Sarah Gold

Yale University Press at 100

Met with Brenda King from Yale yesterday to go over the press’s fall list.The press turned 100 this year, and its upcoming lead title is by noted bibliophile Nicholas Basbanes: A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908–2008.

But the book on Yale’s list that I’m most looking forward to is Joseph Epstein’s on Fred Astaire for the Icons of America series.

Still, the title they’re most optimistic about saleswise is Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Com-mander’s War in Iraq by Peter R. Mansoor. Previewing fall university press books on inside-highered.com, Scott McLemee says: “The title most likely to get significant attention from the press is probably Baghdad at Sunrise...   it arrives with a blurb from Gen. David Petraeus calling the book ‘a must read for soldiers, scholars, and policymakers alike.’ ” (For laughs, scroll down to the first comment, by a huffy reader who wants to know more about Amazon’s “Kimble.”)

McLemee is reporting his BEA discoveries, which include the poor booth locations university presses receive. For anyone who follows these presses regularly, this is an old story. The exceptions are the largest and most prestigious presses (some of whom band together to get a central location). Even sadder is the fact that smaller, regional presses are deciding not to attend BEA at all.

What’s in My Bookbag: Fall books are starting to pour in, and I’m building my stash. Top of the pile is Jonathan Sarna’s A Time to Every Purpose: Letters to a Young Jew, part of Ba-sic’s excellent “Letters to a Young…” series (initiated by John Donatich, who is now, coinci-dentally, at Yale University Press). The reason I’m reading this is not that Sarna and I went to the same Jewish day school (though we did), but because I’m eager to know what a leading scholar of American Jewish history has to say to the next generation about “the laughter and the tears, the teachings and the memories, the hopes and the fears that characterize the Jewish holiday cycle.” It’s set to pub in September, in time for the High Holy Days.

Posted by Sarah Gold on June 6, 2008 | Comments (0)