Duke University Press Log

Listen Again in LA Weekly

Our new book on pop music, Listen Again, edited by Eric Weisbard, is named one of LA Weekly's "favorite undernourished books of the  year." Reviewer Nick Moore writes: "This collection of essays on subjects ranging from ORCH5, a Stravinsky phrase turned synthesizer blip that helped forge the sound of early hip-hop, to James McKune, a record collector who single-handedly invented the Delta-blues genre, deftly analyzes marginal and telling moments in pop history. Listen Again is a brilliant reimagining of last century’s most accessible art form."

Driftless Hailed by A Photo A Day

Danny Wilcox Frazier's Driftless has been called one of the best photography books of the year by the website APhotoADay. Melissa Lyttle writes: "When I saw this work win the Community Awareness Award, I instantly fell in love. It's dark, it's edgy, it's real... and it's all done in his backyard. It's the kind of work I dream of doing. I'm glad to see this transcend a contest edit, and become a bigger body of work that translates beautifully onto the pages of a book."

Campo Wins New England Poetry Club Award

Rafael Campo's The Enemy has won the Sheila Motton Book Award from the New England Poetry Club. The New England Poetry Club was founded in 1915 by Amy Lowell, Robert Frost and Conrad Aiken. The Club sponsors the oldest poetry reading series in the country.

Campo's The Enemy a Poetry Foundation Top 10

Rafael Campo's The Enemy has been chosen as one of the top 10 poetry books of the year by the contributors to Poetry Magazine. The list appears on their blog, Harriet. Patricia Smith writes, "My favorite book of 2007, the one I keep returning to again and again, is Rafael Campo’s The Enemy. Campo, the pinpoint lyricist, takes an unflinching look at the deceptions necessary for war, the weaknesses it reveals and disguises as glory. Battles within the body, clashes of landscape and culture, wars of mindset and madness—Campo unleashes truths within stanzas that are deftly and uncompromisingly structured. His revelations—ragged, miraculous, hard-won—spark the ache of recognition ('We have become the creature no deity would deign to call "child"'), but also turn the heart towards hope."

Henck Reviewed in The Canadian

Nicholas Henck's Subcommander Marcos: The Man and the Mask is reviewed in The Canadian. Reviewer Robert Ovetz writes that the book is an "enlightening case study of how one of the possibly most influential political movements of the 21th century was born, faultered and was then rejuvenated by those it sought to lead. Subcommander Marcos convincingly demonstrates that Zapatismo has created a new model in which taking up arms may finally no longer be incompatible with simultaneously taking up the cause of autonomy and democracy. This book has arrived just in time, when the anti-globalization movement appears to have run out of steam precisely because it has failed to provide a visionary model of the future in the present."

Caryle Letters Praised in the Telegraph

A. N. Wilson writes in the Telegraph: "One of the most prodigious academic enterprises of our times has been the decision by Duke University to produce a learned edition of The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle." The collection "reads like a tragi-comic novel," he says. The Carlyle Letters are available free online as well as in bound editions.

Miles and Holland Receive Honorable Mention

Crossing Waters, Crossing Worlds by Tiya Miles and Sharon P. Holland received an Honorable Mention for the 2007 Gustavus Myers Book Award.  The award is given to  books that "deepen public awareness of human realities, vulnerabilities, strengths, complexities, and, most importantly, resiliencies."

Elizabeth Lawrence in Winston-Salem Journal

David Bare of the Winston-Salem Journal sings the praises of our collection of essays by notable southern gardener Elizabeth Lawrence in his round-up of the year's best gardening books. “Reading these essays is like picking through a box of fine chocolates, each one to be savored, carefully nibbled and melted in your mouth," he writes of Beautiful at all Seasons: Southern Gardening and Beyond with Elizabeth Lawrence. "Reading Lawrence reminds us that gardening is a way to connect to our community, our history and traditions and ultimately to the world around us. This is one for the bedside table.”

Listen Again on WUNC's The State of Things

Several contributors to our new book Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music will be interviewed on WUNC's The State of Things today at noon. Music scholars Eric Weisbard, Mark Anthony Neal and Holly George Warren join host Frank Stasio to reflect on the significance of forgotten stories in music history.

David Price on Democracy Now!

David Price, author of the forthcoming book Anthropological Intelligence, was interviewed on Democracy Now! about the Pentagon's Human Terrain System for which they are recruiting anthropologists. Price is a founding member of the Network of Concerned Anthropologists.