The University Press of Kentucky

Cyber Monday Deals!

November 28, 2011

Missed all the Black Friday shopping action? There are still Cyber Monday deals to be had! UPK is giving you 20% off ALL our titles AND the FREE EBOOK file to start filling that new Kindle Fire, Nook tablet, or iPad- subject to ebook availability. See the list of all available ebooks here (more than 300 titles available!)

The fine print: To order, use promotional code FCBM and your email address at checkout to receive 20% off your purchase and register for your free ebooks. Ebooks will be delivered via email no later than a week after your order is processed.

UPK Black Friday Sale!

November 25, 2011

Maybe you’ve already been shopping since 12 am, or 4 am, or 6 am, maybe you’re more the wait until Christmas Eve type. Either way, we’re happy to help with your holiday shopping list. In honor of Black Friday, we’re offering 30% TODAY ONLY on ALL UPK books! That’s 10% more than our regular holiday sale!

Use discount code FBFR at checkout to receive this special Black Friday deal.

And we mean ALL BOOKS including these great gift ideas:

: ‘Kentucky Horse Country’ 30% OFF: $31.50

: ‘The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook’ 30% OFF: $17.47

: ‘The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook’ 30% OFF: $20.97

: ‘Tales from Kentucky Sheriffs’ 30% OFF: $17.47

: ‘Crawfish Bottom’ 30% OFF: $24.50

: ‘Cecelia and Fanny’ 30% OFF: $21

: ‘A Voice in the Box’ 30% OFF: $15.37

: ‘Kentucky Bourbon Cocktail Book’ 30% OFF: $10.47

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 24, 2011

Happy Thanksgiving from the University Press of Kentucky! We’re so thankful you’re our fan- stay tuned for special deals and promotions throughout the holiday season!

The November Free Book of the Month is Here!

November 1, 2011

It’s November 1st, and I hope you now know what that means…your next FREE BOOK of the Month! Yes, its that time already, we hope you enjoy! Click here to sign up for your copy of:

About the Book:

The present era of staggering scientific and technological innovations, with major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, commerce, and communications, seems to document unparalleled human achievement. Yet when we examine the long-term implications, it becomes clear that an ever-growing number of humans have threatened the delicate environmental balance that sustains life on this planet. The past century may be remembered not as a period of great progress but as one marked by unrestrained consumption and failure to come close to a sustainable use of the earth’s limited natural resources.

In The State of the Earth, noted historian Paul K. Conkin provides a comprehensive analysis of the many environmental hazards that humans must face in this still-young century. Our activities have threatened the survival of many plants and animals, created scarcities in cultivatable soils and water needed for irrigation, used up a large share of fossil fuels, polluted air and water, and most likely created the conditions that will lead to major climate changes. Conkin not only evaluates the challenges but recognizes the successes of concerned individuals and organizations in creating awareness and in supporting policies that will best preserve a healthy earth.

The State of the Earth is an invaluable resource for those who desire a broad yet thorough and scientifically informed introduction to present environmental challenges. Even when humans possess the knowledge and the tools to cope with mounting environmental problems, they may not be willing to make the needed sacrifices. Conkin demonstrates that the issues are as much moral and political as technological.

About the Author:

Paul K. Conkin, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Vanderbilt University, is the author of numerous books, including The Southern Agrarians, When All the Gods Trembled: Darwinism, Scopes, and American Intellectuals, and A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929.

“Conkin’s somber account of the ecological dangers facing humanity today raises deep and painful moral questions. Can the two-centuries-long banquet of the affluent nations continue without damaging the biosphere and ruining the prospects of our children’s children? A distinguished American historian, Conkin shows that we live at a critical turning point in human and planetary history. This is a powerful and timely introduction to global ecological issues. It deserves to be read alongside other recent ecological classics such as J. R. McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun or Jared Diamond’s Collapse.”–David Christian, author of Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History

Come Listen to a Ghost Story by the Fireside

October 28, 2011

Whether you’re dressing as Lady Gaga or a Zombie for Halloween this year, I’m sure we can all agree that candy and spooky stories are some of the best Halloween traditions. And while you may not have the time this season to take the family on a camping trip to share delightfully spooky stories, the West Virginia Network has a solution. They’re putting together a series of webisodes to (hopefully) freak you out! All of the stories come from Ruth Ann Musick’s book The Telltale Lilac Bush and Other West Virginia Ghost Tales, and air on thewvnetwork YouTube channel. Check out the first two stories below!

The Telltale Lilac Bush

A Head and A Body

Preserving our Heritage: Douglas A. Boyd and the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer

October 12, 2011

portions originally published via University of Kentucky News

Doug Boyd, author of the recently published Crawfish Bottom, made news this week for his commitment to finding new and engaging ways to work with oral histories. Boyd, the director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, teamed up with Eric Weig, the director of Digital Library services to create an Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS). OHMS is a technological program that enables individuals to search oral histories for specific keywords, saving precious time for both experienced researchers and students. Recently, the University of Kentucky libraries were awarded a $195,000 grant in order to expand OHMS. The grant was presented in the Advancing Digital Resources category which supports the creation and preservation of important digital resources as well as the development of alternative ways to improve access and use of digital assets.

Doug Boyd’s interest in digital resources is reflected in his new book Crawfish Bottom, which traces the history of the community of Craw. Initially depicted as hoodlums with a passion for crime and unsanitary living conditions, the area became a target for urban renewal projects and was eventually demolished in the mid 1960s in order to build the city’s Capital Plaza. Boyd offers an important history of the 400 families that were displaced and the culture of the community they were forced to leave behind. Blending together firsthand accounts from residents of Craw and those from neighboring towns, Crawfish Bottom relies on oral histories to introduce the popular misconceptions of the area and subsequently refute them with a more balanced and accurate account.

Boyd will be involved in numerous upcoming events in the Kentucky area, further promoting Crawfish Bottom and his fascinating approach to oral history. On October 25, Boyd will participate in the Community, Race, and Memory Symposium at the Grand Theatre in Frankfort focused on exploring the lives and culture of African Americans in Frankfort. He will be joined by Sheila Mason Burton and filmmaker Joanna Hay. Audio clips from interviews for Crawfish Bottom will be played and there will be a roundtable discussion followed by a question and answer session with the audience. Boyd will also be at the Kentucky Book Fair November 12 at the Frankfort Convention Center.

A small neighborhood in northern Frankfort, Kentucky, Crawfish Bottom was located on fifty acres of swampy land along the Kentucky River. “Craw’s” reputation for vice, violence, moral corruption, and unsanitary conditions made it a target for urban renewal projects that replaced the neighborhood with the city’s Capital Plaza in the mid-1960s.

Douglas A. Boyd’s Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community traces the evolution of the controversial community that ultimately saw four-hundred families displaced. Using oral histories and firsthand memories, Boyd not only provides a record of a vanished neighborhood and its culture but also demonstrates how this type of study enhances the historical record. A former Frankfort police officer describes Craw’s residents as a “rough class of people, who didn’t mind killing or being killed.” In Crawfish Bottom, the former residents of Craw acknowledge the popular misconceptions about their community but offer a richer and more balanced view of the past.

Douglas A. Boyd, director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky, is a coeditor of Community Memories: A Glimpse of African American Life in Frankfort, Kentucky. He lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

“Eloquently traces the ways that the residents of a community define their place and their relationship to it. Crawfish Bottom seamlessly weaves together history, follkore, and geography into an engaging, trenchant, and substantive whole.”–Fitzhugh Brundage, author of The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory

Sign up now for October’s FREE BOOK of the Month!

October 3, 2011

You loved Football and Philosophy, the response for A Voice in the Box was phenomenal, and now we’ve got another great Free Book of the Month for your October reading! Sign up here for your Free copy of Real Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal by renowned skeptic and renaissance man, Joe Nickell.

As a former private investigator and forensic writer, Joe Nickell has spent much of his career identifying forged documents, working undercover to infiltrate theft rings, and investigating questioned deaths. Now he turns his considerable investigative skill toward the paranormal, researching the most well-known and mysterious phenomena all over the world—spontaneous human combustion, UFO visitations, auras, electronic poltergeists, and many, many more—with an eye toward solving these mysteries rather than promoting or dismissing them.

Real-Life X-Files: Investigating the Paranormal examines the cases of over forty paranormal mysteries. Using a hands-on approach, Nickell visits the scene of the so-called unexplainable activity whenever possible and attempts to physically duplicate the miraculous. Whether he’s inflicting stigmata on himself or recreating the liquefying blood of Saint Januarius, Nickell does whatever necessary to eliminate the probable before considering the supernatural. What is left is that much more fascinating.

Nickell reports on familiar legends from American history such as the supernatural events surrounding Abraham Lincoln’s death and the supposed crash landing of an alien spacecraft near Roswell, New Mexico. He closely examines claims of the miraculous, from rose petals bearing the likeness of Jesus to photographs of a “golden door” to heaven. Controversial mysteries such as clairvoyance and “spirit painting,” haunted places, and freaks of nature are just a few of the many topics covered.

Suspenseful, engrossing, funny, and grounded in scientific methodology, Real-Life X-Files provides real explanations for the “paranormal” activities that have intrigued human beings for centuries.

Joe Nickell, author of Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detection, is Senior Research Fellow of the international Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He writes the “Investigative Files” column for Skeptical Inquirer magazine.

“Whoever said that the truth is both stranger and more entertaining than fiction describes this book exactly.” — Skeptical Inquirer

Working to Honor Kentucky’s Diverse History: The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia

September 30, 2011

The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia is an on-going project spearheaded by editors John A. Hardin, Karen C. McDaniel, and Gerald L. Smith to provide the first comprehensive volume of research on the black experience in the Commonwealth. The first of its kind in any state, The KAAE will be a major reference for students, teachers, researchers, and anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of Kentucky and the South.

For more information on the Encyclopedia, the editors, how to submit entries, a timeline of the project, and sample entries, visit www.uky.edu/kaae

Video courtesy of UK PR

Statement of Need:

Kentucky African Americans have been a part of the Commonwealth of Kentucky from its inception. Although enslaved, blacks traveled with the first settlers and assisted them in founding Boonesborough and other frontier settlements. Since that era, Kentuckians of African American descent have played significant roles as builders, entrepreneurs, educators, politicians, athletes, soldiers, doctors, nurses, coal miners, lawyers, and religious leaders. Under the state’s segregation laws, blacks built thriving business districts in cities and towns, established hospitals for the ill, supported public schools and teachers colleges and established cemeteries to bury their loved ones.

Kentucky African American history is as diverse, vibrant, and resilient as the state’s general history. This history has been chronicled in doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, occasional articles in scholarly journals, and a few general histories. In 1970, The Kentucky Commission on Human Rights published Kentucky’s Black Heritage, a 161-page supplement for Kentucky history textbooks. In 1982, Alice Dunnigan’s lengthy popular history, The Fascinating Story of Black Kentuckians, was published by the Associated Publishers Division of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History. Ten years later, the Kentucky Historical Society published the well-received two volume History of Blacks in Kentucky authored by Dr. Marion Lucas and Dr. George Wright.

These historical works were complemented by biographies on famous Kentuckians including Muhammad Ali, Whitney Young, Lyman T. Johnson, Mae Street Kidd, Rufus Atwood, and Ted Poston. These biographies plus monographs on other special topics on Kentucky life have created a growing interest in Kentucky African American history.

The Kentucky Encyclopedia (1992), The Encyclopedia of Louisville (2002), and The Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky (2009)have entries on African Americans, but these volumes were not compiled to focus solely on the many topics and issues relative to black life in the bluegrass state.

The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia will provide a comprehensive volume of research on the black experience in the Commonwealth. It will include entries on the individuals, events, places, organizations, movements, and institutions which have shaped the state’s history since its origins. It will also include topical essays on slavery, education, women, religion, sports, business, and civil rights. A first of its kind, The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia will serve as a major reference for students, teachers, researchers, and anyone interested in expanding their knowledge of Kentucky and the South.

The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia will include Kentucky African Americans who have been identified as having played significant roles in Kentucky life. Some will be Kentucky-born African Americans who later assumed important national roles and others who became Kentuckians by identification or migration.

A bibliographic essay and selected bibliography will direct the reader to other sources. An advisory committee will review an evolving list of entries and make recommendations. However, the editors will use their professional judgment in making the work one that encompasses the breadth and depth of the Kentucky African American cultural and historical experience.

Kentucky African American and Affrilachian poet Frank X Walker suggests in his poem “Kentucke” that Kentuckys history overlooks those persons of African descent who made significant contributions. His closing phrase in this poem drives home this point with a note that “some of the bluegrass is black.” The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia supports this concept by providing its readers with a reference tool to grasp the diversity of Kentucky’s culture and history.

To Donate to the Kentucky African American Encyclopedia:

Your gift is tax deductible. The Thomas D. Clark Foundation, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) entity.

Please send all contributions to:

Kentucky African American Encyclopedia Project
c/o The Thomas Clark Foundation
The University Press of Kentucky
663 South Limestone Street
Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

You can also email us at uk-kaae@lsv.uky.edu and someone will contact you.

Mark Your Calendar, We’ve Got Upcoming Events!

September 26, 2011

As if you didn’t already know by now, we’ve got great authors who love to travel, meet readers, talk about all different sorts of subjects, and sign books. We’ve got some great upcoming opportunities for you to meet, interact with, and even eat with your favorite UPK authors. As always, you can also keep track of the UPK Google Calendar online at www.kentuckypress.com.

October 1 @ 11:30 am

In the Kitchen with Maggie Green, author of The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook

Make reservations now for a special luncheon with Maggie Green, hosted by Chef Ouita Michel at the Holly Hill Inn in Midway, KY. Each guest will be treated to a multicourse menu created with recipes from The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook as well as receive a signed copy of the book. Green will also discuss cookbook trends and how she was inspired to write her book.

Tickets are $50, call Donna at (859) 846-4732 for reservations.

Saturday, October 8 at 1 pm

Cooking with UPK at the Lexington Incredible Food Show

Chef Albert W.A. Schmid, author of The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook, and Maggie Green, author of The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook will be on hand at the Lexington Incredible Food Show, signing books at the Incredible Food Show Bookstore sponsored by Joseph-Beth. Schmid will begin signing at 1 pm, and Green will begin signing at 2 pm.

Learn more about the Lexington Incredible Food Show here.

Thursday, October 20 @ 7 pm

WKU Libraries presents Far Away Places: “The Peace Corps: A Historical and Kentucky Perspective”

Jack and Angene Wilson, authors of Voices from the Peace Corps: Fifty Years of Kentucky Volunteers will be talking and signing books at the Barnes & Noble at 1680 Campbell Lane, Bowling Green, KY.

Admission is free, and no pre-registration is required.

Saturday, October 22 10 am – 4 pm in Cincinnati, OH

The Books by the Banks Festival feat. LOTS of UPK authors, Presented by: The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, University of Cincinnati, The Mercantile Library, Clermont County Public Library, Northern Kentucky University W. Frank Steely Library, and Joseph-Beth Booksellers.

The following UPK authors will be signing books at this year’s annual Books by the Banks Festival at the Duke Energy Center in Cincinnati:

Albert W.A. Schmid: The Kentucky Bourbon Cookbook
Maggie Green: The Kentucky Fresh Cookbook
Brad Asher: Cecelia and Fanny: The Remarkable Friendship Between an Escaped Slave and Her Former Mistress
Stanley Hedeen: Big Bone Lick: The Cradle of American Paleontology
Troy Jackson: Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader
William Lynwood Montell: Tales From Kentucky Sheriffs
James A. Ramage & Andrea S. Watkins: Kentucky Rising: Democracy, Slavery, and Culture from the Early Republic to the Civil War

Hope to see you at any or all of these great events!

Watch your favorite UPK authors from C-Span’s trip to Frankfort

September 15, 2011

Did you forget to set your DVR for C-Span‘s special feature on the Kentucky Book Fair a few weeks ago? In case you missed it, C-Span’s LCV Cities Tour visited Frankfort and highlighted some of your favorite UPK authors before the 30th Anniversary of the Kentucky Book Fair (Coming up Saturday, November 12!) Check out the clips below to hear some of our authors talk about their newest books!