We are looking for a qualified and capable investor/partner/manager to assume major responsibilities for the complex of cultural businesses located in our building at 2430 Bancroft Way in Berkeley.

The circumstances and conditions that describe this can be  viewed at

UPB-Berkeley Opportunity 5_12

I am re-reading The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue by linguist Deborah Tannen.   It was published in 1998, but as Washington wrangles over the debt and deficit crisis I find this book to be more relevant than ever.  In fact, I wish every member of Congress, the President, and the press would read and ponder it thoughtfully.

Tannen describes the consequences of what she sees as a culture of argument and critique in our society.  In academia, this is manifested in a sense that only negative commentary shows truly critical thinking.  In journalism, there is a compulsion to frame everything in terms of two opposing sides.  This precludes more nuanced multisided approaches and in some cases overlegitimizes fringe opinions unsupported by fact.  Also, too frequently the press feels it’s done its job by presenting two sides without taking the added step of investigating the truth of their arguments.   Meanwhile, in politics, there is a downward spiral of public discourse into increasingly partisan vituperation.  Sound familiar?

In light of the current debate in Washington, the following quotes seem especially apt:  “The term ‘compromise’ has two senses.  It can mean ‘weaken, undermine, destroy’….  It can also mean ‘give in for the purpose of reaching agreement.’  The first sense of the word is decidedly negative, but the second sense could well be positive.  In recent years, even this sense of the word has taken on negative connotations….  There was a time when the ability to compromise was considered a great strength.  Henry Clay…was called the ‘Great Compromiser’ — and this was said with admiration.”

The Argument Culture is still available in paperback, and we are going to reorder it for our stock at UPB.  If enough people read and act upon it, who knows — maybe we can start to change the public discourse for the better.

Sorayya Carr, UPB   /   Posted on July 30, 2011

“. . . a specialized, localized haven. . . University Press Books, offering a super and sizeable selection of niche. The store’s intimate aesthetic is more a dream-library than a place of business. And this reflects its mindset, for the store is no profit-maximizing firm, but its own special ecosystem, privileging the small and the slow, and savoring rather than consuming. Its genres pay respect to the particularity of literature, where fiction and nonfiction become laughable barriers. The store further challenges artistic norms in breaking down the author-reader boundary that most stores favor; the writer events are dialogue rather than diatribe. University Press Books is my Mecca for scholarship and thought. And to borrow the words of poet Brenda Hillman, it is ‘the love of my life. Well, one of them.’”  The Daily Californian, 15 April 2010, Hallie Kutak, Co-Editor-in-Chief of Berkeley Poetry Review.

“We too must write Bibles, to unite again the heavenly and the earthly world.”

That’s Emerson on Goethe in Richardson, First We Read, Then We Write (Iowa, 2009), which I am nominating for UPB’s Best Gift Book of the Year.