Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Seventeen Most Innovative University Presses


The list, with recommended reading from each press, care of Huffington Post.

FYI: The crowd above isn't cheering for a Nebraska football win. They're cheering because of the University of Nebraska Press's definitive seven-volume set of the journals of Lewis and Clark.

From the piece (the aforementioned University of Nebraska)...

Donna Shear, director, says: "We're proud of our long commitment to publishing Native American, Western American, and regional history and literature. We're the largest and most diverse university press between California and Chicago and we take that role very seriously, publishing 160 new titles per year and keeping 3,000 titles in print. Next year, we'll mark the 50th anniversary of the first books published under our paperback imprint Bison Books. Bison Books makes classic literature accessible and affordable for everyone. Editors selected books for popular appeal and lasting value. UNP first published eight paperbacks under this imprint in 1961, including Old Jules by Mari Sandoz, and sold them for $1.00-$1.50 each. The books sold in truck stops and dime stores and were immediately popular. The Bison goal is still one we embrace today: making and keeping literature accessible and affordable. That's why we are making as many of our titles available in various e-book formats as we can. It's also why we continue to be committed to literature in translation, having published in English the last two Nobel laureates in literature. UNP is one of the most active American publishers of translated work. I'm especially excited about the publication in October of Four Years in Europe with Buffalo Bill--the first of The Papers of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody series. This series is another indication of our commitment to the history and literature of the region, much like our comprehensive seven-volume Definitive Journals of Lewis and Clark we published in the early 2000s." Titles of special interest include Ted Gilley's Bliss and Other Short Stories (winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction) and Sonya Huber's Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir (Bison Books).

No comments: