ShelfLife@Texas

What does a navy do when it is not at war? From 1922 to 1933, the U.S. Navy kept the peace in the volatile western Pacific.

In “Diplomats in Blue: U.S. Naval Officers in China, 1922-1933” (University Press of Florida, 2009), Professor Emeritus of History William R. Braisted depicts a bygone world in which admirals played almost as important a role as ambassadors in representing American interests abroad.

During peace-time, high-ranking naval officers worked first to protect American citizens and American…

“My thesis is, in a nutshell, that love is in fact even more profound and basic to our being than most of our talk about it would suggest,” writes the late philosopher Robert Solomon in the preface to “About Love: Reinventing Romance For Our Times” (1988, 1994, 2006).

Solomon, the former Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy and a distinguished teaching professor, passed away in 2007 at the age of 64. But his ideas about life, love, relationships and sex,…

“Why does some of the best poetry emerge from the charred ruins of a tortured relationship?” asks Betsy Berry, lecturer in the Department of English.

That’s the question students tackle in her popular course, “Literary Marriages from Hell,” which examines the lives of doomed literary couples and the masterpieces of literature they produced.

Students read books such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night,” which immortalized his relationship with his wife Zelda (who suffered from schizophrenia), and analyze poems such as…

While statistics vary, watchdog organizations estimate the pornography industry generates between $10 and $15 billion a year in the United States. By comparison, the Hollywood box office generates about $10 billion a year.

For several years, Associate Professor of Journalism Robert Jensen researched the pornography industry by interviewing producers, analyzing the films they make, following the trade press and speaking with pornography consumers via formal and informal interviews. The result is “Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity” (South End Press,…

Each year, Valentine’s Day offers the opportunity for couples to celebrate their love with lush red roses, candlelit dinners and heart-shaped boxes filled with chocolate confections.

However, the commercialized celebration of romantic love doesn’t often acknowledge the darker side of many relationships, which may include obsession, jealousy and even murder.

In his recent research, David Buss, UT professor of psychology and leading researcher in the field of evolutionary psychology, delves into the underbelly of romantic relationships to shed light on the…

In Greek mythology, Narcissus’ obsession with his reflection in a pool of water ultimately led to his death. For thousands of years, the cautionary tale has served as rich fodder for artists and philosophers, and even became the basis for Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of narcissism.

UT alumna Lisa Leit (Ph.D. Human Ecology, ‘08) further explores the psychological concept in “Conversational Narcissism in Marriage “ (VDM Verlag, 2008), which examines how narcissistic attention-seeking behavior in communication affects marital stability.

Central features of narcissism…

Australian novelist Peter Carey lands on campus this spring as the Michener Center’s Residency Award Author. The special residency program brings writers of international acclaim to the center each year for short, intensive seminars.

Carey’s latest book, “His Illegal Self,” is out in paperback from Vintage this month, and like each of his ten novels, it is boldly inventive and tackles new territory.

Whether drawing upon his own experience as an advertising executive-turned-commune dweller in “Bliss,” or re-imagining the life of a Dickens’…

University of Texas law professor Tom McGarity will be at BookPeople this Saturday, Feb. 7, at 3 p.m. to discuss and sign his latest book, “The Preemption War: When Federal Bureaucracies Trump Local Juries” (Yale University Press, 2008).

McGarity, a regulatory law expert, says most consumers would be surprised to learn that the doors to the local courthouses are in jeopardy of being closed to them if they have been injured by a defective product, sickened by contaminated food, or disabled…

Four years ago, Associate Professor of Government Ami Pedahzur investigated the use of human bombs in terrorist attacks around the world in the 2005 book “Suicide Terrorism” (Polity).

Now, after a decade of studying terrorism, he turns his attention to Israel’s battle in “The Israeli Secret Services and the Struggle Against Terrorism” (Columbia University Press, 2009).

In the book, Pedahzur argues that Israel’s counterrorism policy has not been successsful. To learn why, read the Austin American-Statesman’s interview with Pedahzur in the Jan. 18…

One of the more unusual items in the Evelyn Waugh collection at the Harry Ransom Center is a book known as the “Victorian Blood Book.”

The oblong decoupage book features more than 40 pages of carefully cut-out and assembled engravings from books, all embellished with hand-colored drops of blood and religious commentaries (see inset). The emphasis throughout is on images of the crucifixion, birds and snakes, all dripping with blood.

Learn more about this odd and rather grotesque precursor to modern-day scrapbooks…