In Insatiable City, Theresa McCulla probes the overt and covert ways that the production of food and the discourse about it both created and reinforced many strains of inequality in New Orleans, a city significantly defined by its foodways. Tracking the city’s economy from nineteenth-century chattel slavery to twentieth-century tourism, McCulla uses menus, cookbooks, newspapers, postcards, photography, and other material culture to limn the interplay among the production and reception of food, the inscription and reiteration of racial hierarchies, and the constant diminishment and exploit ..read more

In An Artificial History of Natural Intelligence, David W. Bates offers a new history of human intelligence that argues that humans know themselves by knowing their machines. In this excerpt from the book, David describes a philosophical malaise in our approach to AI and argues that we have come to a point when we must fundamentally rethink what it means to be human. The historical evolution and development of artificial intelligence (AI) has long been tied to the consolidation of cognitive science and the neurosciences. There has been, from the start of the digital age, a complex and mutuall ..read more

The University of Chicago Press is pleased to announce that Objects in Air: Objects and Their Outside around 1900 by Margareta Ingrid Christian is the recipient of the 2024 Gordon J. Laing Award. The award was presented by the University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos at a gala reception on April 24, 2024, in the City View Room of the David Rubenstein Forum at the University of Chicago. The Gordon J. Laing Award is conferred annually by vote of the Board of University Publications on the faculty author, editor, or translator whose book has brought the greatest distinction to the list of ..read more

University Presses like Chicago are committed to making available works that not only keep us informed but also help us to better understand the world and climate around us. To celebrate Earth Day, we have put together a reading list of recent books (and a few forthcoming ones!) from Chicago and our client publishers that help illuminate different aspects of our planet. From the first two books in Chicago’s new Earth Day series—Mark E. Hauber’s Bird Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Avian Lives and Marty Crump’s Fall 2024 title Frog Day: A Story of 24 Hours and 24 Amphibian Lives, both illustrat ..read more

One of the University of Chicago Press’s newest distributed client presses is Tupelo Press, noted literary publisher of poetry and prose. In celebration of our new collaboration with Tupelo—and of National Poetry Month in April—we are delighted to share some of Tupelo’s thoughts about their history, their list, and their future. Throughout April, shop our collection of new poetry books on Bookshop, or order directly from our website using the promo code POETRYMONTH to take 40% off all month long. Can you give us a brief history of Tupelo? Jeffrey Levine launched Tupelo Press as a nonprofit pu ..read more

As we continue our celebration of National Poetry Month, we’re excited to share a conversation between Nin Andrews, author of fifteen poetry collections, including her forthcoming collection Son of a Bird, and January Gill O’Neil, whose new book, Glitter Road, was published by CavanKerry Press earlier this year. January shares her guiding influences, how Emmett Till’s story is woven into her own, and how she honors both the light and the darkness in her writing. Nin Andrews: Many years ago, I read with January Gill O’Neil at an independent bookstore in Brookline, Massachusetts. What a memorab ..read more

Few—if any—of us are looking forward to the upcoming 2024 Election season. During such a historically tumultuous year, most Americans are chiefly concerned with safeguarding their emotional and mental wellbeing while being engaged political citizens. Nothing about this election will be simple or inconsequential—and that is precisely why it matters now more than ever to engage with the massive questions lying before our nation.    As we enter the heat of the election season, we’d like to draw your attention to a handful of thought-provoking, salient books that beg us to consider our p ..read more

In honor of National Poetry Month, celebrated every April, we’re sharing a roundup of poetry collections that have been published within the last year. Featuring Chicago’s Phoenix Poets Series as well as books from our distributed client presses, these books touch on subjects like race, identity, and queerness, national borders and the limits of language, the beauty of nature, and the challenges of illness and caretaking. You’ll find moving collections from up-and-coming poets at Acre Books, Autumn House, CavanKerry Press, Omnidawn, and Seagull Books—and new to us this year, Tupelo Press. Not ..read more

This month on the blog, we catch up with executive editor Karen Levine to hear about her career path, her work in acquiring art and ancient studies books for the Press, and some of her favorite women artists, writers, and historical figures. First of all, can you tell us a little about your path in publishing and what led you to UCP? I never wanted to do anything else. Once upon a time, one of my undergraduate advisors at Occidental College, the poet Martha Ronk, helped me line up an internship at the small LA literary publisher Sun & Moon Press (RIP). My first job out of college was as a ..read more

Opening day 2024 is here! However, unless you are a Diamondbacks fan, you were probably disappointed with your team in 2023. (In Chicago, we got a double dose of disappointment.) Perhaps you aren’t hopeful for the 2024 season. If that’s the case, why not dip into baseball’s storied past? After all, baseball is all about stories. You can indulge in your love of the game without dwelling on past defeats. We’ve got stories of good guys and bad guys, small ball and stadiums, and even some sabermetrics. Enjoy! close-up baseball on the infield Tinker to Evers to Chance The Chicago Cubs and the Dawn ..read more