University Presses
This is the sixth post in a series dealing with University Presses. They are offered to provide you with alternative reading if you are not happy with "Heather's Top Book Picks" or can't wait another two days for James Patterson to publish a new book. They also show that some colleges produce books as well as athletes.
I have generally focused on the more "popular" titles offered by the university presses and stayed away from the scary, scholarly ones. So far, my attention has been on those campuses closest to our border. The first one listed books of environmental interest published way out in Washington state. Another dealt with the University of Minnesota and I also offered a group of travel titles published at Northwestern University in Chicago. Closer to home, Penn State University Press has been dealt with as has Wayne State University Press.
Two more Michigan publishers are now offered: the University of Michigan and Michigan State. The university presses closest to us are useful since they typically publish titles of regional interest. For example, if you look through this series you will find a lot of books about the Great Lakes.
Eleven examples are provided below, seven from Michigan and four from MSU. The first two have some relevance in relation to some unfortunate current events, involving school tragedies and the troubles of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. The others cover subjects ranging from music and sports to botany and cruising on the Great Lakes. The samples were chosen by me and you should look at the websites provided below for the complete catalogues. For example, I did not provide this title from MSU: Rhetoric, Ecofeminism, and Animal Rights Law
"But is legal personhood the best means to achieving total interspecies liberation? To answer that question, Impersonating Animals evaluates the rhetoric of animal rights activists Steven Wise and Gary Francione, as well as the Earth jurisprudence paradigm. Deploying a critical ecofeminist stance sensitive to the interweaving of ideas about race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and species, author S. Marek Muller places animal rights rhetoric in the context of discourses in which some humans have been deemed more animal than others and some animals have been deemed more human than others."
University of Michigan Press
Bath Massacre: America's First School Bombing
New Edition, Updated and Expanded Edition
Arnie Bernstein
On May 18, 1927, the small town of Bath, Michigan, was forever changed when Andrew Kehoe set off a cache of explosives concealed in the basement of the local school. Thirty-eight children and six adults were dead, among them Kehoe, who had literally blown himself to bits by setting off a dynamite charge in his car. The next day, on Kehoe's farm, what was left of his wife—burned beyond recognition after Kehoe set his property and buildings ablaze—was found tied to a handcart, her skull crushed. With seemingly endless stories of school violence and suicide bombers filling today's headlines, Bath Massacre serves as a reminder that terrorism and large-scale murder are nothing new.
Right in Michigan's Grassroots: From the KKK to the Michigan Militia
JoEllen McNergney Vinyard
Throughout the twentieth century, Michigan became home to nearly every political movement in America that emerged from the grassroots. Citizens organized on behalf of concerns on the "left," on the "right," and in the "middle of the road." Right in Michigan's Grassroots: From the KKK to the Michigan Militia is about the people who supported movements that others, then and later, would denounce as disgraceful—members of the Ku Klux Klan during the 1920s, the followers of Father Charles Coughlin in the 1930s, anti-Communists and the John Birch Society in the post–World War II era, and the members of the Michigan Militia who first appeared in the 1990s.
The Great Lakes Region
Floating Palaces of the Great Lakes: A History of Passenger Steamships on the Inland Seas
Joel Stone
A lively history of the most majestic ships to ever ply the Great Lakes
Through much of the nineteenth century, steam-powered ships provided one of the most reliable and comfortable transportation options in the United States, becoming a critical partner in railroad expansion and the heart of a thriving recreation industry. The aesthetic, structural, and commercial peak of the steamboat era occurred on the Great Lakes, where palatial ships created memories and livelihoods for millions while carrying passengers between the region’s major industrial ports of Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Toronto. By the mid-twentieth century, the industry was in steep decline, and today North America’s rich and entertaining steamboat heritage has been largely forgotten. In Floating Palaces of the Great Lakes, Joel Stone revisits this important era of maritime history, packed with elegance and adventure, politics and wealth, triumph and tragedy. This story of Great Lakes travelers and the beautiful floating palaces they engendered will engage historians and history buffs alike, as well as genealogists, regionalists, and researchers.
Michigan Shrubs and Vines: A Guide to Species of the Great Lakes Region
Burton V. Barnes, Christopher W. Dick, and Melanie E. Gunn
The essential reference for identifying shrubs and woody vines in Michigan and the Great Lakes Region
Shrubs and vines are some of the most diverse and widespread plants in the Great Lakes Region. Michigan Shrubs and Vines is the must-have book for anyone who wishes to identify and learn about these fascinating plants. Presented in the same attractive, easy-to-use format as the classic Michigan Trees, the book gives detailed descriptions of 132 species, providing concise information on key characters, habitat, distribution, and growth pattern. Precise line drawings accompany each species description and illustrate arrangement and characteristics of leaves, flowers, and fruits in addition to stem structure to assist with reliable year-round identification. A thorough introduction covers the features and forms of shrubs and vines as well as their natural history, their role in landscape ecosystems, and their occurrence in regional ecosystems of North America and plant communities of the Great Lakes. This long awaited companion to Michigan Trees will appeal to botanists, ecologists, students, and amateur naturalists alike.
Music
I Hear a Symphony: Motown and Crossover R&B
Andrew Flory
Investigates how the music of Motown Records functioned as the center of the company’s creative and economic impact worldwide
I Hear a Symphony opens new territory in the study of Motown’s legacy, arguing that the music of Motown was indelibly shaped by the ideals of Detroit’s postwar black middle class; that Motown’s creative personnel participated in an African-American tradition of dialogism in rhythm and blues while developing the famous “Motown Sound.” Throughout the book, Flory focuses on the central importance of “crossover” to the Motown story; first as a key concept in the company’s efforts to reach across American commercial markets, then as a means to extend influence internationally, and finally as a way to expand the brand beyond strictly musical products. Flory’s work reveals the richness of the Motown sound, and equally rich and complex cultural influence Motown still exerts.
Sports
Football U....J. Douglas Toma Description
It's the great debate again: who's winning, college sports or higher education? For anyone passionate to settle that score, Football U. presents a new direction—that maybe it's time for the two sides to shake hands and call a truce.
J. Douglas Toma makes a case for dialogue and mutual benefits. In short, at some major institutions of learning, academics can learn a thing or two from spectator sports, particularly football, and vice versa.
Still, a lot of people don't see it that way, and the very mention of this subject can start a heated discussion in some circles. Even if you don't pay special attention to college sports you've probably heard the arguments, usually anti-athletic, which run from the dumbing-down of America to the commercialization—hence impoverishment—of everything in our culture.
Toma argues that football underscores the collegiate ideal, and highlights the unique forms in which some institutions express that ideal. He's trying to heal an old wound—the separation of town and gown. Spectator sports do this in part, he believes, by creating a "national brand" that adds distinctiveness to otherwise commonplace campuses. "Teams and games," he writes, "provide a convenient vehicle through which external constituents relate to institutions and thus identify with them—coming to think of the institutions as their own."
Michigan State University Press
The Great Lakes
Checking the Pulse of Lake Erie
Ecovision World Monograph
Edited by M. Munawar and R. Heath
The progress of research on Lake Erie has been marked by several milestone publications during the long struggle to restore the system. The reports of the U.S. Federal Water Pollution Control Administration (1968) and the International Joint Commission (1969) described Lake Erie in the depths of degradation. “Lake Erie in the Early Seventies” (1976) recorded the status of limnology and fisheries in the lake before remedial programs were implemented. “State of Lake Erie” (1999) described the state of the lake in response to remedial actions and at early stages of the invasion of dreissenid mussels. Checking the Pulse of Lake Erie is an update of “State of Lake Erie” in light of continued efforts at restoration and impacts from nonindigenous species. This book contains twenty papers contributed by authors from a broad spectrum of disciplines and research interests.
Pandora's Locks: The Opening of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence Seaway
By Jeff Alexander
AND
The Muskegon: The Majesty and Tragedy of Michigan's Rarest River
By Jeff Alexander
Muskegon is a derivation of a Native American word meaning "river with marshes." Jeff Alexander examines the creation, uses of, devastation, and restoration of Michigan's historic and beautiful Muskegon River.
Four of the five Great Lakes touch Michigan's shores; the state's shoreline spans more than 4,500 miles, not to mention more than 11,000 inland lakes and a multitude of rivers. The Muskegon River, the state's second longest river, runs 227 miles and has the most diverse features of any of Michigan’s many rivers. The Muskegon rises from the center of the state, widens, and moves westward, passing through the Pere Marquette and AuSable State Forests. The river ultimately flows toward Lake Michigan, where it opens into Muskegon Lake, a 12 square-mile, broad harbor located between the Muskegon River and Lake Michigan.
Formed several thousand years ago, when the glaciers that created the Great Lakes receded, and later inhabited by Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians, the Muskegon River was used by French fur trappers in the 1600s. Rich in white pine, the area was developed during the turn-of-the-century lumber boom, and at one time Muskegon Lake boasted more than 47 sawmills. The Muskegon was ravaged following settlement by Europeans, when rivers and streams were used to transport logs to the newly developing cities. Dams on rivers and larger streams provided power for sawmills and grain milling, and later provided energy for generating electricity as technology advanced.
There is now an ambitious effort to restore and protect this mighty river's natural features in the face of encroaching urbanization and land development that threatens to turn this majestic waterway into a mirror image of the Grand River, Michigan's longest river and one of its most polluted.
Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes
Edited by Alison Swan
Fresh Water: Women Writing on the Great Lakes is a collection of nonfiction works by women writers. These works focus on the Midwest: living with the five interconnected freshwater seas that we know as the Great Lakes. Contributing to this collection are renowned poets, essayists, and fiction writers, all of whom write about their own creative streams of consciousness, the fresh waters of the Great Lakes, and the region's many rivers:
Sources:
There are Wikipedia entries for both the University of Michigan Press and Michigan State University Press. For the university press websites see: U of M and MSU.
The Bonus:
If you prefer to read something by James Patterson and his helpers, you should know that he has just published a new memoir. From a review of it, I learned this:
"Patterson is among the world’s best-selling and most wildly prolific living authors. His books have sold more than 300 million copies. His new memoir is the 10th book he’s published so far this year, and one of four books he has slated for release this month. A checklist of books on his website includes nearly 400 titles, comprising thrillers, true-crime books, contributions to various children’s and YA series and collaborations with a variety of celebrities including a former president and a former Fox News host. Patterson, 75, insists he’s responsible for at least outlining every last one of these literary creations."
(From: "James Patterson Shares His Formula For Success. It’s Pretty Simple," Mark Athitakis, Washington Post, June 6, 2022.)
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