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SuperJail Warden wrote:

When you guys choose non-fiction, are there any guidelines you follow? I mentioned that both of my ISIS books were from university presses. I don't trust any history or political science books that didn't come out of a university press or were published by a tenured professor. The Putin book is an exception because of the NYT. Too much crap out there like the Bill O'Rielly series.

there are a lot of other good presses that are non-university, just a different market (and i don't say that because it's temporarily an industry i'm involved in). university presses are good for monographs and, though less often, polemics. there are plenty of imprints attached to leading journals and other organs of public opinion. NYRB do a good series. publishers such as verso offer a 'radical' or 'critically engaged' perspective. if you just go to university presses, you're getting a rather specific type of history. to say that the major non-fiction publishers, being trade publishers rather than academic, are doing 'lesser' history is just stupid. one puts more focus on new research, meticulous scholarship (including the settling of academic scores), and paratextual stuff (appendices, bibliographies, indexes, concordances). the other prioritises narrative and interpretation. they are both forms of 'good history work'.

also, appealing to 'yale' or 'oxford' as a brand for university presses doesn't really matter. the ranking of a university doesn't correlate exactly with the quality of its university press. they are almost entirely separate entities in terms of budget and specialism. you could go to just about any major university press and get a monograph of the same quality as an OUP/CUP tome.

Last edited by uziq (2017-01-04 18:18:45)

uziq wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

When you guys choose non-fiction, are there any guidelines you follow? I mentioned that both of my ISIS books were from university presses. I don't trust any history or political science books that didn't come out of a university press or were published by a tenured professor. The Putin book is an exception because of the NYT. Too much crap out there like the Bill O'Rielly series.

there are a lot of other good presses that are non-university, just a different market (and i don't say that because i'm temporarily an industry i'm involved in). university presses are good for monographs and, though less often, polemics. there are plenty of imprints attached to leading journals and other organs of public opinion. NYRB do a good series. publishers such as verso offer a 'radical' or 'critically engaged' perspective. if you just go to university presses, you're getting a rather specific type of history. to say that the major non-fiction publishers, being trade publishers rather than academic, are doing 'lesser' history is just stupid. one puts more focus on new research, meticulous scholarship (including the settling of academic scores), and paratextual stuff (appendices, bibliographies, indexes, concordances). the other prioritises narrative and interpretation. they are both forms of 'good history work'.

also, appealing to 'yale' or 'oxford' as a brand for university presses doesn't really matter. the ranking of a university doesn't correlate exactly with the quality of its university press. they are almost entirely separate entities in terms of budget and specialism. you could go to just about any major university press and get a monograph of the same quality as an OUP/CUP tome.

You are in the industry and it would be dumb for me to try to argue this out with you. I will just say in my experience the quality of history books I read from university presses were better and more referenced than the stuff I got from elsewhere or the history section of Barnes and Noble. Of course there are exceptions like Hobsbawn whose Age of Revolution series is published by Vintage Press. But he was a historian so it goes back to my point about still preferring academics. Interestingly the good history books I have from non-university presses are from Vintage Press. Almost all of them actually.

While you are here, how do university presses work? Does the school print the books themselves or do they just put up the funding for a printer and vet the work they send to it? I saw my school's press building and it wasn't big but the university's website has hundreds of books for sale.

SuperJail Warden wrote:

uziq wrote:

SuperJail Warden wrote:

When you guys choose non-fiction, are there any guidelines you follow? I mentioned that both of my ISIS books were from university presses. I don't trust any history or political science books that didn't come out of a university press or were published by a tenured professor. The Putin book is an exception because of the NYT. Too much crap out there like the Bill O'Rielly series.

there are a lot of other good presses that are non-university, just a different market (and i don't say that because i'm temporarily an industry i'm involved in). university presses are good for monographs and, though less often, polemics. there are plenty of imprints attached to leading journals and other organs of public opinion. NYRB do a good series. publishers such as verso offer a 'radical' or 'critically engaged' perspective. if you just go to university presses, you're getting a rather specific type of history. to say that the major non-fiction publishers, being trade publishers rather than academic, are doing 'lesser' history is just stupid. one puts more focus on new research, meticulous scholarship (including the settling of academic scores), and paratextual stuff (appendices, bibliographies, indexes, concordances). the other prioritises narrative and interpretation. they are both forms of 'good history work'.

also, appealing to 'yale' or 'oxford' as a brand for university presses doesn't really matter. the ranking of a university doesn't correlate exactly with the quality of its university press. they are almost entirely separate entities in terms of budget and specialism. you could go to just about any major university press and get a monograph of the same quality as an OUP/CUP tome.

You are in the industry and it would be dumb for me to try to argue this out with you. I will just say in my experience the quality of history books I read from university presses were better and more referenced than the stuff I got from elsewhere or the history section of Barnes and Noble. Of course there are exceptions like Hobsbawn whose Age of Revolution series is published by Vintage Press. But he was a historian so it goes back to my point about still preferring academics. Interestingly the good history books I have from non-university presses are from Vintage Press. Almost all of them actually.

i think you have quite a skewered view on what the non-academic market is. the fact you use the word 'historian' to talk about academics writing for university presses suggests you don't realise that there are lots of full-time 'historians' who don't write research. a great deal of 20th century and contemporary stuff won't be published by university presses because they are traditional and prefer to mull over european courts or clausewitz for the umpteenth time.

academic books are definitely better on paratextual scholarly stuff (obviously). but i will say again that many academics, particularly in niche subjects, cannot write for shit. a 320pp hardcover on the middle ages written by a medievalist ensconced in a university can be a torturous thing. academics are not so good at taking all their research materials and honing it into a lean, well-paced book. admittedly this isn't a problem if you're using the book as an academic reference, anyway, dipping in and out using the index as much as reading from cover to cover. but there's a giant market and a big reading public in between 'exhaustive monograph' and 'bill o'reilly hires a ghost writer'.

to kJ's point above about reading another account of a war: fair enough. doesn't interest me, either. but there are enthusiasts and fanatics for every period, conflict, genre, whatever. i can read endless books on modernism and 20th century art – it's my thing. some people are fascinated with american civil war. the most written about person in history is napoleon (he beats jesus). some people really like their napoleonic history. you'll find the same ground gets covered and renewed every 10 years or so. that's when a good (non-academic) history writer can really make a difference. at this stage no one is going to unearth a great new fact or angle on the romanovs or henry viii. good writing and a personality make up for that. the academic version of this is that, where the fashions and paradigms of thought change every generation too, a new bunch of scholars will recycle the same events through a different jargon. marxist, feminist, constructivist, relativist, etc.

i'm not a big history reader, in any case. non-fiction for me normally means polemics, theory, criticism, philosophy, etc. check my goodreads, lug nuts.

Last edited by uziq (2017-01-04 18:15:55)

Shop Class as Soulcraft - Matthew B Crawford - Not bad, a different take on modern work life with some basic research to back up his arguments. I read it to validate my own ideas and that's what I got.

The Art of Mental Training - DC Gonzalez - Nice and short, has the absolute bare bones of mental training strategies for performance in sport and other things with slightly more of a warrior mindset. Not a lot of depth though.

Now reading The Quest - Daniel Yergin

50 books a year would be a huge stretch for me, 10-20 would be my absolute upper limit.

you're how old and still posting dragonball Z gifs? Jesus christ.

hmm i was 11ish when dragon ball z was on t.v.

that would have made newbie in like early 20's by then right?

SuperJail Warden wrote:

The next book I have is "Who Are We?: The Challenges to America's National Identity" by Samuel Huntington, the guy who wrote Clash of Civilizations. It sold out after the election because a lot of liberals were trying to make sense of how we lost so badly.

Got about halfway through it before I got bored. This is it if you never heard of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Are_W … l_Identity

The book was written in 2004 and has aged pretty badly.

tl;dr of the book: Huntington argues that the collapse of the Soviet Union proved that ideology alone wasn't enough to hold states together and that a shared national identity is needed. He goes onto argue that immigration from Mexico will cause the U.S. culture to shift and change in a way that permanently damages the country and divides the people living here. His solution is to change American culture and laws in order to better assimilate immigrants into a explicitly WASP culture. His two most important points would be to get Mexicans to speak English and to adopt Protestantism because of its superior qualities over the other forms of Christianity. 


Huntington was 78 at the time he wrote this book and it seems more of a "old man angry at changing world" than a deep warning about the coming collapse of American culture. The book is 13 years old. Mexicans not speaking English and liking the Pope seem trivial to about every challenge American culture has faced since 2004. War, economic collapse, drug abuse, mass automation, terrorism, etc. all seemed to do more harm to us than having to press 1 for English. Immigration from Mexico has almost reversed and Mexican Americans have spent the last year and a half affirming how American they were instead of retreating into isolation like he thought they were eventually going to do.


That is not to say that I think the book was trash. As I said before, I agree with him that ideology is not enough to hold a state together and that a shared national identity is important. A Christian national identity seems like it would work but he wants to make sure it is a damn protestant one which is silly and very 2004. Considering the threat of Islamic extremism and the abandoning of religion among Americans in general, I think trying to get people to abandon Catholicism in favor of his superior Protestantism is a stupid battle to pick.

New book I'm reading is "The Boys in the Boat"

Daniel James Brown’s robust book tells the story of the University of Washington’s 1936 eight-oar crew and their epic quest for an Olympic gold medal, a team that transformed the sport and grabbed the attention of millions of Americans. The sons of loggers, shipyard workers, and farmers, the boys defeated elite rivals first from eastern and British universities and finally the German crew rowing for Adolf Hitler in the Olympic games in Berlin, 1936.

The emotional heart of the story lies with one rower, Joe Rantz, a teenager without family or prospects, who rows not for glory, but to regain his shattered self-regard and to find a place he can call home. The crew is assembled  by an enigmatic coach and mentored by a visionary, eccentric British boat builder, but it is their trust in each other that makes them a victorious team. They remind the country of what can be done when everyone quite literally pulls together—a perfect melding of commitment, determination, and optimism.

Drawing on the boys’ own diaries and journals, their photos and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream, The Boys in the Boat is an irresistible story about beating the odds and finding hope in the most desperate of times—the improbable, intimate story of nine working-class boys from the American west who, in the depths of the Great Depression, showed the world what true grit really meant. It will appeal to readers of Erik Larson, Timothy Egan, James Bradley, and David Halberstam's The Amateurs.

I haven't started it yet...just picked it up yesterday.  I heard about it earlier last year on NPR, and then my aunt recently reminded me and recommended it.  Will keep everyone updated.

I got it for Christmas two or three years ago. Still haven't read it. Let me know how it goes.

will be about ...? you haven't graduated college? i thought you were a student like 5 years ago.

is getting two ba's different from getting a double major? if so, why wouldn't you just get a double major?

getting two undergraduate degrees is pretty much unheard of here.