The University of Illinois Press, like most academic and small publishing concerns, faces an uncertain fiscal environment that depends on many factors—politics, capitalism, snack machine revenue—beyond our control. Throughout the AAUP, indeed […]
Authors speak and sign at Printers Row
For the tenth consecutive year, the University of Illinois Press will have a large presence at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest. Festival goers can visit the University of […]
The Simmons brand
In recent days the big sports media news revolved around ESPN’s Bill Simmons, one of its most popular personalities. Simmons started years ago as the independent Sports Guy, a bro-friendly, […]
Happy International Nurses Day
In observance of International Nurses Day, an excerpt from Nursing Civil Rights: Gender and Race in the Army Nurse Corps, by Clarissa J. Threat. Before 1941 African Americans did not ignore […]
Obsession and olfaction
Jonathan Reinarz, author of Past Scents: Historical Perspectives on Smell, recently wrote a piece on his love of books and his work in sensory history for Books Combined, the blog […]
Orson Welles Week: When Orson met Papa
The recent Hollywood Issue of Vanity Fair features a long story by Josh Karp on Orson Welles’s Quixotic quest to finish The Other Side of the Wind, referred to ever after as […]
Orson Welles Week: Trivia
With today the seventieth anniversary of V-E Day, we tie in the end of that conflict with our Orson Welles Week celebration. In this trivia question, the great director meets […]
Cheat feat
This morning our scandal-addled zeitgeist turns its attention to professional football, where the New England Patriots stand accused, and more or less convicted, of deflating balls for a playoff game […]
Orson Welles Week: The Book(s) of Orson
From wunderkind to auteur to pop culture curiosity, Orson Welles traveled fame’s full arc. It is a credit to his genius that, despite a marriage to Rita Heyworth and a […]
Orson Welles Week: It was 100 years ago today
Today marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Orson Welles. The pride of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Welles dropped into life as the son of inventor-wagon factory owner Richard Welles […]
Orson Welles Week: Bully for you, chilly for me
Orson Welles spent his declining years as a pop culture man of all seasons. Hounded by the IRS, desperate to fund the numerous films on his artistic agenda, the director […]
Orson Welles Week: Twist of Lime
A large part of the twentieth century was born in 1915. That storied year, an all-star lineup of cultural giants found their way to our reality, and in short order […]