The New York Review of Books; the October 23rd issue ran a three
page article by Colm Tóibín that likens Obama’s Dreams
of My Father to Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son
The Student Loan
Scam, Alan Michael Collinge, February 2009, cloth, $22.95, 978-0-8070-4229-8
Publishers Weekly; starred review, featuring cover art, in the October
6st issue
“Comprehensive and stirring, this extraordinary book is whistle-blowing
at its finest.”
Publicity, Reviews, and Praise:
The Blue Cotton
Gown, Patricia Harman, October 2008, cloth, $24.95, 978-0-8070-7289-9
Boston Globe/Shelf Life column; the book was selected as Pick of
the Week by Annie Philbrick of Bank Square Books in Mystic, Connecticut; ran
in the Sunday, October 5th issue
“Here is an intimate account of a woman, both her career as a midwife
and her life as the wife of a doctor in West Virginia. Her patients’
lives are stories of hope and loss; her marriage is a story of love and
faith accompanied by debt and tension. Well-written and heartfelt.”
People Magazine; review forthcoming; issue date to come
Early Spring,Amy Seidl, cloth, March 2008, $24.95, 978-0-8070-8584-4
Library Journal; starred review, featuring cover art, in the October 1st
issue
“Writing in terms lay readers will understand, Seidl talks about the
subtle changes occurring within her own backyard…. Informative and
hopeful, this book is highly recommended...”
—Maureen J. Delaney-Lehman
Orion Magazine; excerpt to run in the March/April issue
The Porning of
America, Carmine Sarracino and Kevin M. Scott, September 2008, cloth,
$24.95, 978-0-8070-6153-4
“It's too early to know exactly how kids who grow up in this hypersexualized
environment will be affected in the long term. But Scott and his coauthor
say it's not too soon—or too prudish—to sound the alarm, and to
look critically at the sexualized culture we're exposed to every day.”
Metro Spirit; review ran in the October 1st issue of Augusta, Georgia’s
independent newspaper
“Written with an expansive grasp of the highlights of pornographic
history and a mastery of narrative argument, “The Porning of America”
is a fascinating view of the changing popular culture surrounding American
life, which offers a new vision of the days to come and a multitude of
debates to be had concerning the sexual reality of the contemporary world.”
America; review in Fall Books issue of the magazine; October 6th
Washington Blade, review to run in October 10th issue
Washington Post; book mentioned in Fall Books round-up
Poetry; Daphne Merkin slated to write profile of Ms. Oliver; date
to come
Beacon Acquisition:
Sociologist Gail Dines has been writing and lecturing on the porn industry
for over twenty years, and in this new, thought-provoking book she argues that
porn’s omnipresence is detrimental to our sexual freedom. Unlike other
books on porn, Dines will expose the extensive economic structure supporting
this unapologetic multi-billion dollar industry—an industry that astonishingly
reaps more profits than the film and music industries combined—while analyzing
largely ignored aspects of porn like race and racism. Dines illustrates how
today’s porn is strikingly different from yesterday’s Playboy and
Penthouse magazines—and because porn has become nearly indistinguishable
from pop culture, the actual porn industry has evolved to become even more hard-core
(including child porn and torture porn) in order to differentiate its products
in an already glutted market. And, with the advent of the internet and other
digital technologies, users don’t have to wander far to access porn; today,
the average age of the first downloading is 11.5 years for boys, and studies
reveal that young men are consuming more porn than ever before. Dines’s
book shows who profits from porn while questioning how its toxicity is affecting
our culture and sexuality. Fall 2010.
Beacon Press is a department of the