University of Arkansas Press Is Having a Holiday Sale Through Dec. 31

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press is running a holiday sale providing 20 percent off on all books, now through Dec. 31, with free shipping to University of Arkansas campus addresses.

The offer is good on any book published or distributed by the University of Arkansas Press. Non-campus addresses will be charged standard shipping rates.

The press publishes and distributes books that make great gifts for anyone with an interest in Arkansas history and culture, poetry, middle east studies, sports, nature, and American and southern history. While many university presses are known for their more arcane and academic offerings, a number of recent University of Arkansas Press books have shown mainstream appeal and received national attention.  These include Medgar Evers: Mississippi Martyr; Camp Nine, a novel set in WWII-era Japanese internment camp; Roy Reed’s memoir Beware of Limbo Dancers; and Unbelievable Happiness and Final Sorrow: The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Marriage. There have also been some standouts among the books the press distributes for other publishers, most spectacularly Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany, published by Butler Center Books, which was reviewed in the New York Times and is currently in its third printing.

The U of A press has been known as a publisher of poetry since it was founded in 1980. Melissa King, director of sales and marketing, said, “A great selection for any poetry bookshelf is Billy Collins’s The Apple That Astonished Paris.” Collins, who had his first book published by the press in 1988, went on to become U.S. poet laureate. King also recommends The Geography of the Forehead and Making Love to Roget’s Wife, by Ron Koertge. “These books are nice companion pieces to Collins and are enjoyable for some of the same reasons, including a delightful sense of humor.” Frank Stanford, author of The Light the Dead See, has a near cult-like following and is another interesting choice, King added.

The press also sells Arkansas photographer Tim Ernst’s books, including his 2013 calendar, a great gift for only $12 with the discount, and books from the Ozark Society Foundation, with offerings such as the Wildflowers of Arkansas and Arkansas Butterflies and Moths.

For Arkansas history buffs, some of the books in the press’s Arkansas Classics series are a nice choice, King said. Those include Life in the Leatherwoods by John Quincy Wolf, A Journal of Travels into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819 by Thomas Nuttall, The Life and Adventures of an Arkansaw Doctor by David Rattlehead, The White River Chronicles of S.C. Turnbo, and Rude Pursuits and Rugged Peaks: Schoolcraft’s Ozark Journal, 1818-1819.

A recent exchange on the very active Arkansas History listserv managed by the University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections Department asked for significant books on Arkansas, and answers that popped up frequently included Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919; Ruled by Race: Black/White Relations in Arkansas from Slavery to the Present; History of the Mosaic Templars of America; Daisy Bates’s memoir The Long Shadow of Little Rock; Jelly Roll: A Black Neighborhood in a Southern Mill Town; Cavorting on the Devil’s Fork: The Pete Whetstone Letters of C.F.M. Noland; and ‘anything by Margaret Bolsterli, Morris Arnold, or Vance Randolph’.”

Brian King, assistant director and editorial and production manager, who has been with the press for 18 years, mentioned Ozark Vernacular Houses: A Study of Rural Homeplaces in the Arkansas Ozarks 1830-1930 as a book he has particular regard for that has strong connections to Fayetteville. He also recommended Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics, which he called perfect for a poetry reader and also anyone who writes poetry. “That book is really about art and how it functions,” he said. “The editors, among them Maxine Kumin, selected works in which poets not only define what poetry is but also describe how it is conceived of and made.”

David Scott Cunningham, project editor at the press, recommended Don’t Leave Hungry: Fifty years of Southern Poetry Review. “Arranged by decade, it’s an elegantly typeset concordance to the rise of Southern literary pride,” Cunningham said.

Davis McCombs, creative writing professor at the University of Arkansas, suggested Elizabeth Hadaway’s book of poetry, Fire Baton. “Hadaway's poems, which are as exquisitely crafted as any I know being written today, are a terrific and original mixture of high culture erudition and pop-culture pizazz,” he said.

Michael Pierce, associate professor of history at the U of A, recommended Pea Ridge and Prairie Grove by William Baxter, saying the book “should be required reading for those interested in the Civil War in Arkansas as we celebrate the 150th anniversary of that great struggle. A minister and educator, Baxter provides a first-hand account of how the war played out in Fayetteville — guerrilla warfare, occupations, dislocations, and deprivations — rather than an examination of the battles. A devoted Unionist, Baxter nonetheless expresses sympathy for the honorable people on both sides.”

The books mentioned here are only a few of the over 700 titles currently available from the University of Arkansas Press. Visit www.uapress.com to view all of the press’s available titles, email mak001@uark.edu to request a twice-a-year catalog, or call 479-575-3634 and mention the “holiday discount” to take advantage of this offer, now through Dec. 31.