“Close reading allows us to make truth claims and to have disagreements about these claims. We can’t have disagreements if they’re not against the background of a shared assumption about how we adjudicate arguments.” buff.ly/3WWVxC7

I'll use my paperback birthday to suggest humbly that Child is perfect for our moment.She fought tirelessly for racial justice. Her life exhibits promise & perils of white activism. She was fierce, formidable & funny. Book group, anyone? Spread the word! UChicagoPress Alan Thomas

And my amazing UChicagoPress co-author, Allison Van Deventer is co-leading this workshop, too! If you're wondering what a "book argument" actually is (and what people often mistake for an "argument") and hope to pinpoint yours, join us! us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regist…

“This is one of the most gripping accounts of a milieu it would bore me rigid to inhabit myself.” The TLS on Nate Silver’s “On the Edge #classicblurb

Job opening in the UChicagoPress books division: I'm hiring a Senior Editorial Associate and Acquisitions Department Coordinator to work out of our office in Hyde Park (hybrid OK). Please email with any questions. Details at link: uchicago.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External…

Congratulations to @PDabashi and Kirsty Sinclir Dootson, co-winners of the 2024 MSA First Book Prize! You can read more about their wonderful books here: msa.press.jhu.edu/prize/shortlis… (And order a copy!)

Huge congrats to @PDabashi, whose "dazzlingly original and sophisticated" Losing the Plot: Film and Feeling in the Modern Novel is co-winner of the MSA First Book Prize! msa.press.jhu.edu/prize/shortlis… MSA (Modernism) UChicagoPress

On the gargantuan concrete bunkers housing those seemingly incorporeal AI bots. Terrific story, complete with a primer on concrete (green and otherwise) by Ted Fishman spectrum.ieee.org/green-concrete IEEE Spectrum #concrete #AI

📣 As a UChicagoPress featured book at #2024AAATampa, Futures after Progress is 30% off – with free shipping –  now through January 24! Just use code EX57672 at press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book….

"It was when I started reading Charles Bernstein more than fifty years ago that I began believing in reincarnation." New in review, Jerome McGann on Charles Bernstein's The Kinds of Poetry I Want, from UChicagoPress: criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/jerome_mcgann_…

New this fall, the 11th and 12th books in Chicago’s #ThinkingLiterature series: Julia Jarcho’s “Throw Yourself Away: Writing & Masochism” and Leah Middlebrook’s “Amphion: Lyre, Poetry, & Politics in Modernity.” UChicagoPress

I am now on BlueSky (agthomas.bsky.social), and you can also find me on Instagram (instagram.com/agthomas81/)

John Guillory’s “On Close Reading” is here! See also Scott Newstok’s companion website, Close Reading Archive: closereadingarchive.org Orders placed directly with UChicagoPress are shipping now (30% off with promo code UCPNEW): tinyurl.com/4ew4tm6h

Cover reveal — Allison Carruth’s “Novel Ecologies: Nature Remade and the Illusions of Tech” unmasks the tech industry’s quasi-religious faith in environmental engineering. Forthcoming in January. Preorder now with code UCPNEW for 30% off: press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book… UChicagoPress

Congratulations to Julie Park (Julie Park), awarded an honorable mention for the MLA's James Russell Lowell Prize! MY DARK ROOM "offers a new perspective on the concept of setting and on the relationship between literature and spatiality."

Congratulations to Jesse McCarthy, author of THE BLUE PERIOD, which has been longlisted for the National Books Critics Circle Awards in Criticism. Part of our Thinking Literature series, THE BLUE PERIOD investigates Black writing in the Cold War era. buff.ly/3P03XUe

Attending the Association of Writers and Writing Programs meeting in Los Angeles? We'll see you there! You can check out our featured books and get 30% off & free US shipping with promo code EX57852 at our virtual exhibit: bit.ly/UCPEXAWP. #AWP25

An juicy excerpt—Helen vs. Menelaos!—from my forthcoming #Odyssey translation appears in the latest issue of The New Criterion: newcriterion.com/article/from-h…

Coming next summer: Matt Damon as Odysseus in #TheOdysseyMovie. Coming next month: the muscular new translation of #TheOdyssey by Daniel Mendelsohn. Preorder from Amazon: a.co/d/hhF0dOO. greekheritage Zendaya Updates

“I began the practice of, the last thing before going to bed every night, putting down the two things that I’d learned in the course of the day into a sentence,” says David Shields, AM’75, PhD’82. He calls these ultrabrief lines “Laconics.” mag.uchicago.edu/arts-humanitie…