Jesse Jackson Jr. gained his Congressional seat by winning a special election to replace Rep. Mel Reynolds. Reynolds resigned after being convicted of sexual misconduct. Jackson himself resigned as the […]
Category: american history
Baseball on Trial honored
Baseball on Trial by Nathaniel Grow is co-winner of the 2015 Larry Ritter Book Award from the Society of American Baseball Research. The award recognizes the best new baseball book […]
Digital Depression author Dan Schiller on Net Neutrality
Digital Depression author Dan Schiller is a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In light […]
From aeromotive to aerospace
When aviation pioneer Octave Chanute died in 1910, no one could have dreamed that man would not only conquer the air, but venture into outer space. Five years after Chanute’s […]
Q&A with Before the Ivy author Laurent Pernot
Laurent Pernot is the executive vice chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago. Pernot came to the U.S. as a Chicago-area foreign-exchange student in 1988 and caught ’89 Cubs playoff fever. […]
Diamonds are a reader’s best friend
We have entered that mid-February time when catchers and pitchers report to spring training to prepare for the baseball season. To don the tools of ignorance. To pretend to run […]
$2.99 eBook sale to celebrate Black History Month
For the month of February 2015, to coincide with Black History Month, we have lowered the e-book list price of four titles in the University of Illinois Press catalog to […]
How TV news helped and hindered feminism
In 1970, the big three television networks of ABC, CBS and NBC took notice of the feminist movement. The stories on TV news ranged from a patronizing dismissal of feminists […]
Q&A with Behind the Gas Mask author Thomas Faith
Thomas I. Faith is a historian at the U.S. Department of State. He answered some questions about his book Behind the Gas Mask: The U.S. Chemical Warfare Service in War and […]
Martin Luther King’s life remembered and examined by David Levering Lewis
Initially published soon after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., David Levering Lewis’s King: A Biography was acclaimed by historians as a foundational work on the life of the civil rights […]
Disaster mismanagement
This week we find the new release by Jacob A. C. Remes, lately seen writing on Hurricane Katrina for The Atlantic. Remes’s book Disaster Citizenship: Survivors, Solidarity, and Power in the Progressive […]
Birthday Wishes to the Super Bowl
On this date in 1967, an American institution—nay, the most sacred of secular holidays—was born. Super Bowl I pitted the Kansas City Chiefs, a team reared on red meat and jazz, against […]