Since its initial publication, Michael Hicks‘s book The Mormon Tabernacle Choir: A Biography has attracted raves for telling the fascinating inside story of the beloved American institution. We are pleased […]
Category: music
Release Party: Foggy Mountain Troubadour
With his trademark mandolin style and unequaled tenor harmonies, Curly Seckler has carved out a seventy-seven-year career in bluegrass and country music. Written in close collaboration with Mr. Seckler and […]
Release Party: The Street Is My Pulpit
Hip-hop artist Juliani, born Julius Owino, is one of contemporary Kenya’s major music figures. In the new University of Illinois Press release The Street Is My Pulpit, Mwenda Ntarangwi explores […]
200 Years of Illinois: Miles to East St. Louis
The world changed on May 26, 1926, for on that day Miles Davis entered the world in Alton. The Davises initially lived at 1112 Milnor Street. When Miles was two, […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Steel Away
The Stone Age had its cavepeople and thyroidal mammals, the Bronze Age its Hoplites and long poems, the Iron Age its hillforts and bog mummies. The Steel Age seldom gets […]
Sweet home Chicago
May 11-13, 2016, the publishing industry will descend upon the City of Big Shoulders for the textapalooza that is BookExpo America. BEA, held at Chicago’s McCormick Place this spring, is […]
See ‘The Hayloft Gang’ on screen
The National Barn Dance was the nation’s most popular country music radio show during the 1930s and 1940s, predating the popularity of the Grand Ole Opry and serving as a […]
$2.99 e-book sale to coincide with the International Country Music Conference
For the month of May 2016, in celebration of the International Country Music Conference in Nashville, we are lowering the e-book list price of two titles in the University of Illinois […]
RIP Paul Bierley
Today we received word that noted UIP author Paul Bierley had passed away. For us, Bierley wrote The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa. He penned other words on Sousa as […]
Throwbacklist Thursday: Workin’ on the Railroad
Though another state calls itself the Crossroads of America, Illinois deserves the title as much as any of the Lower 48, for here the prairie gathers the railroads and interstates to […]
Fiddling Bill’s beautiful music
Word comes from the Library of Congress that twenty-five selections have been added to the National Recording Registry. While the likes of Merle Haggard and the unstoppable Gloria Gaynor will no doubt […]
Alan Harper’s blues odyssey
Alan Harper left his home in England in 1979 on a pilgrimage to find the blues. His journey led him to Chicago where he worked at a sandwich restaurant and […]