ShelfLife@Texas

University of Texas law professor Kristine A. Huskey will discuss and sign her new book, “Justice at Guantanamo: One Woman’s Odyssey and Her Crusade for Human Rights,” at BookPeople at 7 p.m., Thursday, October 22.

Huskey, who teaches in the Law School’s National Security Clinic and is a fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, will also talk about the future of Guantanamo; and the current federal policy on preventive detention.

“Justice at Guantanamo” (Lyons Press, June 2009) is a memoir,
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The Harry Ransom Center kicked off Poe Mania, in anticipation of the exhibition “From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe,” which is now open.

Several Poe-centric online features were unveiled:

• View a video preview of “From Out That Shadow: The Life and Legacy of Edgar Allan Poe.”

• Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” has been one of his most popular poems since its publication in 1845 in the New York Evening Mirror newspaper. This popularity has led
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The Harry Ransom Center has introduced the Web exhibition “Sanora Babb: Stories From the American High Plains,” which highlights the work of American novelist Sanora Babb (1907-2005). Babb drew on the natural beauty of the American High Plains and the difficult conditions of her childhood there to give voice to a people who left little written record of their own lives and who have received scant representation in history.

The exhibition highlights Babb’s accomplishments as a fiction writer and illustrates with historical photographs
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Nadine Eckhardt will read from her memoir Duchess of Palms on March 31 at 5:30 p.m. in the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum.

In her funny and honest memoir, Eckhardt tells the remarkable story of a “fifties girl” who lived through the politically powerful men in her life, acclaimed political novelist Bill Brammer and, later, U.S. Congressman Bob Eckhardt.

From her beginnings as a teenage “Duchess of Palms” beauty queen, to her entrée into the political and literary circles of Washington D.C.
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Joanna Hitchcock is director of the University of Texas Press. She is a former president of the Association of American University Presses and a founding member of the Texas Book Festival Advisory Committee.

UT Press publishes more than 100 books a year in a variety of fields for scholars and students throughout the world, as well as books on the history, arts and culture of Texas.

“Because I am involved professionally with the publication of scholarship, most of the books I
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“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
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Like no other mass medium, books have the ability to crystallize a point in history or serve as a catalyst for public opinion.

Great books can foster nationwide discussion or provide a framework for the way people understand an issue. And every once in a while, a book comes along that changes everything.

Last winter, College of Liberal Arts professors took readers on a literary journey through U.S. history in the feature “Books that Changed America.” The story profiled seven bestselling
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Although staff at UT Libraries don’t expect to see the death of the book in its traditional printed form anytime soon, they aren’t taking any chances. Staff members are constantly seeking new ways to integrate technology with long-standing library practices.

One new feature recently launched by the libraries is Longhorn Reviews, a Web 2.0 tool for the Library Catalog that allows users to submit reviews of titles housed at the university.

Matt Lisle, libraries information analyst and Longhorn Reviews project member, says user-generated
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Attention book lovers, bibliophiles, literary scholars and casual readers. Today, the Office of Public Affairs has launched ShelfLife@Texas, a blog for readers to discuss literature, book news and literary events at The University of Texas at Austin.

ShelfLife will offer readers an inside look at the university’s vibrant community of authors. Our contributors will write about books by faculty and staff members, students and alumni of the university, on topics ranging from the arts, history and the humanities, to business,
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