University of California Press Blog

Crack the Code Sweepstakes: Win $100 of UC Press Books

Next week, we’ll be holding our Crack the Code Sweepstakes. Each day, we will be posting a new coded video. At around 9:00am PST/12:00 EST, each day, we’ll announce when the video is up via our Twitter feed @UCPress and on our Facebook page.  You’ll have until 9:00pm/12:00 EST  to Tweet us your solution.  One entry will be drawn randomly from the days correct entries and the winner of the free copy of The Book of Codes will be announced via Twitter. There is a limit of one entry per day per Twitter account, but you can enter each and every day.

At the end of the week, we’ll close the Crack the Code Sweepstakes in high style by giving everyone a final chance to win. Each day’s code can be collected and assembled into a quote from an author near and dear to our hearts at UC Press. Just go to our blog and review the week’s codes and email your solution and who said it to an address we’ll post on the blog. From the qualifying entries, one entry will be chosen to receive the Grand Prize of $100 of UC Press books.

Look for the first video Monday morning, November 16, 2009.

Randall Grahm and Bonny Doon

"Like Columbus who sought a trade route to Asia, Randall Grahm set sail in 1979 for the Great American Pinot Noir, foundered on the shoals of astringency and finesselessness and ended up running aground in the utterly unexpected New World of Rhône and Italian grape varieties."—Randall Grahm's Biography

Thus began Bonny Doon Vineyard, and the world of wine has never been the same. Bonny Doon's biodynamically produced, adventurous wines are blended with Grahm's imaginative miscellany: satirical soliloquies, rollicking literary parodies ("Howlbarino" by Alain Gainesberger, "Da Vino Commedia: The Vinferno" by Al Dente Allegory); sermons on the virtues of screwcaps, and reflections on Bonny Doon as a creative endeavor as well as a winery. Grahm's new vinthology, Been Doon So Long, collects his viterature, poesy, and doon-tunes, as well as articles and insights on sustainability, terroir, and what makes a good wine. In this video, Grahm reflects on Bonny Doon's evolution over the years. For more, visit his blog, beendoonsolong.com.

Charles Darwin On Tour

If you think you see Charles Darwin roaming the streets this month, it might be Richard Milner, the singing Darwin scholar. Since his graduate school days, Milner, a science historian and author of Darwin's Universe, has been transforming key moments in scientific history into funny, enlightening songs, and performing them in character. His one-man musical, Charles Darwin Live and In Concert, is on a worldwide tour to celebrate Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species.

Based on letters written by Darwin and other 19th century scientists, Milner's lyrics weave humor and imagination with factual history. He dramatizes the moment Darwin's friend Thomas Henry Huxley first read On the Origin of Species:

"'Twas adaptive radiation that produced the mighty whale
His hands have grown to flippers and he has a fishy tail
Selection's made him streamlined for his liquid habitat
Why didn't I think of that?"

—from "Why Didn't I Think of That?" lyrics ©1992 by Richard Milner

In the Gilbert and Sullivan-style "Darwin's Nightmare", (co-written with John Woram), Darwin tosses and turns all night, worrying about the fallout from his publishing his discoveries:

"I was lying awake with a dismal headache
And my sleep was put off by anxiety
For I feared that my plan of explaining how man
Had evolved would provoke notoriety."

—from "Darwin's Nightmare", lyrics ©2007 by Richard Milner and John Woram

Milner creates wit and hilarity from the great discoveries of science, but his songs do more than entertain—they pay tribute to Darwin and to the spirit of human curiosity.

Watch Milner's New York Times music videos: "Why Didn't I Think of That?" and "Darwin's Nightmare", and listen to an interview with Milner on Voice of America.

Darwin: Live and in Concert's next appearance is November 10 at the Linnean Society of London, followed by the Contra Costa Jewish Community Center in Walnut Creek, CA on November 14. Find the full schedule, plus more songs and information, at Milner's website.

Pasta on Location

by Sheila Levine, Associate Director and Publisher, University of California Press

Last month I had the great pleasure of visiting Rome to help launch our new Encyclopedia of Pasta. My hosts were the author, Oretta Zanini de Vita and the translator, Maureen Fant. They had organized two events, and my job was to talk about the book from the publisher's perspective. It was also an opportunity to tout our other books on the intersection of food and culture.

With only an hour to catch my breath after arriving at my hotel from the airport, Maureen and I walked to Villa Celimontana which houses the Societa Geografica Italiana. Our panel consisted of a geographer, an anthropologist, the author, translator, and myself. Fifty people attended. These were scholarly types, very interested in the extensive research the author had completed in preparation for writing her book. Zanini is very assured about her subject. As her publisher, I came away confident that we had published THE expert on pasta shapes. The Almost Corner Bookshop, one of only three remaining English-language bookshops in Rome, was there to sell copies of the book. A reception followed, with beautiful pastas served on the balcony. Fortunately, I was warned not to eat because a group of us were treated to a special dinner of—you guessed it—five courses of pasta:  ravioli with ricotta and artichokes, tagliolini with little shrimp, penne with red mullet and cherry tomatoes, large shells with scampi and basil, and tortellini with pork jowl and tomato.  I ate everything—whew!

Two days later, on October 10, the American Academy in Rome hosted a second panel. This time Oretta, Maureen, and I were on stage with Christopher Boswell from the American Academy's Sustainable Food Program. Chris trained at Chez Panisse so we talked about the pros and cons of life in Rome and Berkeley. This was an entirely different audience from the Societa Geografica Italiana: mostly expats, folks interested in the stories the author had to tell: "It is absolutely not true that Marco Polo brought pasta to Italy! We were making pasta here long before." The audience of 75 people was very enthusiastic, they asked many questions, and most important, they bought 40 copies of Encyclopedia of Pasta. Once again, not surprisingly, a lunch of pasta followed.

I had a wonderful two days in Rome before heading to the Frankfurt Book Fair. The food was wonderful, and I'm happy to say that none of it was pasta!    

Ed Sullivan's America

This week, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a feature of Gerald Nachman's Right Here on Our Stage Tonight!: Ed Sullivan's America. The Chronicle's Regan McMahon interviewed Nachman in Oakland, where Nachman grew up, and weaves together the author's own story with that of Ed Sullivan's groundbreaking show. "Nachman astutely examines the show as a cultural watermark, something that united the country as nothing has before or since...", McMahon says.

As a television critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Nachman's first review was of the Ed Sullivan Show. "I packed the review with wisecracks," he recalls in the book. Nachman (above, at a book launch party hosted by friends) characterizes primordial TV as a grey and dismal entity, shrouded in the shadow of radio and Hollywood, and the Ed Sullivan show as a kind of revolution, a catalyst not only for TV's initial success, but for popular culture across America: "Sullivan's show was something beyond even what it first envisioned for itself: it became the great equalizer, relentlessly democratic, cutting across all age, class, cultural, and ethnic boundaries..." he says in the book. It was the place for aging stars and new talent, and and harnessed the social changes that were transforming the country, entertainment, and celebrity. And it brought people together—as Sullivan and McMahon both point out, the Ed Sullivan Show drew 47 million viewers on a weekly basis in 1955, compared to 35 million who watched the American Idol finale in 2008.

Read the San Francisco Chronicle article, A Toast to Bygone Era of 'Ed Sullivan Show'

Listen to an interview with Gerald Nachman on our podcast page

Dangerous Pregnancies: New UC Press Podcast with Leslie Reagan

We are pleased to announce that Episode 30 of the UC Press podcast series is now available. In this episode, Chris Gondek of Heron and Crane Productions speaks with Leslie Reagan about the German measles (rubella) epidemic of the 1960s, and its lasting effects on abortion, disability rights, and politics in America. Reagan explores this story in her book Dangerous Pregnancies.

You may subscribe to the monthly podcast feed that contains the individual episodes using your RSS aggregator or directly via the iTunes store. You can listen to individual author interviews from the episodes at our podcast page. Listen to this podcast now.

Dirty Water: New UC Press Podcast with Bill Sharpsteen

We are pleased to announce that Episode 29 of the UC Press podcast series is now available. In this episode, Chris Gondek of Heron and Crane Productions speaks with Bill Sharpsteen about Sharpsteen's book Dirty Water, and how a man named Howard Bennett led the successful fight to clean up DDT, sewage, and other pollutants from Santa Monica Bay in the 1980s.

You may subscribe to the monthly podcast feed that contains the individual episodes using your RSS aggregator or directly via the iTunes store. You can listen to individual author interviews from the episodes at our podcast page. Listen to this podcast now.

How the Dinosaurs Lived

As a dinosaur paleontologist, evolutionary biologist, author, and educator, Scott Sampson's work reaches into the past, present, and future. While holding a dual position at the University of Utah and the university's Utah Museum of Natural History, he began a major project in Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, one of the country's last frontiers for dinosaur paleontology. The site proved to be a window back in time, to a region populated by many never-before-seen dinosaur varieties, including a giant duck-billed dinosaur, a new type of feathered dinosaur, and others. In this video, Sampson and others from the Utah Museum of Natural History trace a dinosaur fossil from the earth to the museum.

In his book Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in a Web of Life, Sampson places dinosaurs in the context of the entire natural world, from the origins of life to the present. Illustrating how dinosaurs lived and what we can learn from them, Sampson imparts a sense of wonder about paleontology and the scientific revelations that still wait to be unearthed. 

Sampson now lives in California, and continues his research while taking on new projects related to education. He is the paleontologist and host of the Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet, and of the PBS Kids series Dinosaur Train, produced by the Jim Henson Company. In the video below, from PBS's coverage of the of the TV Critics Press Tour, Sampson talks to Zadi Diaz about Dinosaur Train, and how learning about dinosaurs is a great way to start learning about science and the natural world.

Full Circle on the 38th Parallel

David and Janet Carle have completed the trans-America portion of their 38th parallel adventure. Over the past month they have explored how water, environment, and culture intersect at this latitude across the US, from east to west. This week, they traveled through October snow to Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park and on to Telluride, where they joined the 350 Global Climate Change event. They followed the Colorado River to Moab, Utah, where efforts are underway to clean up uranium tailings along the river, then through the many water-sculpted national parks along the 38th parallel, and finally to eastern Nevada, where the battle is on to prevent local groundwater from being diverted to Las Vegas. The Carles will spend the winter at home in Mono Lake, and will embark on an international expedition in the spring, investigating water and environmental issues along the 38th parallel in Asia and Europe.

From Janet and David Carle's blog, Parallel Universe: 38º N:

The Headwaters State—Colorado

We reached Salida, Colorado along with a night of winter weather. So we stayed two nights with our former Mono Basin neighbors, Shannon and Brett, took a day off from traveling, and learned about a battle led by local citizens against the export of nearby mountain "springwater" (actually groundwater) by the Nestle Co. to their Denver bottling plant....Read More

Telluride 350

A lot of planning has gone into this trip, but the surprises keep coming and have made for some of our best experiences. Telluride is a ski town that used to be a mining town and is almost right on the 38th parallel. We planned to look into water issues (Sam Miguel Creek runs right through town), then learned that a 350 Global Climate Change event was scheduled for October 24....Read More

Radioactive Cleanup on the Colorado

In Moab, UT, 38 34', 109 32'; we met Kimberly Schappert by choosing the Up the Creek tents-only campground in the middle of town. Kim came to Moab over 20 years ago, and started a mountain biking magazine. She has seen Moab change from a small mining town with a Uranium Cafe and Atomic Grill, into a mecca for outdoor recreation....Read More

Water Grab in Eastern Nevada

We arrived in the old mining town of Pioche, 37°56', 114°27', on a bitterly cold afternoon. The local history museum provided a warm shelter and many interesting exhibits. It was staffed by Barbara Zelch, who told us her husband has been very involved in the battle over Las Vegas planning to export groundwater from eastern Nevada valleys....Read More