Day’s Work contains thirteen fictional short stories accompanied by illustrations throughout. The stories were written between 1893 and 1896 while Kipling was living in his Bliss Cottage in Vermont and simultaneously working on The Jungle Book. Unlike many of Kipling’s other collections, there are no poems dividing the stories within The Day’s Work. The black and white illustrations within the collection were drawn by four different artists including, William Dodge Stevens (1870-1942), William Louis Sonntag Jr. (1869-1898), Ernest Leonard Blumenschein (1874-1960), and William Ladd Taylor (1854-1926); each leaning into their strengths to support Kipling’s vivid narrative.  

Read other Milestone Monday posts here! 

– Jenna, Special Collections Graduate Intern 

[quirkycatsfatstacks]

Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Author: Gabrielle ZevinPublisher: Knopf Publishing GroupReleased: July 5, 2022Received: Own (BOTM)Warnings: Suicide, workplace shooting, childhood cancer Wow. Wow! Suppose you have ever found yourself wanting to read a love letter to video game history merged with the intricacies of human nature. In that case, you must read Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. Written by Gabrielle Zevin, this…

[infraredmag]

'Sonic Life: A Memoir' by THURSTON MOORE

THURSTON MOORE Sonic Life: A Memoir October 24, 2023 Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group From the founding member of Sonic Youth, a passionate memoir tracing the author’s life and art—from his teen years as a music obsessive in small-town Connecticut, to the formation of his legendary rock group, to thirty years of creation, experimentation, and wonder “Downtown scientists rejoice! For Thurston…

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology

Compiled and edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Last Jr.

This collection of twenty-six short stories provides an interesting and different look at some issues I have never thought about. In reading through reviews of this work I found that some reviewers  were able to relate to more of the stories than other readers and some readers were unable to relate much at all. Most went into reading believing the stories would be scary, horror stories, or put them on edge – some did, and some didn’t, in my opinion.

The stories that had the biggest impact on me were:

* KASHTUKA by Mathilda Zeller in which a young woman is pushed by her mother to go with someone she doesn’t want to be with to cook and help with a party. A ghost/scary story is told briefly and seems to allow a Kashtuka to materialize and kill a few people – the twist at the end was a grabber indeed.

* WHITE HILLS by Rebecca Roanhorse looks at what a woman might do to maintain a better quality of life than she was raised in. I hated Marissa’s mother-in-law and husband and really questioned the decision she made at the end of the story.

* SNAKES ARE REBORN IN THE DARK by D.H. Trujillo’s story brought in a bit of magic and touch of horror while talking about respecting and honoring ancient wall/cave paintings.

* BEFORE I GO by Norris Black dealt with grief and loss and made me hope I never run into Mother Night.

* DEAD OWLS by Mona Susan Power is a cold story with ghostly encounters that I hope to never experience myself.

* NAVAJOS DON’T WEAR ELK TEETH by Conley Lyons was dark and disturbing with a main character I wanted to shake and tell to spend time with someone else…someone safer, less abusive, and better for him…that had a darker ending too.

* WINGLESS by Marcie R. Rendon dealt with two boys in a foster care situation no child should find themselves in. I cringe thinking about that story and hoped at the end they both found a brighter future somewhere somehow.

There were a LOT of stories and though I couldn’t relate to all of them, the stories above were the ones that stood out the most to me and will linger longer.

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the ARC – this is my honest review.

4 Stars

BLURB

A bold, clever, and sublimely sinister collection that dares to ask the question: “Are you ready to be un-settled?” Featuring stories by: Norris Black • Amber Blaeser-Wardzala • Phoenix Boudreau • Cherie Dimaline • Carson Faust • Kelli Jo Ford • Kate Hart • Shane Hawk • Brandon Hobson • Darcie Little Badger • Conley Lyons • Nick Medina • Tiffany Morris • Tommy Orange • Mona Susan Power • Marcie R. Rendon • Waubgeshig Rice • Rebecca Roanhorse • Andrea L. Rogers • Morgan Talty • D.H. Trujillo • Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. • Richard Van Camp • David Heska Wanbli Weiden • Royce Young Wolf • Mathilda ZellerMany Indigenous people believe that one should never whistle at night. This belief takes many forms: for instance, Native Hawaiians believe it summons the Hukai’po, the spirits of ancient warriors, and Native Mexicans say it calls Lechuza, a witch that can transform into an owl. But what all these legends hold in common is the certainty that whistling at night can cause evil spirits to appear—and even follow you home. These wholly original and shiver-inducing tales introduce readers to ghosts, curses, hauntings, monstrous creatures, complex family legacies, desperate deeds, and chilling acts of revenge. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones, these stories are a celebration of Indigenous peoples’ survival and imagination, and a glorious reveling in all the things an ill-advised whistle might summon.

[sad-boys-book-club]

"&" Ampersand - A Literary Companion

Selected stories with the themes of Bastille's upcoming project "&" Ampersand. And, of course, a love letter to my favourite band.

PART 1

Intros & Narrators: Wallace, David Foster. Oblivion: Stories. Little, Brown and Company, 2004./ Nancherla, Aparna. Unreliable Narrator: Me, Myself, and Impostor Syndrome. Penguin Publishing Group, 2023.// Eve & Paradise Lost: Bohannon, Cat. Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2023. / Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Alma Classics, 2019.// Emily & Her Penthouse In The Sky: Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them. Harvard University Press, 2016. /Dickinson, Emily. Emily Dickinson: Letters. Edited by Emily Fragos, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2011.// Blue Sky & The Painter: Prideaux, Sue. Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream. Yale University Press, 2019. / Knausgaard, Karl Ove. So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch. Random House, 2019.//

PART 2

Leonard & Marianne: Hesthamar, Kari. So Long, Marianne: A Love Story - Includes Rare Material by Leonard Cohen. Ecw Press, 2014./ Cohen, Leonard. Book of Longing. Penguin Books Limited, 2007.// Marie & Polonium: Curie, Eve. Madame Curie. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013./Sobel, Dava. The Elements of Marie Curie: How the Glow of Radium Lit a Path for Women in Science. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2024.// Red Wine & Wilde: Wilde, Oscar, et al. De Profundis. Harry N. Abrams, 1998./ Sturgis, Matthew. Oscar: A Life. Head of Zeus, 2018.// Seasons & Narcissus: Ovid. Metamorphoses: A New Verse Translation. Penguin, 2004./ Morales, Helen. Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths. PublicAffairs, 2020.//

PART 3

Drawbridge & The Baroness: Rothschild, Hannah. The Baroness: The Search for Nica, the Rebellious Rothschild. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2013./ Katz, Judy H. White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-racism Training. University of Oklahoma Press, 1978.// The Soprano & Her Midnight Wonderings: Ardoin, John, and Gerald Fitzgerald. Callas: The Art and the Life. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974./ Abramovic, Marina. 7 Deaths of Maria Callas. Damiani, 2020.// Essie & Paul: Ransby, Barbara. Eslanda: The Large and Unconventional Life of Mrs. Paul Robeson. Haymarket Books, 2022./ Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. Beacon Press, 1998.//

PART 4

Mademoiselle & The Nunnery Blaze: Gautier, Theophile. Mademoiselle de Maupin. Penguin Classics, n.d./ Gardiner, Kelly. Goddess. HarperCollins, 2014.// Zheng Yi Sao & Questions For Her: Chang-Eppig, Rita. Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023./ Borges, Jorge Luis. A Universal History of Infamy. Penguin Books, 1975. // Telegraph Road 1977 & 2024: Kaufman, Bob. Golden Sardine. City Lights Books, 1976./ Wolfe, Tom. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Pan Macmillan Australia Pty, Limited, 2008.

Original artwork created by Theo Hersey & Dan Smith. Printed letterpress at The Typography Workshop, South London.

[dk-thrive]

The Simple Truth

I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes, took them home, boiled them in their jackets and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. Then I walked through the dried fields on the edge of town. In middle June the light hung on in the dark furrows at my feet, and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers squawking back and forth, the finches still darting into the dusty light. The woman who sold me the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables at the road-side stand and urging me to taste even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way, she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said, "Even if you don't I'll say you did." Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, the glass of water, the absence of light gathering in the shadows of picture frames, they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves. My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965 before I went away, before he began to kill himself, and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious, it stays in the back of your throat like a truth you never uttered because the time was always wrong, it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken, made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt, in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.

— Philip Levine, "The Simple Truth" in "The Simple Truth: Poems" (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group; September 3, 1996)

[literaticat]

Hi Jenn - I was wondering whether there is any discernible difference between being published by a big 5 imprint that has the same name as the overall house (ex. the Random House imprint itself), vs an imprint under the same house but with a different name? Are you more likely to be a lead title and get more marketing support if you are being published by the former? Is there more implied prestige? Thank you <3

Short answer: no.

But since you probably want a longer answer:

In case you don't know it, most publishers, particularly large and VERY large publishers, are broken up into "groups" and "imprints" -- that is, different brands all under the umbrella publisher. This goes for ALL the big publishers, but I'll focus on PRH since that was your example:

Penguin Random House is broken up into multiple "groups" and within those groups are multiple imprints. << (that link shows all the groups and their imprints!)****

The two groups you mostly would be familiar with on the kids side are Penguin Young Readers Group and Random House Children's Books. But WITHIN those, on the Penguin side, there is Viking, Dutton, Philomel, Putnam, Kokila, Penguin Workshop, Rocky Pond, etc etc. And on the RH side, there's Random House Books for Young Readers, Delacorte, Knopf, Crown, Labyrinth Road, Make Me a World, etc etc.

They are ALL part of PRH. There is no imprint just called "Penguin" on the kid's side -- you have to go to one of the imprints. There IS an imprint called RH BYR -- but there is no special perk or prestige to being published by that imprint vs Knopf, or whatever other RH imprint. Individual imprints may be different sizes or have different specialities, missions, or "vibes" -- but they are all PRH, none of them are particularly "better" or "worse". (They might be better or worse for YOUR book, but they aren't better or worse to the general public or anything like that!)

For example: Rocky Pond is pretty much one main editor, and it has a specific mission: Kids books for all ages that focus on mental health and social/emotional learning. Kokila has several editors, and a specific mission: Kids books for all ages that center marginalized voices/experiences. Rise has two editors, and a specific mission: "To engage, empower, and evolve the youngest readers (ages 0-5) with authentic, relevant, and elegant books." -- you get the picture, right? Different vibes! So if YOUR book was appropriate for one of those imprints, maybe that's the best imprint for it. You'd still be "published by Penguin Random House" -- you'd be a "Penguin author" -- you'd just be at one of the smaller imprints that specializes in that kind of book. (And in the case of Penguin, since there literally IS NO IMPRINT just called "Penguin" -- well, you are gonna be at a differently named imprint!)

(The RH side is more difficult to discern from that link because the RH imprints don't have their "mission statements" listed like that, so I'll just tell you -- Delacorte is mostly highly commercial YA & MG fare, Knopf is books for all ages that are more "literary", RH BYR tends to be commercial middle grade, chapter books, series, etc, RH Graphic = Graphic novels, Joy Revolution is basically diverse romances by and about BIPOC characters, Labyrinth Road I'd think of for MG adventure/fantasy series, etc. There's crossover, of course, but essentially: Different vibes for different kinds of books! If your book is a commercial chapter book series, it's probably gonna be RH BYR -- if it is a lyrical and literary picture book, it probably WON'T be -- and that's fine!)

--

**** ETA: If you want to know more, this info is out there and available online for all the publishers, it's not secret information. I always suggest, when you read a book, make a note of the publisher/imprint, because you will start to see patterns -- that's the best way to get the "vibe" of a given imprint, and can help you find comps, figure out where YOUR book belongs, etc etc.

[musingsofmonica]

August 2023 Diverse Reads

August 2023 Diverse Reads

•”Happiness Falls” by Angie Kim, August 29, Hogarth Press, Literary Mystery 

•”Every Drop Is a Man's Nightmare” by Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, August 29, Bloomsbury Publishing, Short Story Collection — Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology (Hawaiian Identify) 

•”The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” by James McBride, Riverhead Books, Historical

•”Family Lore” by Elizabeth Acevedo, August 1, Ecco Press, Literary/Magical Realism

“A Council of Dolls” by Mona Susan Power, August 7, Mariner Books, Literary — Coming of Age/Native American & Aboriginal/Magical Realism

•”Tomb Sweeping: Stories” by Alexandra Chang, August 8, Ecco Press, Short Story Collection — Asian American  

•”The End of August” by Yu Miri, Translated by Morgan Giles, August 1, Riverhead Books, Historical/Saga 

•”Holler, Child: Stories” by Latoya Watkins, August 29, Tiny Reparations Books, Short Story Collection — African American  

•”Vampires of El Norte” by Isabel Cañas, August 15, Berkley Books, Gothic Thriller/Horror/Suspense 

•”Las Madres” by Esmeralda Santiago, August 1, 

Knopf Publishing Group, Literary

•”Daughters of Latin America: An International Anthology of Writing by Latine Women” by Sandra Guzman, August 15, Amistad Press, Anthology — American: Hispanic & Latino

•”Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls” by Kai Cheng Thom, August 01, Dual Press,  Nonfiction/Poetry/Motivation

•”The Art of Scandal” by Regina Black, August 1, Grand Central Publishing, Romance

•”Her Radiant Curse” by Elizabeth Lim, August 29, Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers, Fantasy/Fairy Tales/Folklore 

•”The Apology” by Jimin Han, August 1, Little Brown and Company, Family Saga/Magical Realism

•”The Water Outlaws” by S. L. Huang, August 22, Tordotcom, Fantasy

•”The Queen of the Valley” by Lorena Hughes, August 22, Kensington Publishing, Historical

•”I Will Greet the Sun Again” by Khashayar J. Khabushani, August 1, Hogarth Press, Contemporary — Coming of Age/LGBTQ+/Muslim

•”The Peach Seed” by Anita Gail Jones, August 1, Henry Holt & Company, Literary 

•”Lush Lives” by J. Vanessa Lyon, August 1, Roxane Gay Books, Literary

Happy Reading!

Mo✌️

[wastehound-voof]

Here is your AI written description for your Ebay listing: "This is a hardcover book titled "Homemade Cookies" written by Farm Journal Editors and published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group in 1971. The book is written in English and falls under the genre of cooking. It focuses on the topic of courses and dishes related to cookies."

JUST TELL ME THINGS ABOUT THE CONDITION

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I was asked about what grievances M.A.G.A. has and I thought it over.  My response follows. 

I see three common characteristics in their complaints. 1) They involve a checklist of specific groups, foreign and domestic, they fear and loathe, such people being mostly outside the cultural limits of their tribe. 2) These groups are all "up to something", conspiring to take something away or threaten their security. 3) And such threats are directed by certain people behind the scenes who they've been warned about in their social networks---Hillary, Soros, etc. What makes this all work politically is that it's a cafeteria of madness, with each paranoid person getting what they want out of it all. 

And it's all ambiguous enough for each person to read into the conspiracies and the nonspecific "elites" and "globalists" something that is swirling in their confused minds. I think all this explains why there's been a renewed interest in Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". RH blended scholarship from other academic disciplines with political and social history to give us a new perspective on movements. He got criticized for it, for straying into speculation, I suppose, but he opened eyes.

This was the essay alone, in 1964, before it was published by Knopf along with some others in 1965. https://harpers.org/.../the-paranoid-style-in-american.../

[Thanks to my friend Steven Jennings]

* * * *

“The Double Sufferer”

The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon. Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been considering—a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies . . . systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”

This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties. 

In American experience ethnic and religious conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual machinery. 

A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him—and in any case he resists enlightenment.

We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.

[Richard Hofstadter :: The Paranoid Style in American Politics]

[wellesleybooks]

The National Book Award finalists have been announced.

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Fiction:

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All-Stars Pantheon Books / Penguin Random House

Aaliyah Bilal, Temple Folk Simon & Schuster

Eliot Duncan, Ponyboy W. W. Norton & Company

Paul Harding, This Other Eden W. W. Norton & Company

Tania James, Loot Knopf / Penguin Random House

Jayne Anne Phillips, Night Watch Knopf / Penguin Random House

Mona Susan Power, A Council of Dolls Mariner Books / HarperCollins Publishers

Hanna Pylväinen, The End of Drum-Time Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers

Justin Torres, Blackouts Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

LaToya Watkins, Holler, Child Tiny Reparations Books / Penguin Random House

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction:

Ned Blackhawk, The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History Yale University Press

Jonathan Eig, King: A Life Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Viet Thanh Nguyen, A Man of Two Faces: A Memoir, A History, A Memorial Grove Press / Grove Atlantic

Prudence Peiffer, The Slip: The New York City Street That Changed American Art Forever Harper / HarperCollins Publishers

Donovan X. Ramsey, When Crack Was King: A People’s History of a Misunderstood Era One World / Penguin Random House

Cristina Rivera Garza, Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search for Justice Hogarth / Penguin Random House

Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Raja Shehadeh, We Could Have Been Friends, My Father and I: A Palestinian Memoir Other Press

John Vaillant, Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World Knopf / Penguin Random House

Kidada E. Williams, I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War Against Reconstruction Bloomsbury Publishing

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Poetry:

John Lee Clark, How to Communicate W. W. Norton & Company

Oliver de la Paz, The Diaspora Sonnets Liveright / W. W. Norton & Company

Annelyse Gelman, Vexations University of Chicago Press

José Olivarez, Promises of Gold Henry Holt and Company / Macmillan Publishers

Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [åmot] Omnidawn Publishing

Paisley Rekdal, West: A Translation Copper Canyon Press

Brandon Som, Tripas Georgia Review Books / University of Georgia Press

Charif Shanahan, Trace Evidence Tin House Books

Evie Shockley, suddenly we Wesleyan University Press Monica Youn, From From Graywolf Press

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature:

Juan Cárdenas, The Devil of the Provinces Translated from the Spanish by Lizzie Davis Coffee House Press

Bora Chung, Cursed Bunny Translated from the Korean by Anton Hur Algonquin Books / Hachette Book Group

David Diop, Beyond the Door of No Return Translated from the French by Sam Taylor Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Jenny Erpenbeck, Kairos Translated from the German by Michael Hofmann New Directions Publishing

Stênio Gardel, The Words That Remain Translated from the Portuguese by Bruna Dantas Lobato New Vessel Press

Khaled Khalifa, No One Prayed Over Their Graves Translated from the Arabic by Leri Price Farrar, Straus and Giroux / Macmillan Publishers

Fernanda Melchor, This Is Not Miami Translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes New Directions Publishing

Pilar Quintana, Abyss Translated from the Spanish by Lisa Dillman World Editions

Astrid Roemer, On a Woman’s Madness Translated from the Dutch by Lucy Scott Two Lines Press

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, The Most Secret Memory of Men Translated from the French by Lara Vergnaud Other Press

2023 Longlist for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature:

Erin Bow, Simon Sort of Says Disney-Hyperion Books / Disney Publishing Worldwide

Kenneth M. Cadow, Gather Candlewick Press

Alyson Derrick, Forget Me Not Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers / Simon & Schuster

Huda Fahmy, Huda F Cares? Dial Books for Young Readers / Penguin Random House

Vashti Harrison, Big Little, Brown Books for Young Readers / Hachette Book Group

Katherine Marsh, The Lost Year: A Survival Story of the Ukrainian Famine Roaring Brook Press / Macmillan Publishers

Dan Nott, Hidden Systems: Water, Electricity, the Internet, and the Secrets Behind the Systems We Use Every Day Random House Graphic / Penguin Random House

Dan Santat, A First Time for Everything First Second / Macmillan Publishers

Betty C. Tang, Parachute Kids Graphix / Scholastic, Inc.

Yohuru Williams and Michael G. Long, More Than a Dream: The Radical March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom Farrar, Straus and Giroux Books for Young Readers / Macmillan Publishers

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

Ernest Thompson Seton (1860-1846) was a prolific Canadian-American author and wildlife artist, who was also one of the founding pioneers of the Boy Scouts of America. Woodland Tales is a reflection of his interests in the natural world, consisting of short stories about animals and the seasons. He split the book up into parts that he labeled as “Things to see in Springtime” or “Things to see in Wintertime,” with matching short stories. Throughout the book you can find many of his illustrations.

I was shelving something else when I found this book on accident, and I’m glad I opened it. The illustrations and stories vary between feeling like it’s something out of a fairy tale to something more scientific, such as a field guide. As a nature-lover myself, this book was a great find!

This particular edition is the 1922 printing of the book, originally published in 1921 by Doubleday, Page & Company In Garden City, N.Y. Another interesting thing about the book is the curious details I learned about Doubleday when researching it. For instance, during the relocation of the firm to Garden City in 1910, some of their operations were done out of a train station! The founder Frank Nelson Doubleday either ghost wrote or edited John D. Rockefeller’s autobiography, and he was also friends with Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. Another interesting thing to note is that one of the company’s partners, Walter Hines Page, was also the ambassador to Great Britain during World War I. The Doubleday company and later its then president and CEO Nelson Doubleday, Jr., the grandson of the founder, owned the New York Mets baseball team from 1980-2002. What quirky little things to learn!

Beginning in the late 1980s, Doubleday began a series of mergers, becoming a  a division of Random House in 1998 and merging with Knopf Publishing Group in 2009, which today is part of Penguin Random House. I ended up learning more about the publisher than about the author or title, but that’s the rabbit hole one goes down sometimes when selecting a staff pick!

View more posts with illustrations by Ernest Thompson Seton.

View more Staff Picks!

-- Sarah W,. Special Collections Undergraduate Intern

[deathdyinggrief2023]

Thanatology Bibliography

THANATOLOGY READINGS 

Moll, Rob. (2010). The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into the Life to Come. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. ISBN: 9780830837366 

Parkes, C., Laungani, P. and Young, W. (1997). Death and Bereavement Across Cultures. London: Routledge. ISBN: 9780415131377

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alford, John & Catlin, George. (1993). The role of culture in grief. The Journal of Social Psychology, 133(2), 173-84.

Aries, Philippe. (1976). The Hour of Our Death. New York: Bantom.

Burton, Laurel., & Tarlos-Benka, Judy. (1997). Grief-Driven Ethical Decision-Making. Journal of Religion and Health, 36(4), 333-343. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/27511175

Castle, Jason. & Phillips, William. (2003). Grief rituals: Aspects that facilitate adjustment to bereavement. Journal of Loss & Trauma, 8(1), 41-71.

Corr, Charles A., Donna M. Corr, and Kenneth J. Doka. (2019).  Death & Dying, Life & Living. Boston, MA: Cengage.

Crunk, Elizabeth. Burke, Laurie., & Robinson, Mike. (2017). Complicated grief: An evolving theoretical landscape. Journal of Counseling & Development, 95(2), 226-233.

Doughty, Caitlin. (2015). Smoke gets in your eyes and other lessons from the crematory. New York: Northcott. 

Dresser, Norine & Wasserman, Freda. (2010). Saying goodbye to someone you love: Your emotional journey through end-of-life and grief. New York: Demos Medical Publishing. 

Frank, Arthur W. (2013). The wounded storyteller. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Guinther, Paul.,Segal, Daniel. (2003). Gender differences in emotional processing among bereaved older adults. Journal of Loss & Trauma, 8(1), 15-33.

Heath, Yvonne. (2015). Love your life to death: How to plan and prepare for end of life so you can live life fully now. Canada: Marquis Publishing.

Hemer, Susan. (2010). Grief as social experience: Death and bereavement in lihir, papua new guinea¹. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 21(3), 281-297. 

Kalanithi, Paul. (2016). When Breath Becomes Air. New York: Random House.

Kellehear, Allan. (2002). Grief and loss: Past, present and future. Medical Journal of Australia, 177(4), 176-177.

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[darlenefblog]

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary

by Sarah Ogilvie

Publisher: ‎ Knopf (October 17, 2023)

Publication date: ‎ October 17, 2023

Print length ‏ : ‎ 371 pages

Rating a 5 stars out of 5

"The Oxford English Dictionary is one of mankind’s greatest achievements, and yet, curiously, its creators are almost never considered. Who were the people behind this unprecedented book? As Sarah Ogilvie reveals, they include three murderers, a collector of pornography, the daughter of Karl Marx, a president of Yale, a radical suffragette, a vicar who was later found dead in the cupboard of his chapel, an inventor of the first American subway, a female anti-slavery activist in Philadelphia . . . and thousands of others." 

Geeks, nerds, and lovers of words rejoice. The Dictionary People is an amazing work chocked full of richly detailed biographical backgrounds, tidbits, and juicy gossip about the people who contributed to the epic Oxford English Dictionary. Fair warning that it can also read like a textbook. The setup is a grouping by alphabet letters. A for archaeologist to Z for Zealots, cute play on a dictionary layout.

The author refers to them as unsung heroes and I whole heartedly agree. Learning the dedication, time, energy, and willingness to work (free) for the love of reading and words was an amazing journey. There was a core group of paid administrators, editors and assistants but the majority of references were submitted by readers. I never thought about where a dictionary came from, its origins or how the idea came about. So many people, so many years, so much influence on modern life. Correct spelling, pronouncement, multiple meanings, all come from dictionaries. They've been around in one form or another for centuries although usually regionally orientated or dedicated to one language. There are books solely about pronouncing words. All this knowledge came together to create an amazing work of art.

The Oxford dictionary was in a race to beat others to the finish line, other countries were working on their own versions most notably Noah Webster in America. He decided how Americans would spell and it's sure different from the Brits. He believed that fewer letters were better and more didn't necessarily contribute to the end result. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and had a hard time putting down the book.

[ausetkmt]

Who Killed George Jackson? Fantasies, Paranoia and the Revolution

Who Killed George Jackson? Fantasies, Paranoia and the Revolution

At the time of his death at San Quentin Prison on August 21, 1971, George Jackson, a 29-year-old black convict, was serving his eleventh year of a one-­to-life sentence for robbery, and facing trial, along with two other black prisoners, for the January, 1970, murder of a guard at Soledad Prison. Jackson had also achieved great fame. His book of prison letters, Soledad Brother, published in the fall of 1970, had been called “one of the finest pieces of black writing ever to be printed…the most important single volume from a black since The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

It was a typical notice, and a fair one. The response to Jackson’s book was translated into political support for Jack­son and his co-defendants (together, they became known as the Soledad Brothers). Always, the fund-raisings and rallies held across America and in Europe focused on Jackson.

Yet back in California Jackson’s fame was neither so simple nor so salutary. He attracted many who were eager to aid in his legal defense, but also those who were willing to kill for him, and more who would not kill for him, but who promised that they would. He attracted as well those who wanted to kill him. State and local police intelligence agencies had infiltrated the Black Panthers, prison reform and legal defense groups working with Jackson: they had knowledge of many of the plots and conspiracies discussed by some of Jackson’s supporters: plots to break Jackson out of prison or to begin revolutionary warfare. Sometimes intelligence agents attempted to take those plots over; to turn plots hatched for Jackson’s benefit against him; to make him a conspirator in his own murder.

Out of these murky events has come an extraordinary book: Who Killed George Jackson? (Knopf), by Jo Durden-Smith, a brilliant portrayal of radical, police, and prison politics in California—but not because it offers any easy answers, or even many hard ones. “It’s not only a question of what the facts are,” Durden-Smith said in a recent interview in San Francisco. “It’s also a question of who owns them.” But it is not even exactly a question of facts at all. Durden-Smith came to California, he says, with the idea that “All I had to do…to write my small piece of history was to find the facts buried in the piles of conflicting evidence.” What he found instead of immutable facts were hazy symbolic figures and tangible murders: murders committed by those symbolic figures, or murders of them. It is an almost classic detective story. It has the disturbing complexity of motives and masks of a spy thriller by John Le Carre or Joseph Hone, and the emotional anchor—the commitment of the detective to the mystery he has determined to crack—of the best work of Raymond Chandler or Ross MacDonald. It is first-rate political history—and political criticism—that is distinguished by intellectual clarity and a freedom from cant. It is a book of martyrs, but a book of martyrs that is also an unrelieved record of bad faith, self-deception, and betrayal. And it is, perhaps most interestingly, an act of owning up by Durden-Smith him­self, an English filmmaker and journalist who, frustrated by the sterility and smugness of the London Left in the late sixties and seventies, found himself drawn into an “imaginary relationship” with George Jackson. Durden-Smith was not the only one. For George Jackson was not only a convict, and not merely a famous writer. George Jackson was the last great hero of a long political rebellion that—beginning in the late fifties, and perhaps reaching peak with the Paris revolt of 1968 and the American anti-war movement of the late sixties—marked a turning point in our history; as has been said of the failed revolutions of 1848, it was a turning point in history when history refused to turn.

In 1970, when Jackson’s name first gained currency among radicals and liberals, left-wing politics in America were deepening in intensity and desperation even as their field of action was shrinking. Radicals felt trapped by their ever-increasing knowledge of the institutional injustices of American life—and by hidden doubts about their own efficacy and purity. And so, as has happened before in such situations, changes took place. The idea of “a correct line” began to replace thought; discipline to replace inventiveness and expression; symbolic actions and fantasies of terror to replace attempts to organize communities and groups: and secret cells to replace public mass movements.

As the field of action narrowed, so did the left’s view of America. The perfect microcosm of America, it was accepted—the ideal worst case—was to be found in its prisons. Thus, radical efforts were directed at the prisons, and a remarkable paradox developed: As prisoners, especially black prisoners, came to look to the radical groups outside as a means of personal and political salvation, radicals outside began to look to the prisoners for the same rewards. But it was a dangerous paradox. because each side wanted from the other something it lacked the ability to deliver. The prisoners wanted power over the prisons, and, ultimately, freedom; the radicals wanted a revolution in the prisons that would finally begin the revolution itself.

George Jackson symbolized, and overshadowed, this crucial shift in politics and perception; he became to some a figure of almost religious force, a man who might, by the strength of his own personality, absorb the failures and weaknesses of the left, and magically transform them into victory—or, short of that, into a kind of personal justification for those who had remained pure. Speaking for himself, Durden-Smith defines Jack­son as he was seen by many as the seventies began: “I came to think of him not just as a hero…but as something more personal: a wholly admirable man, a standard. However variable we were, Jackson was real, a fixed point, something to hold on to. He had made himself his own man. He was the way he sounded. Few could say as much.” When Durden­-Smith arrived here early in 1972 to investigate the question of Jackson’s death, the story as he and most others knew it was as follows.

A petty thief and small-time gun­man—eighteen years old and a three-time loser—George Jackson entered California’s prisons in 1960. Repeatedly turned down by the Adult Authority—the parole board—and disciplined with years of solitary confinement, he attempted to make political sense of his life. He read economics, political theory, and revolutionary and third world history. Convict life in California prisons was a round-robin war between racist gangs of whites, Mexican-Americans and blacks; Jackson came to understand that the convicts’ racism served the interests of the keepers, and he took steps—small, brave, risky steps—to educate and organize convicts across racial lines, not against each other, but against the guards, the wardens, and the government.

Prison authorities perceived Jackson’s actions as the worst sort of threat to the prison system itself. Partly in response to the rising political self-consciousness of many of the convicts, guards at Soledad Prison, where Jackson was incarcerated, set up a confrontation between feuding black and Chicano prisoners early in 1970. In the prison exercise yard, the anticipated fight broke out, and a guard, primed for the trouble, shot three black prisoners, all of whom later died. The guard was soon cleared by a grand jury; in short order, a guard in the maximum security ward, uninvolved in the killings in the yard, was killed in revenge. Jack­son and two other black convicts were charged with the murder. The possibility that Jackson was being framed for his politics was more than credible; a defense committee was set up, and support ranged far beyond California. White radicals, and the Black Panther Party, began to shift their activities from the streets to the prisons.

On August 7, Jackson’s seventeen-­year-old brother, Jonathan, entered the Marin County Courthouse, armed three black convicts, and took five hostages, who were to be held against the release of the Soledad Brothers—who had by that time been transferred to nearby San Quentin prison to await their trial. In the shooting that followed, Jonathan Jackson, two of the convicts and one hostage—a judge—were killed. Two months later, Jackson’s book appeared, dedicated to his brother. Jackson immediately became a world figure.

A little more than a year after his brother died, and shortly before his trial was to begin, Jackson, armed with a gun, broke out of the maximum security ward of San Quentin and into the prison exercise yard. He was shot and killed by a guard. Three guards and two white convict trustees were found dead in the ward from which Jackson had run. Prison authorities announced that a visitor, white radical attorney Stephen Bingham (who disappeared the night of August 21, and who has since surfaced only once, in 1974, when he announced through a reporter that he was living secretly in Canada), had smuggled the gun to Jackson, and that Jackson had been attempting to escape, this explanation did not fit the evidence, which included, among many anomalies, a gun too big to have been hidden without either detection or connivance by the guards. Jackson’s supporters claimed he had been set up, and assassinated.

Who Killed George Jackson? begins with “History as Fiction,” a frankly nov­elistic reconstruction of the events that took place at San Quentin on August 21, based in the main on grand jury testimony, most of it from prison guards. It is, in other words, essentially the state’s case—here, Jackson pulls the smuggled gun and initiates the carnage—as it was assembled for use against the six convicts who were charged, along with Stephen Bingham, with murder, conspiracy, and other crimes related to the deaths of August 21.

Durden-Smith writes that his presentation of what can probably be called the official version of the case is “fictional in two senses: imaginary rather than real, and unproven rather than true.” Durden-Smith doubts—and will later contradict—a good deal of the story as he tells it here, but he does not shrink from it. He uses a stark, direct narrative voice, and because the reader knows the climax to which each small detail of the day is leading, the flat tone of the writing causes the tension inherent in each incident to build, until the final explosion seems implicit in the most ordinary and trivial of the encounters described. The result is the kind of dramatic momentum that forces a reader to suspend disbelief or even doubt, and I think one must assume that is what Durden-Smith is aiming for. He wants his narrative to convince, but not quite in the sense of leading the reader to accept it as “the facts.” Rather, the specificity of violence—of each of the six killings—is to be impressed on one’s mind, and impressed deeply. The graphic, second-by-second nature of the descriptions is meant to ensure that as the story develops, no reader, regardless of his or her point of view, will be able to disguise these deaths in the politics that led to them—or that have since been called forth, by those on all sides, to justify them. Before seeking answers to crucial factual questions—Where did the gun come from? How many guns were there? (Save for those in watchtowers, prison guards are not permitted to carry firearms.) If a gun was passed to Jackson, was it meant to be inoperative?—and scores more—Dur­den-Smith files a refusal to smooth over a horror that in itself creates a different sort of fact. He is suggesting that there is a way in which a recognition of that horror must precede, and outlast, whatever other facts may eventually be found.

How and why six men came to be killed at San Quentin on August 21 may be disputed; the fact that they were killed cannot be. This may seem obvious; Durden-Smith’s primary argument throughout his book is that in the world in which these events took place, it was not. (Just this spring, one could read in Mother Jones, the new slick-paper left-wing magazine, that, “People may argue over what—if any—crimes the SLA committed.”) Durden-Smith writes at the close of his study that when he stepped into the case, the deaths it encompassed—there are at least eighteen—were not real to him; he begins by establishing the premises of their reality. With cold, physical detail, he puts back into death the sting one’s politics can rob from it.

[music-despite-everything]

Having a Coke with You

By Frank O’Hara 1926 – 1966

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne

or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona

partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian

partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt

partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches

partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still

as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it

in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth

between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint

you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look

at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world

except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick

which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time

and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism

just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or

at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me

and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them

when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank

or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully

as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

From The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara by Frank O’Hara, copyright © 1971 by Maureen Granville-Smith, Administratrix of the Estate of Frank O’Hara, copyright renewed 1999 by Maureen O’Hara Granville-Smith and Donald Allen. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.