Temple University Press’s Annual Holiday Give and Get

This week in North Philly Notes, the staff at Temple University Press suggest the Temple University Press books they would give along with some non-Temple University Press titles they hope to read and receive this holiday season. 

Mary Rose Muccie, Director

Give: My family is full of Philadelphia sports fans, so there are two recent Press titles that make perfect gifts for them. Stan Hochman Unfiltered, edited by Gloria Hochman, contains almost 100 Philadelphia Daily News columns by the late sportswriter.  Columns by another late Daily News sportswriter, Phil Jasner, are collected by his son Andy in Phil Jasner “On the Case”. Jasner covered the 76ers for almost 30 years, while Hochman’s columns cover all sports. Both collections are great reads and capture Philly sports hits and misses, many of which fans will never forget.

Get: I already gifted myself and have recommended to numerous friends Ronan Farrow’s Catch and Kill. In it, Farrow details his investigation into Harvey Weinstein and the lengths powerful men went to to cover it up, as well as the intimidation tactics used against him as he dug for the truth.  It’s a riveting account of the ways money and power were used to protect predators and silence women, and the strength and courage of those women as they stood against it.

Karen Baker, Associate Director, Financial Manager
Give: I would like to give Contested Image by Laura Holzman because my family is from Philadelphia and was always very interested in art and the local museums.

Get: I would like to receive I’m a Good Dog: Pit Bulls, America’s Most Beautiful (and Misunderstood) Pet, because I have a pit bull, and while I know how great they are, I would like to read the stories of others and all of their inspirational stories.

Ashley Petrucci, Rights and Contracts Coordinator and Editorial Assistant

Give: Invisible People: Stories of Lives at the Margins by Alex Tizon and edited by Sam Howe Verhovek: Like many others, I saw “My Family’s Slave” from The Atlantic shared on Reddit back in 2017 and found Lola’s tale so compelling that I made sure to pass the article along to several friends.  Working on this book a little over a year later was such a pleasant surprise, and I’m excited to have a whole book of Alex’s work to share with the same friends that I sent the story to back in 2017.

Get: None!  I have two tall bookcases full of books, so I don’t think I can fit anymore!  As a matter of fact, I should probably begin “the purge” (only to then replace them with more books, I’m sure…)

Aaron Javsicas, Editor-in-Chief

Give: Monument Lab: Creative Speculations for Philadelphia. This is a catalog of the temporary monuments installed throughout the city in Fall 2017 in answer to the question, “What is an appropriate monument for the current city of Philadelphia?” It’s the latest book to emerge from our long collaboration with Mural Arts Philadelphia, and it’s in some ways the boiled-down essence of what Temple University Press publishing is all about. It’s daring, it’s urban, and it’s about Philly, and it makes an important contribution to scholarship with writing that’s approachable for any reader. It’s also beautifully designed and illustrated. Very, very giftable. Gift it.

Get: What I’d really like to get is that one manuscript I’ve been waiting on. Meanwhile, I hope someone gives me Eric Loomis’s A History of America in Ten Strikes. The labor movement in this country has endured body blow after body blow, and a book rounding up the moments in our history when labor action caused fundamental change seems like a smart way to frame how it’s been definitionally important and could be again.

Ryan Mulligan, Editor,

Give: Stan Hochman Unfiltered, Sports columnists today tend to be either passionate avatars of their cities, channeling the frustrated voice of the people into provocative takes, or erudite scribes digging into the human interest stories of the people behind the uniforms. Stan Hochman brought the best both in his columns and he started doing it before most any other writer was doing either. His writing was acerbic, cathartic, funny, and revealing.

Get: The Nickel Boys. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad was one of my favorite books of the past decade so sign me up for his next effort.

Sarah Munroe, Editor

Give: Set in Kamchatka, Julia Phillips’s Disappearing Earth is billed as a mystery because two young girls disappear in the very beginning. But the way the story unfolds is so much more. Each chapter is told from a different person’s perspective and the characters overlap in each others’ stories in big and small ways throughout. Underneath runs the current of the girls’ disappearance and we see the ripples throughout other lives. Phillips swiftly and deftly brings the reader into each new life in such a compelling way that I wanted to read a whole book about each of the protagonists. Disclaimer: I could be biased because there’s a scene in which a couple encounters a bear while camping, which happened to my husband and I this summer because of our overly zealous small dog.  

Get:  A two-fer: Lawn People: How Grasses Weeds and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are by Paul Robbins and Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have by Tatiana Schlossberg. I’ll soon be moving to a house with an actual yard that’s mine to care for the first time in my adult life, and I frequently worry about climate change, famine, and water scarcity. What I do when I worry is read about my worry. Both of these books think about individual choices as part of local and global ecologies.

Ann-Marie Anderson, Marketing Director

Give: I want Monument Lab as the book to give to my artist friends who grapple with questions of public art.

Get: I want to get On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, a novel about a Vietnamese American family, to read during my lengthy, leisurely holiday break.

Irene Imperio, Promotions Manager

Give: Gifting for my young readers: Art Museum Opposites by Katy Friedland is a book of opposites for young readers, based on the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collections.

Get: Hoping to get: Life Is Magic: My Inspiring Journey from Tragedy to Self-Discovery, the new memoir from former Philadelphia Eagles long snapper Jon Dorenbos.

Gary Kramer, Publicity Manager

Give: I would give my cinephile friends a copy of Greg Burris’ The Palestinian Idea, as it contains an analysis of films by Annemarie Jacir and Hany Abu-Assad, two of my favorite filmmakers. Burris examines radical perspectives on Palestinian media and popular culture, making it a provocative book that should generate considerable thought and discussion.

Get: What I would like to get is John Waters’s Mr. Know-It-All, which I’ve been meaning to buy and read since it was published. If I get a copy, that will prompt me to finally read it!

Kate Nichols, Art Manager

Give and Get: I am both giving family members, and myself Alex Tizon’s Invisible People.

Joan Vidal, Senior Production Editor 

Give: I plan to give Alex Tizon’s Invisible People: Stories of Lives at the Margins, a collection of the award-winning journalist’s masterful stories of those who are commonly dismissed and disregarded.

Get: I’d like to receive None of the Above, by Michael Cocchiarale, a novel about the childhood and young adulthood of Midwesterner Increase “Ink” Alt and the trials and tribulations that put his maturity to the test when he returns to his hometown in his thirties.

Dave Wilson, Senior Production Editor

Give: Stan Hochman Unfiltered because his unique take on the Philadelphia sports scene.

Get: Me: Elton John, the official autobiography of this music icon that has spanned generations.

 

 

Zingers and more from “unfiltered” sportswriter Stan Hochman’s posthumous book

This week in North Philly Notes, Gloria Hochman, editor of Stan Hochman Unfiltered, writes about compiling 100 of her late husband’s columns.

As I read through Stan’s 7,000 columns to come up with the 100 or so chosen for Stan Hochman Unfiltered: 50 Years of Wit and Wisdom from the Groundbreaking Sportswriter.  I smiled, then I cried. All the facets of Stan’s extraordinary life and interests  were reflected in his wit, his knowledge and his way with words. He was the quintessential Renaissance man who loved cool jazz and soulful singers, chilled Chardonnay and sizzling lamb ragout, Shakespeare in the round and theater with Mark Rylance. He was passionate about social justice and harmonious race relations, a society where drugs meant antibiotics, not heroin. His sometimes gruff exterior concealed a cushy niche for the well-being of children whom he believed thrived on praise and unconditional love.  His passionate love for his family-his daughter, his daughter-in-law, his granddaughter and for me—were no secret. Anyone who read his columns or heard his broadcasts knew what was in his expansive heart and on his brilliant mind.

The book features a Foreword from WIP sports host Angelo Cataldi and a message from Governor Edward G. Rendell. The chapters are arranged by sport: Baseball, Horse Racing, Boxing,  Football, Hockey,  and Basketball (pro and college), plus one entitled, “Stan’s World:  Outside the Lines,” which features popular columns on tennis and golf, restaurant reviews, helping kids with disabilities through sports and, even Elizabeth Taylor. Each section is introduced by a sports colleague—Garry Maddox, Larry Merchant, Ray Didinger, Bernie Parent, Dick Jerardi, Pat McLoone, Weatta Frazier Collins (Joe’s daughter) and Jim Lynam.

And throughout Stan Hochman Unfiltered are his many “zingers.” Here are a few of my favorites:

• After Temple’s Jim Williams scored 30 points in a rousing win, Penn coach Jack McCloskey looked like a guy who had wrestled a case of TNT… and lost.
• Doug Sanders swings a golf club like a man trying to kill a rattlesnake with a garden hoe.
• George Foreman has a heart like a lion and a head like a cantaloupe.
• Leonard Toes loves the heat in the kitchen.  Thrives on it.  Bring on the divorce attorneys. Bring on the tough-talking truck drivers.  Leonard Tose has a vocabulary that will melt their transmissions.
• Louise’s banana cream pie is still the most fun you can have in Atlantic City with your clothes on.

In addition to his more than 50 years as a Daily News columnist, Hochman, was well-known for his stint on WIP radio as the Grand Imperial Poobah, where he would settle callers’ most pressing sports debates.

Stan lived with his family in Wynnewood, PA until his death in 2015. He appeared frequently on television, wrote three books, and was featured as a grumpy sportswriter in the movie Rocky V.  The book’s cover photo of Stan is taken from that film.

My favorite columns in a remarkable field: Jackie Robinson and his struggle to become the first black baseball player in the big leagues; the tragic 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, where thirteen Israelis were killed in a chilling blot on the world’s showcase for sports excellence; his graphic description of the fight of the century between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali (and the reactions of the ‘guys and dolls’ who were privileged to see it).

There were hundreds of columns that didn’t make it into the book. They sit in a corner in my bedroom with a big label: heartbreakingly discarded. Maybe another book!

I’ve won 23 journalism awards and had a book on the New York Times bestseller list for three months. But this one is my labor of love—a tribute to the most remarkable wordsmith, husband, father, grandfather and mentor to countless friends and colleagues who continue to carry into the world what we learned from him.

Making visible the afterlives of U.S. colonial and occupation tutelage in the Philippines and Japan

This week in North Philly Notes, Malini Johar Schueller, author of Campaigns of Knowledge, writes about benevolent assimilations.

While most liberal Americans condemn U.S. military strikes and occupations as manifestations of superpower domination by force, they view church groups and educational missions as signs of American goodwill and benevolence toward the world. After all, most Americans see Asian, African, and Middle Eastern nations as civilizationally “behind” the U.S. Dedicated teachers and philanthropists, backed by the United States’ government to set up schools, universities, and libraries in occupied areas are thus signs of a kinder, gentler, democratic America that the world emulates. However, it is precisely because benevolent assimilation—as famously articulated by President McKinley was a strategy of U.S. colonialism—that we should be suspicious of such charitable undertakings overseas. This is especially true in cases where the United States wishes to take over hearts and minds. Take for instance George Bush, who shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 devoted his weekly radio address to informing a skeptical nation that the American occupation was designed to build a stable and secure Iraq through the rebuilding of schools via the personal intervention of American soldiers.

Campaigns of Knowledge tracks this pattern of America as savior, following its politics of violence with the benign recovery of education in two seemingly different locations—colonial Philippines and occupied Japan—in order to demonstrate the similarity of purpose: pacification through schooling. Amidst the throes of the Philippine-American war, American soldiers opened the first school in Corregidor, initiating a comprehensive system of education. Following Japanese surrender, the U.S.-led occupation commenced its educational reform in that country. The object in both cases was to inculcate values of individualism, self-reliance, capitalism, modernity, and a nationalism amenable to American influence. While both Filipinos and Japanese were often seen by educators as “Oriental,” they were contrasting subjects of racial management: Filipinos were undercivilized and had to be educated and civilized; the Japanese were overcivilized and had to be re-educated and decivilized.

Contrapuntally viewing colonial archives such as Senate hearings, educational reports, textbooks, English primers and political cartoons, alongside the cultural productions of colonized subjects including film and literature, Campaigns of Knowledge demonstrates how natives variously appropriated, reinterpreted, rerouted and resisted the lessons of colonial rule. Children’s primers such as Filipino educator Camilo Osias’s The Philippine Reader not only teach English but also articulate a nationalism that both questions and accommodates American rule. The specter of colonial and occupation schooling continues to haunt the imaginations of Filipinos, Filipino Americans, Japanese and Japanese-Americans and the book analyzes the varied nature of these hauntings in autobiographies, novels, films, short stories, and oral histories. Contributing to a transnational intersection of Asian American studies with Asian studies, Campaigns of Knowledge examines figures canonized in the U.S. such as Carlos Bulosan and Bienvenido Santos alongside those canonized in the Philippines and Japan such as Edith Tiempo and Masahiro Shinoda. More broadly, the book demonstrates the centrality of schooling to the project of American empire and the importance of racial difference to this project.