Illinois Press Book Blog

Salon reviews The Lexicographer’s Dilemma by Rutgers English professor Jack Lynch.

Which brings us back to those split infinitives, the most famous of which is spoken by William Shatner in the opening credits of the TV series “Star Trek”: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.” The infinitive form of any English verb almost always consists of two words: “to go,” “to eat,” “to walk,” etc. The idea that those two words ought to be treated as a single, inseparable unit derives from the fact that in Latin the infinitive is one word. The imposition of Latinate grammar on English — the edict against ending sentences in a preposition is another example — is what the 18th-century grammarians have been condemned for by more liberal-minded linguists.

Make your own academic sentence. Look what I came up with in just a few clicks:

The reification of post-capitalist hegemony may be parsed as the historicization of the gendered body.

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Update 10/29/09: snooker

What?! Matthew McConaughey to star in film adaptation of our book Lincoln the Lawyer?? Oops, no. Shelf Awareness reports that Tommy Lee Jones is slated to direct McConaughey in a film version of Michael Connelly’s The Lincoln Lawyer. All is back to normal now.

Yesterday, during a transmittal meeting, we spent some time discussing the subtitle of a forthcoming book. Was it as lively as the book’s content? Should we use the word “steel” in the title and the subtitle? What would the author prefer?

Shelf Awareness points the way this morning to a piece on EW’s Shelf Life blog regarding the subtitle of Sarah Palin’s new memoir.

… there’s at least one aspect of Palin’s opus that seems familiar…perhaps too familiar. And that’s the subtitle: An American Life. Astute history buffs will remember that that was the subtitle of Ronald Reagan’s best-selling 1990 memoir, of course. But in recent years, the three-word phrase has been the default setting for biographies of a host of people who share only the same geographic accident of birth. I tracked down at least 20 examples, many of whose dust jackets appear below.

What does your bookcase say about you? I have a few Billys but they hold CDs. Many of my books are stored in the garage waiting for that custom built shelf that never seems to get funded.

-Columbia University Press blog highlights another perspective on scholarly publishing.
-Harvard University Press launches site for A New Literary History of America.
-NYU Press’s From the Square features Confessions of a NYU Press Intern.
-Penn State University Press blog considers Yale University Press’s decision not to publish Danish cartoon images of the Prophet Muhammad.
-Princeton University Press blog offers its recipe of the month.

My “University of Illinois Press” Google alert has been especially active lately prompted by numerous concerned blog entries about Mark Lloyd, author of the 2006 book Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America. Mr. Lloyd was recently named Associate General Counsel and Chief Diversity Officer at the FCC.

Here are a few examples.

Years ago I decided to conclude most of my business e-mails “Best, Michael.” It seemed to be the best compromise of formal and informal. The Washington Post takes up the matter in today’s edition.

It feels like the 18th century all over again. All that daily correspondence, all those long hours spent hunched over a desk, composing some thoughtful missive about one’s dowry or the Jacobite rebellions. Signed, “Yr humble servant.”

As I prepare to follow up on a couple of forthcoming titles, it’s interesting to see what the thrice-daily publicity e-mails I receive say newspapers and magazines are really looking for:

-Looking for hideous real estate agent Twitter backgrounds
-Female attorneys who collect things
-Baby rashes
-Buying habits for jeans in recession
-Looking for people who have had incredible psychic readings
-Men’s Mushiest Moments