Yale Press Log

MotherTalk calls The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book "an invaluable resource"

In the wake of Mother's Day last Sunday, women who plan to continue working during pregnancy will benefit from reading Marjorie Greenfield's The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book, writes MotherTalk.com. The website quotes one of its reviewers as saying: "until now I have not found a comprehensive, easy to read, enjoyable book on the subject....There are more questions answered on this subject in the book than I honestly thought possible." And Mindy Rhiger, reviewing the book for Library Journal, calls the book a "unique, practical resource for working women during their pregnancy." You can read the full review here.

And The Wall Street Journal's blog The Juggle quotes the The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book on the issue of getting parental leave from a company and the different policies various companies adopt concerning leave. You can read the post here. But it is not just for future moms that this book will be useful. Newsweek magazine's Tip Sheet section recently covered the challenge women face when they want to hold a part-time job after having a baby. Dr. Greenfield, an authority on life and work balance for pregnant women and mothers, advises "working whole days—but fewer of them. With half days, “the work drags into the afternoon, and you never get out,” she says." The article is available on this link.

Recently Dr. Greenfield appeared on Cleveland's WCPO (ABC) News, where she was interviewed by Alicia Booth on her book. ABC News Now’s Tim Johnson also did a live interview with Dr. Greenfield, which you can watch here.

The only authoritative guide specifically for pregnant working women, The Working Woman's Pregnancy Book addresses all the subjects one expects to find in a comprehensive book on pregnancy plus issues of special concern to wage-earning women. Is my workplace safe for my developing baby? When should I tell my employer that I am expecting? What laws protect me if I must take medical leave? Answers to all these and more. Make sure you also visit Dr. Greenfield's blog, which was ranked among the top academic medical and health blogs by Online Nursing Degree Directory.

New York Magazine calls Superheroes a "genuinely cool book"

New York Magazine got their hands on an advance copy of Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy by Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton. They decided to do an early preview of the exhibition, which premiered at the Met this past Wednesday.

New York Magazine called Superheroes a "genuinely cool book," and found it an eye-opening companion to the opening gala gossip: "For all the jokes one can make about the gala's red carpet being graced with celebrities awkwardly decked out in Catwoman leather or Captain America capes (per hostess Anna Wintour's request that attendees take the theme seriously), a look at what's actually being shown at the exhibit is rather illuminating." Read the entire preview here.

And the blog mblankier.com reviewed Superheroes, noting the "very provocative and interesting parallel" between superheroes and fashion. "All the essays, costumes, and clothing in the book," the blogger writes, "are really fantastic and really inspiring." Read the full review here.

Featuring designers including John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Jean Paul Gaultier, and many more, this innovative book examines how the style of superheroes’ dress has influenced street wear and high fashion.

Israel's Independence and Churchill's Zionism

As Israel, and its millions of supporters world-wide, celebrate its 60th birthday, few realize the important role that Winston Churchill played in the establishment of the State of Israel and the shaping of the modern Middle East.

Michael Makovsky’s groundbreaking Churchill’s Promised Land, brings this and much more to light in his careful and nuanced examination of Churchill’s complex relationship with Zionism.

In exploring Churchill’s evolving and ultimately romantic interest in Zionism, Makovsky offers a fresh, more complete and revealing understanding of this great statesman’s worldview. 

Churchill’s Promised Land won the National Jewish Book Award for History (2007) and was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature (2008).

Read an excerpt, or view the table of contents. Click here to listen to an interview with Michael Makovsky on the Yale Press Podcast.

Stall Points is a "must-read" according to big name corporations

IBM Corporation. The Clorox Company. Charles Schwab Corporation. Reliance Industries. JPMorgan Chase.

What do all of these successful corporations all have in common? They--and many others--all have executives who read and praised Matthew S. Olson and Derek van Bever's Stall Points: Most Companies Stop Growing--Yours Doesn't Have To.

Clayton M. Christensen, professor at the Harvard Business School says, “Stall Points is grounded in competent and compelling research.  There is no fluff here.  It is a cogent, practical guide to the most pressing problem today’s managers face: How to sustain growth.” Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer for Facebook says, "This book should be required reading for leadership teams that want to stay relevant to their customers over the long run." You can see what more top execs have to say about the book here.

After the jump, read more about Stall Points, and learn how your company can sustain growth.

Morris's 1948 is a critics' favorite

Under the spotlight of the 60th anniversary of Israeli independence, Benny Morris's recent book, 1948, is a praised as a shining example.

Last Sunday’s New York Times Book Review features David Margolick's review, saying: "Morris relates the story of his new book soberly and somberly, evenhandedly and exhaustively."

The May 5th issue of The New Yorker hit newsstands on Monday with a feature piece by David Remnick. This piece on Israeli history centers around Morris and the publication of 1948, calling it "a commanding, superbly documented, and fair-minded study of the events that, in the wake of the Holocaust, gave a sovereign home to one people and dispossessed another."

Last Monday, David Holahan reviewed the book for the Hartford Courant. 1948, he said, is "a richly detailed and thoroughly researched primer.... A compelling 'aha' book, 1948 brings order to complex, little-understood subjects." He went on to compliment Morris on his "vivid narrative prose and masterly analysis."

Canada's National Post began running excerpts from 1948 on May 5, and will run a total of 5 installments. Read the second and third installments.

Solove interview on NYT Freakonomics blog

Annika Mengisen of the New York Times' Freakonomics blog sat down with another Yale Press author, Daniel Solove. They talked about Solove's new book, The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, and why even those with "virtually no online footprint" should be concerned about their internet reputation. Read the entire interview here.

Other bloggers have picked up this interview. The Tree of Knowledge said that internet reputation is "going to be an interesting area in coming years." And at the Nudges blog, authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein emphasized Solove's point about nudges and choice architecture in social networking sites. Thaler and Sunstein themselves have written about this issue in their book, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

Click here to listen to another interview with Solove on the Yale Press Podcast. Visit Solove's website or read his blog Concurring Opinions. And click here to see Daniel Solove discuss his book as part of Google's Authors@Google speaker series.

May Day and National Hamburger Month

In honor of May Day, Slate ran an article on the best recent books about Communism. After reviewing some basics like the Communist Manifesto, they recommend the Annals of Communism series:

...Once you've got the surveys under your belt, you can turn to Yale University Press' Annals of Communism series, a unique publishing venture designed to make use of Soviet archives. Whether you want Andrei Sakharov's personal files, Stalin's correspondence with Molotov, or documents explaining the Katyn massacre, they're all available in beautifully edited and annotated translations. Don't miss John Haynes and Harvey Klehr's history of the American Communist Party (also a Yale book, also based on Soviet archives), either.

Read the entire article here.

May 1 is also the beginning of National Hamburger Month. Hamburger expert and Yale Press author Josh Ozersky reviewed New York's best burgers for the Daily News. Here is what the Daily News had to say in return about Ozersky and his new book, The Hamburger: A History:

If the city has a professor of patties, it's probably Josh Ozersky, the online food editor for New York magazine.

Not only does he test out several specimens a week, but he has just written a sexy little volume on the history of the patty from its 18th-century beginnings to its postwar boom thanks to White Castle.

Read the entire article here.

Yale Press wraps up Nat'l Poetry Month with awards and readings

At their annual awards ceremony last night, The Publishing Triangle announced Janet Malcolm, author of the critically acclaimed Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, as winner of the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. View the complete list of award winners here.

This remarkable work of literary biography and investigative journalism, turns on the mysterious survival of Stein and Toklas, as Jewish lesbians in Occupied France. Also a fascinating illumination of the world of Stein scholarship, and a stunningly perceptive work of criticism.

For those poety lovers in the New Haven area, the five most recent winners of the prestigious Yale Series of Younger Poets competition will read from their work on Friday, May 2nd.  Free and open to the public, the event will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, Room 208, at 4:00 p.m.

Awarded since 1919, the Yale Series of Younger Poets prize celebrates the most prominent new American poets by bringing the work of previously unpublished artists to the attention of the larger public.  Previous winners of the prize include such talents as Adrienne Rich, John Ashberry, and Robert Hass.  It is the longest-running poetry prize in the United States. More information on the event after the jump.

Live chats with Zittrain and Speth!

Do you have any questions for Jonathan Zittrain about the future of the Internet? Well, thanks to the Internet, you can ask him today in a live chat with Network World from 2PM to 3PM. You can start posting your questions now, or just check back at 2 to hear Zittrain answer other people's questions.

Network World, in a recent feature on his book, lauded Zittrain's "thought-provoking ideas about the trade-off between convenience and innovation on the Internet." Read the entire review, or click here to read more about the book, including excerpts and the table of contents. Also, click here to watch videos of Zittrain fielding interesting questions on current events and trends at bigthink.com.

And tomorrow at 3 PM, washingtonpost.com will host a live chat with James Gustave Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World. You can begin submitting questions here.

The Bridge at the Edge of the World was reviewed in the Green section of the Washington Post. They said that Speth, who has "long been prominent in the environmental movement," gives "an extremely probing and thoughtful diagnosis of the root causes of planetary distress." Read the entire review here. Or read an excerpt from the book itself.

Thaler and Sunstein, nudging across America

Yale Press authors Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein have received a lot of press and praise for their newest book, Nudge. For those of you who want to hear what the authors themselves have to say, here are some opportunities:

• PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley will have Thaler on air for tonight's show (Friday 4/25). Click here to check your local listings, or here for more information on the program.
• On May 1 in Washington D.C., the CATO Institute will host a talk for Thaler, Sunstein, and a commentator at 12:00 PM.
• On May 16, Thaler and Sunstein will come to Chicago for the GSB Management Conference at the University of Chicago. They will be speaking at 1:00 PM.
• At the Google offices in San Francisco, Thaler and Sunstein will be giving a talk about their book at 1:00 PM on May 29.
• Thaler will be in Miami on June 8th to give a talk about Nudge.
• Sunstein will return to Washington D.C. on June 27th at 7 PM to discuss the book at the bookstore Politics & Prose.

If you just can't wait until Thaler and Sunstein come to town, then listen to Cass Sunstein discuss libertarian paternalism on the Glenn and Helen Show, a podcast broadcast through Politics Central via PajamasMedia.

You can also check out their website, www.nudges.org, for news, announcements and to send your own nudge suggestions to the authors.

Speth's Bridge brings together diverse thinkers

Gus Speth, author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability, has been praised by a wide range of readers.

A Christian writer from Read the Spirit called Speth's ideas "a sign of hope." A philosopher of social science at ChangingSociety lauded Speth's "very powerful analysis," while comparing his ideas to those of the Dalai Lama. The writer at Kale for Sale wrote that Speth "is bursting at the seams with information and urgency." And Andrew Revkin on his DotEarth New York Times blog mentioned that The Bridge at the Edge of the World is on his reading table. And a review from the Yale Daily News noted that Speth's book makes "an argument supported from professionals from several different disciplines."

To hear what Speth himself has to say about his ideas, here's a video of Speth's April 22 appearance on OnPoint.

"During today's OnPoint, Speth, a former chair of the Council on Environmental Quality and founder of both the Natural Resources Defense Council and the World Resources Institute, explains why he is unhappy with the current state of environmentalism. He also gauges the changing level of interest in environmental issues on college campuses throughout the country."

View this video here while you still can--It will only be on the site for the next six months.

Click here to listen to an interview with Gus Speth on the Yale Press Podcast.

Happy 444th Birthday, Will!

"When we are born we cry that we are come... to this great stage of fools," William Shakespeare once wrote. Well, 444 years ago today, Shakespeare entered this great stage of fools and made a little more sense out of it. To learn about how he did this, check out the wide array of Yale Press titles about the Bard, including Shakespeare the Thinker by A. D. Nuttall.

Nuttall’s profound and elegantly written study of Shakespeare’s thought is a literary tour de force, a marvelous inquiry into the questions that engrossed the playwright throughout his life. Nuttall investigates the dynamic nature of Shakespeare’s evolving answers and provides for twenty-first-century readers an unparalleled guide to Shakespeare’s plays.

Click here for an extended question & answer discussion with Nuttall. View the table of contents or read an excerpt.

To read Shakespeare's words as they should be read, Yale Press offers the Annotated Shakespeare series. Judith McGowan from the American Association of School Librarians says, "The volumes in this series will enrich any library that stocks editions of individual Shakespeaean plays."

Through the Annotated Shakespeare series, today’s readers have immediate access to the tools they need to help them better comprehend the plays of Shakespeare and explore their many possible interpretations. Each volume includes an informative introduction by the editor, Burton Raffel, a critical essay by Harold Bloom, and comprehensive on-page annotations that assist with vocabulary, pronunciation, prosody, and alternative readings of phrases and lines. Handsome and affordable, these paperback editions invite every reader to get to know—or become reacquainted with—the genius of Shakespeare.

Yale University Press celebrates Earth Day

The Yale Press website now features a special page for Earth Day, with a selection of key environmental titles for individuals and for businesses. From recent publications like Gus Speth's The Bridge at the Edge of the World, to some of our bestsellers like Daniel C. Esty and Andrew S. Winston's Green to Gold, Yale University Press continues to publish groundbreaking work in the field of environmental studies. Click here for an extensive list of titles.

For more new and feature backlist titles in environmental history, conservation biology and the life sciences, please see our online Science catalog.

This week is...

National Library Week! In honor of the bibliofest, here are some Yale Press titles about libraries, perfect for your own library.

The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel

USA Today says that this book is "for readers who take books seriously." They found it to be a "rewarding" read. Read the entire review here.

Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. “Libraries,” he says, “have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember I’ve been seduced by their labyrinthine logic.” In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.

Libraries in the Ancient World, by Lionel Casson

This delightful book tells the story of ancient libraries from their very beginnings, when “books” were clay tablets and writing was a new phenomenon. Renowned classicist Lionel Casson takes us on a lively tour from the royal libraries of the ancient Near East, through the private and public libraries of Greece and Rome, down to the first Christian monastic libraries. Casson explains what books were acquired and how, who read them, how they were organized, and more.

Speth brings together governors to fight climate change

U.S. Governors and top environmental officials will meet tomorrow here at Yale University to exchange ideas on how states and the federal government can combat global warming and develop a strategy for future action.

The gathering, organized in part by Yale Press author Gus Speth, will also celebrate the centennial of President Theodore Roosevelt’s landmark 1908 Conference of Governors, which launched the modern conservation movement, planted the seed for the National Parks System, and inspired significant state efforts to protect land.

Dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and author of The Bridge at the Edge of the World, Speth collaborated with other Yale organizations and state officials to commemorate that landmark 1908 conference. Last night at 8pm, Speth introduced keynote speakers Theodore Roosevelt IV and Gifford Pinchot III, the descendants of the original organizers of that 1908 conference.

The author of Red Sky at Morning would be the first to agree that we are in deep environmental trouble, but he offers hope that there is still time to avert global catastrophe. Gus Speth explores a wide variety of promising and even radical ideas for transforming modern capitalism so as to protect and restore the natural world.

For more information on this conference, click here. To keep on top of more of Speth's events, visit the author's website Bridge At the Edge of the World.com.

Click here to listen to an interview with Gus Speth on the Yale Press Podcast.

Zittrain causes web-wide discussion

Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, has sparked a web-wide debate with his ideas. Here is some of the news Zittrain is getting, in addition to those mentioned in the last post:

• Andy Oram glossed and mused on Zittrain's book for O'Reilly Radar, adding that his thoughts "show how much meat [The Future of the Internet] provides for analysis and discussion."
• Washington Post's technology blog Post I.T. covered a talk Zittrain gave at Google's Washington offices.
• Mark Jones of the Reuters Editors blog reported on the Berkman Centre’s Media:Republic program, at which Zittrain spoke.
• The Information Technology section of the Chronicle of Higher Education interviewed Zittrain, who discussed the possibilities of a terrorist attack on cyberspace or an "iPatriot Act."
• Tony Curzon Price at openDemocracy traced the political science ideas behind Zittrain's book, eventually comparing Zittrain to Aristotle.

Additionally, after the jump is a YouTube video Zittrain's talk at the Tribeca Grand in NYC in preview of his book.

Visit the author's website at www.jz.org. Read and comment on the entire book online at Yale Books Unbound.

New York Times bloggers "Freaking" out for Nudge

On the Freakonomics blog at the New York Times, Annika Mengisen admitted that she and fellow-blogger Steven Levitt can't stop reading Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. The Freakonomics team invited Thaler and Sunstein for a Q&A, which can be read here.

This interview follows Levitt's enthusiastic review for Nudge a few days ago. Levitt, one of the authors behind the book Freakonomics, was just too eager to share Nudge with his readers--even before finishing it.

"I’m halfway through it," says Levitt. "And this is a book I love."

He goes on to say, "Picking and choosing a few examples can’t convey what is most surprising about the book: it is really fun to read. Academics aren’t supposed to be able to write this well."

In the comments section, Freakonomics readers have shared Levitt's and Mengisen's excitement:

"You’ve nudged me. I’m going to go buy the book now," posted Charles D.

"I can’t wait to get this book!" JP agreed.

Read an excerpt from the book, view the table of contents, or check out the Nudges blog.

Yale Press unveils new website for Centennial

In celebration of the Yale University Press Centennial (1908-2008), we are proud to launch our brand new Centennial website.

Visit here to find a message from Yale Press Director John Donatich; a brief history of the Press's first 100 years; highlights from the Press’s bestselling, prize-winning, and seminal works; news about upcoming celebrations, exhibitions and media events; and more.

David Noel Freedman: May 12, 1922 - April 8, 2008

We are sad to report that David Noel Freedman, eminent biblical scholar and General Editor of the Anchor Bible for fifty years, died on April 8. His family plans to hold a memorial celebration in San Diego at a later date and has suggested that, in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to the Society of Biblical Literature for a scholarship in his name.

Condolences may be sent to the family at 39 Meadow Glen, Petaluma, CA 94952.

William Propp wrote this obituary for the Society of Biblical Literature:

      On April 8, 2008, former SBL President (1975-76) David Noel Freedman, Professor of History and Judaic Studies at the University of California, San Diego, died at the home of his son David and daughter-in-law Genevieve in Petaluma, California.  He was 85 years old. 

      Freedman was born Noel Freedman on May 12, 1922, in New York city, to Beatrice and David Freedman.  He deeply admired his immigrant father, a successful playwright and shtik writer for the likes of Eddie Cantor and Buster Keaton.  The over-worked Freedman senior died in 1936 at age 38, and his son adopted a new first name in his honor.  In his 70s and 80s, David Noel Freedman tried to bring back his father’s memory in another way, reissuing some of his works in print and arranging for a staging of his father’s first hit, Mendel, Inc.

Zittrain's internet popularity cannot be stopped

Network World featured Yale Press author and "bona fide member of the digiterati" Jonathan Zittrain in a review titled "How the iPhone is killing the 'Net." This review of Zittrain's new book, The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, has quickly made its way across the web. Macworld reprinted the article, and from there it was dugg and is being picked up by bloggers at Alejandro@Oxford, The iPhone Low Down, Steve's Unofficial Blog, and elsewhere.

Additionally, StopBadware.org blogged on an interview with Zittrain that appeared in the Management section of Computerworld.

North Korean radios that are altered to receive only the official stations. Cars that listen in on their owners’ conversations. Digital video recorders ordered to self-destruct in viewers’ homes thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. Zittrain’s extraordinary book pieces together the engine that has catapulted the Internet ecosystem into the prominence it has today—and explains that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of consumers, the Internet is on a path to a lockdown, a closing off of opportunities and innovation.

Visit the author's website at www.jz.org. Read and comment on the entire book online at Yale Books Unbound.

Yale Press continues Nat'l Poetry Month celebration

Fady Joudah, author of The Earth in the Attic, was featured on Tuesday by the online anthology of contemporary poetry, Poetry Daily. The site also shared two of Joudah's poems, "Atlas" and "The Tea and Sage Poem."Those poems, both from The Earth in the Attic, can be read here. Also, you can click here to listen to Fady Joudah read "In the Calm" from his poem, "Pulse."

Fady Joudah is a Palestinian-American medical doctor and a field member of Doctors Without Borders since 2001. He lives in Houston, TX. He is also the translator of Mahmoud Darwish’s recent poetry The Butterfly’s Burden.

As part of their celebration of National Poetry Month, CBC Radio's Writers & Company invited Yale Press author John Felstiner to talk on Monday about his book Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. Click here to hear that interview in RealAudio format--and to hear Celan himself read from his most famous work, Deathfuge.

This book is the first critical biography of Paul Celan, a German-speaking East European Jew who was Europe’s most compelling postwar poet. It tells the story of Celan’s life, offers new translations of his poems, and illuminates the connection between Celan’s lived experience and his poetry.

Felstiner's biography has received many accolades: nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award; chosen as a best book of 1995 by Choice magazine, Village Voice, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Philadelphia Inquirer; and winner of the 1997 University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin.

Hartford Courant profiles Brent and YUP's digital Stalin archive

The Hartford Courant profiled Jonathan Brent, editorial director of Yale Press' Annals of Communism Project, and interviewed him about the Press's $1.3 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant to develop a digital documentary edition of Stalin's Personal Archive.

After sharing a story of Stalin's correspondences with director Sergei Eisenstein and novelist Upton Sinclair, the Courant said, "It is documents like the dispatch to Sinclair that distinguish Yale's Stalin archive." Read the entire article here.

The article in the Courant was picked up by the History News Network, as well as by RussiaTrek and cafe historia, who said, "This is surely what the web was designed to do. If only other institutions would follow suit."

The digitization of Stalin's Personal Archive is a new initiative of Yale University Press' acclaimed Annals of Communism series, begun in 1992.  The digitized documents from this archive will become the basis for future scholarly research, while expediting traditional book publications on topics of great importance in understanding Soviet and twentieth-century world history.

Heckscher's Creating Central Park discusses the creation of recreation

The New York Sun and the New York Observer, both running pieces on Creating Central Park by
Morrison H. Heckscher, have decided to emphasize different parts of the story: one real estate, the other art.

The Real Estate section of the New York Observer contained a Q&A with Heckscher about the book.  Heckscher begins, "I would like to start by saying that the whole issue of the park has to do with open space in Manhattan. Central Park is, shall we say, the conclusion of 50 years of political machinations of how to provide, for the city and Manhattan, open space mostly for health reasons—for air and space for the health of the public, and recreation." Read the entire interview here.

And the New York Sun ran a piece, "Creating Central Park," in their Arts section, with Heckscher discussing the great minds behind the creation of Central Park.

The year 2008 marks the 150th anniversary of the design of Central Park, the first and arguably the most famous of America’s urban landscape parks. In October 1857 the new park’s board of commissioners announced a public design competition, and the following April the imaginative yet practicable “Greensward” plan submitted by Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted was selected.

This book tells the fascinating story of how an extraordinary work of public art emerged from the crucible of New York City politics. From William Cullen Bryant’s 1844 editorial calling for “a pleasure ground of shade and recreation” to the completion of construction in 1870, the history of Central Park is an urban epic––a tale not only of animosity, political intrigue, and desire but also of idealism, sacrifice, and genius.

NYT on professions and recessions: Sennett and Fraser

Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Lewis Hyde reviewed The Craftsman by Richard Sennett. He explains the book's ideas, saying that he enjoyed "the companionship of its inquiring intelligence." Hyde goes on to tell the readers, "There is much to learn here." Read the entire review here.

Defining craftsmanship far more broadly than "skilled manual labor," Richard Sennett maintains that the computer programmer, the doctor, the artist, and even the parent and citizen engage in a craftsman's work. Craftsmanship names the basic human impulse to do a job well for its own sake, says the author, and good craftsmanship involves developing skills and focusing on the work rather than ourselves. In this thought-provoking book, one of our most distinguished public intellectuals explores the work of craftsmen past and present, identifies deep connections between material consciousness and ethical values, and challenges received ideas about what constitutes good work in today’s world.

Click here to listen to an interview with Richard Sennett on the Yale Press Podcast. View the table of contents, or read an excerpt from The Craftsman.

In an article on Wall Street-bound graduates and their nervousness about the recession, Louise Story of the New York Times asked Yale Press author Steve Fraser. Fraser, author of Wall Street: America's Dream Palace, also teaches an undergraduate seminar on Wall Street at the University of Pennsylvania.

In the beginning of the semester, Mr. Fraser noticed that students seemed to think the housing crisis was unrelated to their goals in finance and was caused mostly by irresponsible borrowers. But after the collapse of Bear Sterns, he said, they had "a great deal more sympathy for people who have already been affected by this crisis.

"There’s a sense in the class now that things are more worrying, that this may affect them."

Read the entire New York Times article here. Click here to listen to an interview with Fraser on the Yale Press Podcast.

Thaler and Sunstein, sharing their nudge knowledge

A wealth of excitement has surrounded Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, authors of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness.

• In "Getting it right on the money," an article on financial literacy in The Economist, Richard Thaler advises on how to improve Americans' financial literacy.
• The New Republic "Easy Does It" by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein consider how to make lazy people do the right thing.  (Article available for subscribers only.)
• In an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, "Designing better choices," Thaler and Sunstein discuss their idea of liberatarian paternalism and its impact upon society.
• In his Boston Globe article "When shove comes to push," Drake Bennett assesses the flurry of ideas around libertarian paternalism.
• In "Lured Toward the Right Choice," Barbara Kiviat of Time Magazine writes about Thaler and Sunstein's "new approach to public policy that takes into account the odd realities of human behavior."

Visit Nudges.org for news, announcements and to send your own nudge suggestions to the authors. Click here for an extended question & answer discussion with the authors.

After the jump are a list of stops on their tour across the United States to discuss Nudge.

Shapiro blegs for the Freakonomics blog

Stephen J. Dubner of the New York Times' Freakonomics blog invited "blegs" from the readers--or, "questions that the Freakonomics readership could collectively answer well." The inaugural bleg--did Clint Eastwood's ever say "Read my lips"--was answered with the help of Yale Press' own Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the "wonderful" Yale Book of Quotations. Shapiro began by explaining the methodology of his wor