The UPB Post:
Minds on Fire

Why We Mustn’t Let Online Retailers Take Over the Retail Landscape


Before you put in that next order for a cheap, convenient, tax-free purchase, please consider this:


http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor?page=1


http://www.mcall.com/news/local/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,7937001,full.story


If the working conditions described in these articles trouble you, remember that we as consumers have the power to make a difference.  Those of us who choose to pay a bit more for free-range chicken eggs or certified humane dairy products, or who buy fair trade products from abroad, are exercising that power.  We respectfully ask you to consider doing the same with your other purchasing decisions, and patronizing independent bookstores as well.

Please pass this along to your friends and colleagues.  Sorayya Carr, Partner and Manager

 

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Adventures with Ants by Mark W. Moffett, University of California Press, 2010, $29.95 cloth

Ya gotta love a guy who once had a pet slime mold.  Mark Moffett, author of Adventures with Ants, not only never lost his childhood fascination with creepy-crawly critters, but developed it into an exciting career.  His book, mainly an account of ant behavior but sprinkled with entertaining fieldwork anecdotes, would be an inspiring gift for a young person with similar interests.  Written for the general public and illustrated with amazing photos, the book also includes endnotes with references for the benefit of serious students of the field.  I especially liked that the exotic locations he visited included California.  (We here in the Bay Area are within the territory of the Very Large Colony of Argentine ants.)  There are several books for myrmecophiles–by which I mean ant-lovers, not symbiotic ant nest inhabitants–on UPB’s shelves at present, and after enjoying this one so much I plan to check out some others.  Sorayya Carr, UPB

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The Art of Publishing at UPB

On December 13, 2010, three legendary local publishers  – Malcolm Margolin, Lynne Withey, and Ernest Callenbach — came to UPB to talk about the joys and challenges of publishing in Berkeley over the last 50 years, mainly at the University of California Press and Heyday Books, where there has been an immense outpouring of creativity. A smudge on the lens of the house camera rendered most images useless, but something about the one below seems almost right as Malcolm Margolin sometimes describes himself as lost in a cloud of metaphors for his love of Heyday and publishing, and Lynne Withey sternly reminded us that university publishing is a business.

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Twain-a-mania

One hundred years after the death of Mark Twain, the publication of his autobiography by UC Press is looking like the publishing phenomenon of this new century.  The excitement caught even UC Press by surprise as their first print run sold out, and they are churning out more as fast as they can.  Here at UPB, we have just put a picture of the book’s cover on our bestseller table because we can’t keep enough copies of the book itself in stock!  We are looking forward to our event with editor Benjamin Griffin on December 16th.  For interesting background on the autobiography and the Bancroft Library’s Mark Twain Project, see http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/mark-twains-last-stunt/Content?oid=2138536.
 
And this is just Volume One!

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Just a Phrase I’m Going Through: My Life in Language by David Crystal, Routledge, 2009, paperback, $26.95.

I’ve just finished reading British linguist David Crystal’s autobiography.  Often hilarious, sometimes poignant, it’s a sheer delight.  The author’s curiosity and zest for everything linguistic (and beyond) is infectious.  John Lawler’s review of this book says of the first chapter, “Being a Linguist,” that “every linguist in the world will go yessing through this chapter.”  I would add that many a faculty member these days will nod vigorously through a later chapter’s description of academic life during the financial cutbacks of the Thatcher years!  This book will interest anyone who enjoys language, whether or not they are professionals in this field.  Sorayya Carr, UPB

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Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual by Michael Pollan, $11 paper, Penguin Books, 2009

Eating wisdom from a Berkeley sage in bite-sized morsels we can enjoy every day. May save our lives, or at least make them better.  William McClung, UPB

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Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books, Edited by Jo Steffens, Yale University Press, 2009, $20 cloth

A delightful set of meditations and lists (along with striking images of their heavily laden shelves and a gem of an essay by Walter Benjamin: “Unpacking My Library”) by several renowned contemporary architects who view their vocations and their passionate relations with printed volumes as bound up with a kindred aesthetic obsession, and for whom form, function and content (and contentment) are most happily wedded in the experience of their beloved beautiful books.  Peter Johnstone, UPB Frontman

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Tamalpais Walking; Poetry, History, Prints by Tom Killion and Gary Snyder, cloth, $50, Heyday Books 2009

A premier Bay Area woodcut artist and one of our greatest living American poets collaborate on the most beautiful book I’ve seen this year—already a local bestseller because we should all own one. It is history, it is poetry, it is the history of local poetry and the art of local natural history. The woodcuts are the best Killions you’ve ever seen, 72 views of Mt. Tam, in prints a la Japonaise. Just the cover is a thrill, and that’s just the start.  Christina Creveling,  UPB Manager

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Practical Water by Brenda Hillman (Wesleyan, 2009)

Hillman’s lyric experimentalism, as displayed in Practical Water, her eighth collection of poetry and third installment in a proposed tetralogy on the elements, offers an unlikely mediation between aesthetic and political concerns. Interested in engaging both traditions, Hillman rejects any partitioning that would disallow her political or aesthetical concerns from being hashed out simultaneously in the measure of a poem. With Practical Water, the State of the Union and State of Being are addressed with equal parts sensitivity and acuity. Hillman’s poems ask a reader to share in the activity of observation and contemplation regarding the complexities of everyday life as a citizen of the political and aesthetic. Here, the poem offers one an opportunity to retry one’s own philosophical and political opinions in a circuitry devised by an exquisite hand. While the conscience is at work mulling over one’s role in geo-political atrocity the heart endures the abstract shudder of pleasure that only poetry can afford. 10.29.09  Pablo Lopez

Hillman 2

Brenda Hillman Reading at UPB in September


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Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human by Richard Wrangham (Basic Books, 2009).

Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham presents the theory that a shift from raw to cooked foods during hominid evolution had profound physical and social effects that led to the development of modern humans.  I approached this book with some skepticism, being disinclined to accept single-cause explanations, and I couldn’t read the chapter title “How Cooking Frees Men” without a jaundiced eye.  But Wrangham amasses quite a bit of information in support of his theory, and he provides a balanced view of the tradeoffs involved, especially for women, in the move toward dependence on cooked foods. Whether or not one accepts cooking as the single most crucial innovation in human evolution, this book is worth including among the readings in a human evolution course. Sorayya Carr, UPB partner, anthropologist.

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About the UPB Post

We intend this UPB Post to be a kind of BERKELEY READS forum, a place where we and our intellectual friends can project what we find in books.

You can blog here, too, by sending not more than 300 words to us at this email address.

Occasionally we will post a cri de coeur for the fate of books and our bookstore, seeking respect and support.

* * *

And an occasional joie de vie as there is so much good life in the books we carry and in this place.

Post Authors

  • Martin
  • Nicola DeRobertis-Theye
  • Pablo Lopez
  • Patricia Nelson
  • Sorayya Carr
  • William McClung
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