Alan Thomas
@agthomas.bsky.social
360 followers 180 following 17 posts
Editorial Director, University of Chicago Press. On book publishing, literature, and photography. https://linktr.ee/alnthomas
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Reposted by Alan Thomas
Oh, wow! Thrilled by this, and a huge thanks to both @longreads.com, which has done so much to make the web a place for good writing, and @placesjournal.bsky.social, which is one of the preeminent venues for anything even remotely related to place, landscape, space, architecture, etc.
“A Map of Radical Bewilderment” by @daeganmiller.bsky.social is featured this week on @longreads.com, in a Reading List on cartographic power and possibility.

A good reminder to return to Miller’s essay, which makes the argument that we can wander in a landscape without insisting it be profitable.
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#ACLA2025 may be ending, but our virtual exhibit is still open! Browse our virtual exhibit and get 30% off and free domestic shipping using code EX58016: bit.ly/UCPEXACLA.
Six book covers rotating clockwise: On Close Reading, Throw Yourself Away, The Barthes Fantastic, Slips of the Mind, Reading Hegel, Amphion.
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Wonderful in-depth piece, with historic California coast photos. The seas are coming for us, every one, you ladies and you gentlemen
"Were you to walk along the beach, keeping a consistent distance from the water, you’d pass through swaths of private land and public land," writes Andrew Malmuth.

California has long allowed an ambiguous boundary on its coastline. Now, climate change is testing the limits of a fragile compromise.
Property and Permanence on the California Coastline
California has long allowed an ambiguous boundary between public and private land along its coast. Climate change is testing the limits of this compromise.
placesjournal.org
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Celebrate Daniel Mendelsohn's landmark new translation of one of the greatest epics of all time, THE ODYSSEY. Join him in person for events around the country this spring to honor this work & his magnificent feat of translation, acclaimed by poets & classicists alike.
New in the Thinking Literature series: Jennifer Soong’s SLIPS OF THE MIND: POETRY AS FORGETTING and Robert Scott’s READING HEGEL: IRONY, RECOLLECTION, CRITIQUE. 30% off with code #UCPNEW on the UChicago Press website @jennifersoong.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social
Great piece on university presses now: “The publishers who don’t run away.”
Excited to have a new piece in the Chronicle of Higher Ed (@chronicle.com). I’ve been in so many exchanges with people who’ve never heard anything happy about university presses. So I wrote an essay to share with them.
Opinion | This Is a Golden Age for University Presses
The focus on efficiency and innovation misses the point: We are producing fabulous books.
www.chronicle.com
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In ON CLOSE READING, John Guillory addresses two puzzles: why the New Critics, who supposedly emphasized close reading, rarely used the term, and why scholars struggle to define it. Guillory explains how these puzzles are connected on our blog. Read more here: https://buff.ly/40pR0bL
Thinking of Shirley Hazzard, who would have been 94 today. This picture is from my last visit with her, in 2014: she is holding her 1963 portrait by Sam Falk. Savor at least a paragraph today from her great novels, Transit of Venus and The Great Fire.
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Congratulations to Jesse McCarthy, author of THE BLUE PERIOD, which has been longlisted for the National Books Critics Circle Awards in Criticism. Part of our Thinking Literature series, THE BLUE PERIOD investigates Black writing in the Cold War era.
2024 NBCC Awards Longlist: Criticism - National Book Critics Circle
Black Meme: A History of the Images that Make Us by Legacy Russell (Verso) The Blue Period: Black Writing in the Early Cold War by Jesse McCarthy (University of Chicago)
buff.ly
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Thrilled that My Dark Room (University of Chicago Press) has been awarded an honorable mention for the MLA’s 2023 James Russell Lowell Prize! 💫✨💫 www.mla.org/content/down...
www.mla.org
Congratulations, Julie!
Cover reveal — Allison Carruth’s “Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech” unmasks the tech industry’s quasi-religious faith in environmental engineering. Forthcoming in January. Preorder now with code UCPNEW for 30% off: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
John Guillory’s “On Close Reading” is here! See also Scott Newstok’s companion website, Close Reading Archive: www.closereadingarchive.org

Orders placed directly with Chicago are shipping now (30% off with promo code UCPNEW): tinyurl.com/4ew4tm6h
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I will make my usual comment about pardons:

Any executive who has pardon power and does not specifically commit at least a portion of their time to regularly, expeditiously reviewing and acting on pardon requests from nobodies is failing a very clear moral test.
“No other family member wanted it”?!?!
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New this fall, the 11th and 12th books in Chicago’s Thinking Literature series: Julia Jarcho’s “Throw Yourself Away: Writing & Masochism” and Leah Middlebrook’s “Amphion: Lyre, Poetry, & Politics in Modernity.” @uchicagopress.bsky.social
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FIELD NOTES: REPAIR #4

The latest in the series, feat. words by Simon Sadler, @tamigraph.bsky.social, Nina Briggs, @kavitaurbanist.bsky.social, Aaron Cayer, Ifeoma Ebo, Elke Krasny, @johanpries.bsky.social, Kyle Spence, Phineas Harper & Gabu Heindl.

Observations on repair in a broken world:
Attending the American Studies meeting in Baltimore? I’ll be there and eager to see you at the UChicago Press booth. Check out our featured titles here: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/vi... @uchicagopress.bsky.social
press.uchicago.edu
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A review of The Virtual Sentence, eight writing exercises by Kyle Booten, D. Graham Burnett, Brian Dillon, Jeff Dolven, Jan Mieszkowski, Sally O’Reilly, Mónica de la Torre, and Elena Vogman.
You Could Use the Exercise
In the face of AI, the time is right to practice our writing techniques for invention and surprise.
www.publicbooks.org
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NEXT Weds. 11/20. Throw Yourself Away: Writing and Masochism. A Book Talk with Julia Jarcho. 4pm Pembroke Hall 305. Responses from Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in English Kevin Quashie & Asst. Professor of English Kyle C. Frisina (Holy Cross). Learn more: https://buff.ly/40iy403