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Aaron Henkin from WYPR radio in Baltimore conducted an engaging in-depth interview with Stephen Wade, author of the book The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recording and the American Experience, on Henkin’s January 25 Signal program.
My favorite part of the interview is hearing Stephen discuss his excitement in finding the origin of the classic song Rock Island Line.
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The January 26, 2013, edition of NPR’s syndicated program Only a Game featured an interview with Albert Figone, author of the University of Illinois Press book Cheating the Spread: Gamblers, Point Shavers, and Game Fixers in College Football and Basketball.
From the Only a Game website:
Everybody knows people gamble on college sports, but few have collected evidence of that phenomenon as energetically as has Albert Figone. . . . Figone has collected chronicles of fixes, point-shaving scandals, and various other sketchy endeavors occurring at schools large and small, most of them over the past 70 years. Some fixes, like the ones at Arizona State and the University of Georgia during the ‘90s, were masterminded by student bookmakers. Others, such as the Boston College basketball scandals of the late ‘70s, have seen players working with professional gamblers. And some grand embarrassments, such as the scandals that brought the University of Michigan, Southern Methodist, and Miami into the headlines, have involved the generous fellows who bankroll some of the nation’s most accomplished teams, the boosters:
“If you’re a booster in sports, football or basketball, you’re in control of the program and the university kind of sits back and kind of watches the boosters as they control what’s going on,” Figone said. “And there’s evidence of that in many places.”
A Technology column in the January 27, 2013, edition of The New York Times featured Matthew Jockers’s forthcoming book Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History.
ANY list of the leading novelists of the 19th century, writing in English, would almost surely include Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Mark Twain. But they do not appear at the top of a list of the most influential writers of their time. Instead, a recent study has found, Jane Austen, author of “Pride and Prejudice, “ and Sir Walter Scott, the creator of “Ivanhoe,” had the greatest effect on other authors, in terms of writing style and themes. . . . Using similar criteria, Harriet Beecher Stowe was 20 years ahead of her time, said Mr. Jockers, whose research will soon be published in a book, “Macroanalysis: Digital Methods and Literary History” (University of Illinois Press).
Mary Sue Welsh, author of One Woman in a Hundred: Edna Phillips and the Philadelphia Orchestra, has commissioned a lovely website for her new book. It features three excerpts she chose to share with her audience. One of the excerpts describes events that took place just six weeks after Edna Phillips joined the orchestra,
“Arturo Toscanini came to town as part of a highly publicized maestro exchange between the Philadelphia Orchestra and the New York Philharmonic that had been set up by Arthur Judson, manager of both orchestras.”
Apparently this “Maestro Swap” went about as well for the orchestra as it does for “Wife Swap” victim’s families. Check out the excerpt to find out more. If you’re interested in the management that brought the “Maestro Swap” to Philadephia and New York, order our forthcoming book, The Great Orchestrator: Arthur Judson and American Arts Management.
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Larry Eugene Rivers’ recent University of Illinois Press book, Rebels and Runaways: Slave Resistance in Nineteenth-Century Florida has earned the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award from the Florida Historical Society.
Using a variety of sources such as slaveholders’ wills and probate records, ledgers, account books, court records, oral histories, and numerous newspaper accounts, Dr. Rivers illuminates the historical significance of Florida as a runaway slave haven dating back to the seventeenth century and explains Florida’s unique history of slave resistance and protest.
The award will be presented at the annual FHS Meeting and Symposium, May 23-26.
Congratulations, Dr. Rivers!
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The January 13, 2013, edition of The New York Times includes a review of Aurora Wallace’s new University of Illinois book Media Capital: Architecture and Communications in New York City.
“News buffs and urban planners alike will appreciate . . . Media Capital, which explores the landmarks — a few still surviving — that media moguls built to validate their dominance.”
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Annette Insdorf, author of the recent University of Illinois Press book Philip Kaufman, is slated to appear tonight (January 11) on Charlie Rose to discuss the Oscar nominations.
She will be sharing the microphone with A.O. Scott of the New York Times, David Denby of the New Yorker, and Dana Stevens of Slate.com.
The University of Illinois Press was honored with five books chosen as Choice Outstanding Academic Titles for 2012. They are:
“The Useless Mouths” and Other Literary Writings, by Simone de Beauvoir and edited by Margaret A. Simons and Marybeth Timmermann
Making Sense of American Liberalism, edited by Jonathan Bell and Timothy Stanley
Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship, by Yvonne Daniel
The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture, by Jared Gardner
How Did Poetry Survive? The Making of Modern American Verse, by John Timberman Newcomb
Comprising just over 9 percent of the titles reviewed by CHOICE during the past year, and less than 3 percent of the more than 25,000 titles submitted to CHOICE during this same period, Outstanding Academic Titles are truly the “best of the best.” Congratulations to our authors, editors, and to everyone who worked on these titles!
History of the Present, the Press’s journal that approaches history as a critical endeavor, was awarded ‘Best New Journal’ for 2012 by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. The announcement was made on January 3 at the Modern Language Association’s annual convention in Boston.
The editors of History of the Present are Joan W. Scott, Andrew Aisenberg, Brian Connolly, Ben Kafka, Sylvia Schafer, and Mrinalini Sinha. Congratulations to them all for the journal’s achievement!
To learn more about the journal, visit its web site at www.historyofthepresent.org.
Q&A with Organized Crime in Chicago author Robert M. Lombardo
Posted by michaelQ: What is your definition of organized crime?
Lombardo: I use the term organized crime to define the political corruption that afforded protection to gambling, prostitution, and other vice activity in large American cities from the second half of the nineteenth century until the end of the twentieth century.
Q: Conventional wisdom traces the roots of organized crime in large U.S. urban centers to the Sicilian mafia. What’s wrong with this paradigm?
Lombardo: Tracing organized crime to the South of Italy ignores the historical record. Organized crime in Chicago existed before Italian immigration, and it existed in Chicago’s black community independent of Italian participation for a period of almost 50 years. Additionally, much of the information upon which this “importation” model is based comes from popular, non academic sources.
Q: When did reports of organized crime first surface in Chicago?
Lombardo: In 1873 Michael Cassius McDonald organized Chicago’s saloon and gambling interests into “Mike McDonald’s Democrats,” and elected their own candidate, Harvey Colvin, Mayor of Chicago. With Colvin in office, McDonald organized the first criminal syndicate in Chicago composed of both gamblers and compliant politicians.
Lombardo: Mike McDonald for sure, but also Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly. Kelly “franchised” all vice activity in Chicago to the Capone Syndicate during the 1940s.
Q: Do related crime syndicates still operate in Chicago today?
Lombardo: There may be some bookmakers and old-time gangsters still around, but traditional organized crime in Chicago is largely a thing of the past. The Chicago Outfit as the progeny of the old Capone Syndicate is almost dead. They have been destroyed by law-enforcement efforts.
Q: What was the most interesting thing that you learned while researching the book?
Lombardo: What I found most interesting was the untold story of Lt. Joe Morris and the Chicago Police Scotland Yard detail under Mayor Kennelly. Had they not been disbanded by Richard J. Daley, they would have drove the Chicago Outfit out of town.