January 2009

Q&A with Liza Wieland, author of A Watch of Nightingales

by The University of Michigan Press January 29, 2009

University of Michigan Press: What is your book about? Liza Wieland: The novel takes place in present-day Washington, D.C., and in England, in 1977, both in London and in a girl’s boarding school near Wales. The two main characters are an American, named Mara, and a Pakistani, called Kokila. They meet at the boarding school in 1977 when Mara’s an exchange student and Kokila is finishing there, headed for university, at Cambridge. They meet again in Washington, D.C. where Mara is the widow of the headmaster of a boy’s school, and Kokila is the mother of one of the students. [...]

Q & A with Douglas Edlin- author of Judges and Unjust Laws

by kris bishop January 28, 2009

In Judges and Unjust Laws, Douglas E. Edlin uses case law analysis, legal theory, constitutional history, and political philosophy to examine the power of judicial review in the common law tradition. Edlin is Associate Professor of Political Science at Dickinson College. Is suspending habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay just? UM Press: If you could name one goal you have for this book, what would it be? Douglas Edlin: To start people thinking that unjust laws don’t just create a moral vs. legal problem for judges and to focus attention on the genuine historical and theoretical bases for judicial review in [...]

Reginal Shepherd named finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award

by The University of Michigan Press January 27, 2009

Reginald Shepherd was named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award this weekend for his Poets on Poetry series collection, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry. Shepherd is one of the rare writers who could transcend the boundaries between poetry and prose, and never more so than in his essays on poetry itself. Under pressure to represent both black men and gay men, he said he turned to poetry as a way to escape those kinds of limitations and boundaries. “Orpheus” could easily have been a dry academic monograph, but instead [...]

Op-Ed: What President Obama Can Learn from Gov. Milliken

by January 26, 2009

President-Elect Barack Obama has been making conciliatory gestures to those who opposed him since he won the election in November, bringing to mind the governing style of Michigan’s longest-serving chief executive: William G. Milliken. Obama will take the Presidential oath in the same month that marks the 40th anniversary of Milliken’s swearing-in. Are there lessons the new President–and we–can draw from the moderate Republican Milliken’s nearly 14-year span as governor? The answer is a qualified “yes,” despite the change in political style, tone and substance between 1969 and 2009. Milliken was able to do two things at once–something that modern [...]

On BBC this Sunday: Steve Ziliak, author of The Cult of Statistical Significance

by kris bishop January 23, 2009

Originally published by: BBC Radio 4's More or Less, with interviewer Tim Harford, is broadcast on Friday, 23 January at 1330 GMT and will be repeated on Sunday, 25 January at 2000 GMT (2:00 PM eastern, 3:00 PM central). Click to view details or to listen in: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/more_or_less/7845787.stm Click here to enter the controversial world of The Cult of Statistical Significance. Steve Ziliak, author of "The Cult" The figures on fertility The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority has the world's largest database on artificial insemination. But how does the HFEA make all this information useful to anxious couples considering having [...]

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