We have all kinds of great new books coming from Indiana University Press this month. Check out the video below and the full list of our highlighted new releases to keep up with the great things happening in our corner of the publishing world.
Earth Eats
By Annie Corrigan with Daniel Orr
Focusing on local products, sustainability, and popular farm-to-fork dining trends, Earth Eats: Real Food Green Living compiles the best recipes, tips, and tricks to plant, harvest, and prepare local food. Along with renowned chef Daniel Orr, Earth Eats radio host Annie Corrigan presents tips, grouped by season, on keeping your farm or garden in top form, finding the best in-season produce at your local farmers’ market, and stocking your kitchen effectively. The book showcases what locally produced food will be available in each season and is amply stuffed with more than 200 delicious, original, and tested recipes, reflecting the dishes that can be made with these local foods.
Selling Local
By Jennifer Meta Robinson and James Robert Farmer
In an era bustling with international trade and people on the move, why has local food become increasingly important? How does a community benefit from growing and buying its own produce, rather than eating food sown and harvested by outsiders? Selling Local is an indispensable guide to community-based food movements, showcasing the broad appeal and impact of farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture programs, and food hubs, which combine produce from small farms into quantities large enough for institutions like schools and restaurants.
Drawing on prodigious fieldwork and research, experts Jennifer Meta Robinson and James Robert Farmer unlock the passion for and promise of local food movements, show us how they unfold practically in towns and on farms, and make a persuasive argument for how much they deeply matter to all of us.
Is Birdsong Music?
By Hollis Taylor
How and when does music become possible? Is it a matter of biology, or culture, or an interaction between the two? Revolutionizing the way we think about the core values of music and human exceptionalism, Hollis Taylor takes us on an outback road trip to meet the Australian pied butcherbird. Recognized for their distinct timbre, calls, and songs, both sexes of this songbird sing in duos, trios, and even larger choirs, transforming their flute-like songs annually.
Equal parts nature essay, memoir, and scholarship, Is Birdsong Music? offers vivid portraits of the extreme locations where these avian choristers are found, quirky stories from the field, and an in-depth exploration of the vocalizations of the pied butcherbird.
Dissent in the Heartland
By Mary Ann Wynkoop
During the 1960s in the heartlands of America—a region of farmland, conservative politics, and traditional family values—students at Indiana University were transformed by their realization that the personal was the political. Taking to the streets, they made their voices heard on issues from local matters, such as dorm curfews and self-governance, to national issues of racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War. In this grassroots view of student activism, Mary Ann Wynkoop documents how students became antiwar protestors, civil rights activists, members of the counterculture, and feminists who shaped a protest movement that changed the heart of Middle America and redefined higher education, politics, and cultural values. This revised edition includes a new introduction and epilogue that document how deeply students were transformed by their time at IU, evidenced by their continued activism and deep impact on the political, civil, and social landscapes of their communities and country.
Chuck Taylor, All Star
By Abe Aamidor
In 1921, Converse hired 20-year-old Chuck Taylor as a salesman, sparking a nearly 50-year career that defined the Converse All Star basketball shoe. Although his name is on the label of the legendary All Stars, which have been worn by hundreds of millions, little is known about the man behind the name. For this biography, Abe Aamidor went on a three-year quest to learn the true story of Chuck Taylor. The search took him across the country, tracking down leads, separating fact from fiction, and discovering that the truth—warts and all—was much more interesting than the myth. Chuck Taylor, All Star is the true story of a man, a company, a sport, and a nation.
Framing Beauty
Edited by Betsy Stirratt
Beauty is one of the most enigmatic, undefinable, and subjective qualities in contemporary visual art. Framing Beauty: Intimate Visions features essays by Deborah Willis, a leading curator and historian of photography, and Rujeko Hockley, Curator at the Brooklyn Museum, as they describe beauty from a variety of cultural, historical, and visual perspectives. Striking images by twenty respected visual artists and photographers contribute different views to the topic of the physical body and racial and feminist perspectives on beauty. Framing Beauty: Intimate Visions catalogues the recent exhibit curated by Willis at the Grunwald Gallery of Art at Indiana University.
The Colonial Legacy in France
Edited by Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, and Dominic Thomas
Translated by Alexis Pernsteiner
Debates about the legacy of colonialism in France are not new, but they have taken on new urgency in the wake of recent terrorist attacks. Responding to acts of religious and racial violence in 2005, 2010, and 2015 and beyond, the essays in this volume pit French ideals against government-sponsored revisionist decrees that have exacerbated tensions, complicated the process of establishing and recording national memory, and triggered divisive debates on what it means to identify as French. As they document the checkered legacy of French colonialism, the contributors raise questions about France and the contemporary role of Islam, the banlieues, immigration, race, history, pedagogy, and the future of the Republic.
Women and the French Army during the World Wars
By Andrew Orr
How did women contribute to the French Army in the World Wars? Drawing on myriad sources, historian Andrew Orr examines the roles and value of the many French women who have been overlooked by historians—those who worked as civilians supporting the military. During the First World War, most officers expected that the end of the war would see a return to prewar conditions, so they tolerated women in supporting roles. But soon after the November 1918 armistice, the French Army fired more than half its female employees. Demobilization created unexpected administrative demands that led to the next rehiring of many women. The army’s female workforce grew slowly and unevenly until 1938 when preparations for war led to another hiring wave; however, officers resisted all efforts to allow women to enlist as soldiers and alternately opposed and ignored proposals to recognize them as long-term employees. Orr’s work offers a critical look at the indispensable wartime roles filled by women behind the lines.
The Flaherty
By Patricia R. Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald
This is the inspiring story of The Flaherty, one of the oldest continuously running nonprofit media arts institutions in the world, which has shaped the development of independent film, video, and emerging forms in the United States over the past 60 years. Combining the words of legendary independent filmmakers with a detailed history of The Flaherty, Patricia R. Zimmermann and Scott MacDonald showcase its history and legacy, amply demonstrating how the relationships created at the annual Flaherty seminar have been instrumental in transforming American media history.
Voice of Business
By Richard Lesher with Dave Scheiber
From small-town life to the world stage, Richard Lesher’s inspiring tale is one of dogged determination. The son of an alcoholic and violent father in Depression-era Pennsylvania, Lesher worked his way through school, eventually overseeing NASA’s vital technological transfer program during the race to the moon. His greatest achievement, however, was serving as president of the US Chamber of Commerce from the Ford through the Clinton administrations. Working closely with the presidents—especially Reagan—he modernized the Chamber over 22 years and dramatically expanded its national and international outreach. Believing strongly in the power of the free enterprise system, Lesher became a key voice and agent of economic change in former communist countries in the 1990s. Respected and admired by presidents, officials, and world leaders on both the left and right, Lesher has lived a hopeful and uniquely American story, a remarkable testament to personal perseverance and the ever-present opportunities in a free society.