The poet and politician, Aimé Césaire, died yesterday at the age of 94. The New York Times published an obituary yesterday. The University of California Press published the Collected Poetry of Aimé Césaire in 1983.
Chuck Crumly, Science Publisher at the University of California Press, continues with the second in a short series of posts about the future of specialized textbooks in the college curriculum.
One of the great strengths of science, as a way of understanding the world, is the connection between past research and future university-level teaching. Exciting scientific findings percolate into textbooks and, as a result, textbooks are constantly changing. Unfortunately, not all change is for the better. Sometimes by including new and amazing discoveries important parts of the foundation of the field are omitted. More often, however, everything is added and nothing is omitted yielding books that ruin the backpacks (not to mention backs) of the students using them. These mega-textbooks are also difficult to teach from because they suffer from a certain "kitchen sink." quality. It is not easy to avoid the peripheral and focus on the core of a textbook that seems to have grown as if on steroids.
As mentioned in my previous blog posting, this trend leaves the specialized courses behind because the growth in the number of pages in a text cannot be sustained by a smaller market. Thus, textbooks for traditionally small classes are disappearing from the marketplace. The solution to both of these phenomena involves establishing a better partnership between the author and the publisher. The underlying elements of this partnership need to be service to the student, some sacrifice, and sustainable financial plans for each textbook.
Let us imagine a publisher working with an author to create a specialized science textbook. These days the goal would have to include content that is in print and also in digital form. Students would be granted the option of obtaining content in either medium. Flexible downloading options would need to be available - from chapter by chapter pay per view to full-text downloads. Authors would need to agree to changes in the way that royalties are assessed and paid so that this flexibility could be implemented by the publisher. And, at least in the short term, authors might be asked to do more work with respect to manuscript preparation (e.g. obtaining digital permissions for all content) and accept less money because the publisher is spending more on digital experiments in content development. This would be the price authors pay to provide service to a smaller student audience.
The author-publisher partnership will not be one-sided. The publisher will need to experiment with fiscally unproven content delivery systems. And some will fail. Individual textbooks will become test subjects or guinea pigs. Because of this testing phase, individual textbooks are likely to cost more to produce and yield less in a return on the investment. And this would be the price that the publisher would have to pay.
Assuming that both author and publisher are willing to join in these sacrifices, what would the world of the textbook look like in ten, twenty or thirty years?
Stay tuned - next time is reserved for the crystal ball
With students returning to college campuses across the country, textbooks are on the minds of students and faculty everywhere. Chuck Crumly, the Science Publisher at the University of California Press, takes some time to reflect on the current state of the textbook business in the United States.
The cost of undergraduate textbooks has become more and more difficult for the average student to afford. At the same time commercial publishers have invested more and more on the average college textbook requiring a larger and larger return on investment. This "vicious circle" has been cycling. Thus, it is not uncommon for a college textbook to cost more than $100 and include ancillary materials, test banks, pedagogical software, color in print and on web sites and more–all to gain the edge in an arms race with competitors. The victims of this arms race are the students.
Both professors and students are beginning to rise up. Professors remember the days when they could afford their textbooks and they are guilty about assigning textbooks whose prices seem extraordinary. Students no longer buy their textbooks new - tattered used copies are okay. There are even companies that now allow student to rent their books. Commercial publishers are aware of these trends and have responded by escalating the arms race with new editions and even more elaborate course ancillary materials.
The down side is the fate of the more specialized - and more interesting - upper division courses intended for small class sizes and not taught at all colleges and universities. Commercial publishers are abandoning these courses - texts in these course do not generate enough revenue. Paradoxically, these are the courses that are intended for the students who will become the professors of the next generation. And they will be assigning textbooks. In a real way, commercial publishers are abandoning their future customers.
What should be done? More next time.
Caryl Flinn's recent book, Brass Diva: The Life and Legends of Ethel Merman, is an account of the life of Ethel Merman, is a marvelously detailed account of how the stenographer from Queens, New York became the queen of the Broadway musical in its golden age. January 16th, 2008, is the 100th anniversary of Ethel Merman's birth. Flinn takes some time to reflect on Ethel Merman at 100.
January 16 2008: Happy birthday, Ethel Merman. You are 100 years old today. For five years now, I’ve taken note of the date while writing Brass Diva.
Merman, of course, was the Broadway belter who introduced some of the 20th century’s classic songs to the public: “I’ve Got Rhythm” “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” “Anything Goes,” “Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better” “You’re Just in Love” “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and her anthem–and Broadway’s–Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business.”
Merman died in February,1984, but 76 birthdays never slowed her down–she was still doing concert specials and TV guest spots. For a woman who got her start performing with Jimmy Durante, Rudy Vallee and even Betty Boop, it’s striking to see her interacting with 70s icons like Donna Summer and Kermit the Frog nearly 50 years later.
Merman entered Broadway history on October 14, 1930, singing “I Got Rhythm” in the Gershwin Brothers Girl Crazy. A second-billed player (a young Ginger Rogers was the star), Ethel blew the house open when she held the “I’ in the chorus for somewhere between 16 to 32 measures. Producer Alex Aarons thought a gun had gone off .
Ethel was an overnight sensation. Here was a 22 year old stenographer in Queens by day who’d never had a singing lesson and now was the toast of Broadway. Merman later told a biographer that she had it easier than Cinderella---and there was no Prince Charming to help her. She went on do do twelve other shows such as Anything Goes, DuBarry Was a Lady, Annie Get Your Gun, Call Me Madam, and Gypsy.
In the 60s and 70s, she turned to TV cameos in shows like Batman, That Girl, and The Love Boat. In 1979 she released “The Ethel Merman Disco Album,” an instant camp classic. And her hysterical turn as the traumatized war vet in the disaster spoof Airplane!—the poor Lt. Hurwitz believes he’s Ethel Merman—wins over even die-hard Merman detractors.
And there is no shortage of those. “She was coarse and uneducated,” said one co-star of the Brass Diva; “She didn’t sing, she honked!” recalled an elderly man from New Jersey. Similarly, the voice—that famous, big voice, can send some screaming out of the room (particularly with the aforementioned Disco Album). Others were wowed by the voice they called a force of nature, comparing it to the Hoover Dam or the atom bomb. The Merm’s personality was just as tough. Famous for her lack of stage fright (What’s to be scared of? I know my lines),) and her robust, X-rated jokes, Ethel was a shrewd business woman–and someone you didn’t want to cross. Her cut offs were as permanent as they were icy.
No one ever called Miss Merman nice, but a surprising number of intimates attested to her shy, child-like, even vulnerable side. Maybe those contradictions describe a lot of strong celebrity women, but all those disconnects among “Ethel Mermans” have intrigued me these last five years.
For the centenary, I am thinking of putting on a Merman recording–probably not the Disco LP—and toasting the Brass Diva with a champagne on the rocks, her drink of choice.
Daniel Lord Smail, the author of the recent UC Press book, On Deep History and the Brain, recently wrote an original essay for Powells.com that introduces the subject of his book. He begins:
Back when I was in grade school — I was born in 1961 — it was pretty clear that history began in 1492. We did cover the Native American peoples in our social studies classes, and since I grew up in Wisconsin this meant the Chippewa. But the Chippewa nation didn't exactly have a history. All they had was a collection of timeless customs, encapsulated in the frozen dioramas we went to see in the State Historical Society Museum in Madison. We never had to memorize any dates associated with the Chippewa. In this sense, Wisconsin came into the stream of history only when the first French traders arrived and set things on the move, in the same way that Christopher Columbus magically brought history to North America as a whole. A thick curtain shrouded all that lay before. There was something back there, but it wasn't connected to the time stream of what we called "history." It never would have occurred to any of us to ask what the Chippewa were doing in Wisconsin at the same time that the Romans were doing things in Rome.
He then poses the question:
So when does history begin?
To find out Smail's take, read the full article at the Powells.com website.
At its annual sidewalk sale on Thursday, October 11, University of California Press will sell hundreds of new and slightly scuffed books from the warehouse at a significant discount. Prices are $5 for paperbacks and $10 for hardbacks, with a few exceptions for art books and oversized editions.
The sale will be held from 9 am to 5 pm in front of the UC Press offices at 2120 Berkeley Way in Berkeley, one block north of University, between Shattuck and Oxford.
This past summer, I completed the final manuscript of How Everyday Products Make People Sick: Toxins at Home and in the Workplace. Since then, I have been following ongoing stories included in the book. One such story concerns the “recent” emergence of severe lung disease (called bronchiolitis obliterans) among workers exposed to the chemical diacetyl. It seems the outbreak has spread. The disease was first thought to be limited to a narrow industrial sector located in a few Midwestern states: artificial butter-flavored, microwave popcorn production. Now several cases have been confirmed in California in other types of factories using diacetyl and California OSHA (a counterpart to Federal OSHA) is investigating 30 facilities where enough of the chemical is used to give concern over additional disease. It has also become clear that the new disease did not first emerge in 2000, as had been thought. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) was called in to investigate a similar outbreak in 1985 in a bakery in Indiana using diacetyl, but the report was inconclusive and was never followed up. Neither Federal nor Cal OSHA has enacted to date any emergency rules for diacetyl control. In a September 2006 public meeting on diacetyl held in Oakland California, a labor representative asked, “…if exposure to diacetyl is hazardous why is it still being allowed to be used?” The California Health Department member chairing a meeting responded, “…the relationship of diaceytl to bronchiolitis obliterans or other lung disease is not entirely clear.” Later in the meeting, he also noted, “…market forces are probably already operating to reduce the use of diacetyl…”
In Proud to Be an Okie, author Peter La Chapelle explores the political and cultural history of the Los Angeles country music scene, illuminating the evolution of politics and musical expression from the early songs of the liberal Woody Guthrie to the later conservative views of Merle Haggard and his "Okie from Muskogee" anthem. Merle Haggard is now making headlines for penning his recent song "Hillary," which seems to endorse Hillary Clinton for President. Could Haggard be serious? La Chapelle examines the debate:
Just as my book Proud to Be an Okie was beginning to hit the store shelves, country music legend Merle Haggard, one of the central figures I write about, was making headlines with a new song titled "Hillary."
Often cast as a working-class conservative for such patriotic anti-counterculture numbers as "Okie from Muskogee" and "Fightin' Side," Haggard appears to endorse Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential bid in the new song, which argues it is time to "put a woman in charge."
The brouhaha that followed resembled in an inverse way the original uproar that broke out over "Okie from Muskogee," his seemingly pro-war, hippie-bashing anthem, in 1969.
With "Hillary," fans on the Right voiced confusion, disappointment, and a sense of betrayal. Fans and bloggers on the Left either applauded it or criticized Haggard, who has been unabashedly opposed to the Iraq War, for endorsing one of the few Democratic presidential candidates who has not officially renounced an earlier pro-war stance.
In 1969, left-wing country-rock fans and critics of the Vietnam War expressed a similar disappointment at "Okie," while right-wing audiences turned out in droves at places such as the Anaheim Convention Center Arena to cheer and sing along.
The one through-line between "Hillary" and "Okie from Muskogee" may be a question of interpretation: Is Haggard singing these songs at face value or are they to be understood as statements of irony?
Haggard's intent has always been a difficult item to nail down. In 1969, even academic folklorists were unsure if "Okie" was meant to be sarcastic, while many longtime fans will swear to this day that Haggard was really lampooning his own small-town boot-wearing narrator.
Although the New York Times blog that brought "Hillary" to light claimed Haggard was serious, longtime fans writing on his website swear it is a lark.
If Haggard is indeed serious, then this, along with the Dixie Chicks' multiple honors at the Grammy Awards, suggest that the earlier liberal populist trend I describe in the book has not completely trailed off in country music--even if today's mainstream country remains dominated by a more-or-less conservative outlook.
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