Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, author of Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age sat down with Farhad Manjoo of Slate for a conversation on bloggingheads.tv. Check it out below.

“Christmas is not that far away. And if you have someone on your list who is interested in birds, you could do a lot worse than by putting one of these new field guides from Princeton University Press under their tree,” writes James Drake for Southern Maryland Newspapers.

I couldn’t agree more. These photographic field guides have been praised for their exquisite and detailed photography and informative text (see here in the Birder’s Library, here in the Phildelphia Inquirer, and here in the New Jersey Newsroom). And, with a smaller price tag than most bird guides ($18.95 each), the Small-Sterry guides are the perfect gift for novice and experienced birders alike.

Get the book that Santa doesn’t want you to read! SCROOGENOMICS: Why You Shouldn’t Buy Presents for the Holidays

The New Yorker’s Book Bench blog featured the Princeton University Press logo in a post about Yale University Press’s recent colophon redesign. Click through to read the other case studies, but first, here’s Monica Racic’s take on the new Princeton University Press design:

While many university press logos are simply (perhaps elegantly) a stamp of the university seal or a line of text using the university name, there are quite a few dynamic monograms that subtly defy the university brand. Princeton University Press: In 2007 Princeton University Press marked its hundredth anniversary with a new, and now highly regarded, design by Chermayeff & Geismar. Peter J. Dougherty, the director of the press, describes the redesign in the preface to the Princeton University Press Identity Guidelines: “The logotype, including a symbol that embeds the Press’s initials within a modern “P” and the classical Trajan typeface used the Press’s name, combined with the familiar orange and black deployed throughout all visual elements, lends point, personality, and elegance appropriate to our identity.”

Ken Reinert, co-editor, with Ramkishen Rajan, of the authoritative new reference THE PRINCETON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE WORLD ECONOMY, has penned a fantastic piece about how to teach the world economy during one of the worst financial collapses since the Great Depression.  Hopefully, Ken’s piece can help our international economics teachers help their students understand the problems–and prevent it from happening again.  Enjoy!

Stuart Clark, author of our terrific book THE SUN KINGS: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began, shortlisted in 2008 for the the 2008 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books, General Prize, will begin a series of weekly popular science/astronomy Twitter chats next Tuesday, November 24. Five chats are planned for 2009, on Tuesdays beginning November 24 at 1PM EST (10AM PST, 6PM GMT).  Each week the chat will focus on a different popular astronomy topic.

We are extremely pleased and thrilled to see our collaboration with the esteemed international news and commentary provider Project Syndicate and our new book THE PRINCETON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE WORLD ECONOMY go live on their website.  They bring some of the world’s most distinguished voices to a global community that includes 431 leading newspapers in 150 countries. 

Together with the great folks at Project Syndicate, we’ve created a “Princeton Encyclopedia of the World Economy ” feature that appears on their homepage.  Click on the Wiki to find out the answer to the word of the day–or Terms of Trade!

Over at Balkinization, Brian Tamanaha describes his book Beyond the Formalist-Realist Divide as a corrective to this “largely false account”. Click through to read more, but here’s a tidbit or two:

The United States legal culture has swallowed whole a largely false account of our legal history. The book demonstrates that this false yet widely believed story has warped political science research on courts as well as legal theory debates about judging.

…

The historical argument in the book will likely generate controversy, for the conventional formalist-realist narrative has many expositors and defenders. It is stupefying to think that we could have been collectively wrong for so long about something so important and well known. Until conducting the research for this book, I too believed that it was true. The abundant evidence I present to show that it is false will come as a shock to many.

The Math Factor speaks with Michael Huber about, among other things, how he came up with the idea for the book Mythematics in which he uses the 12 labors of Hercules as a jumping off point for a series of mathematical problems. Turns out a visit to the MET inspired him to research the labors and eventually to write the book.

I know. It sounds like a set up for a bad joke, but the answer is they are both proud owners of The China Diary of George H. W. Bush.

The Examiner site reports that Yao Ming twittered about receiving a gift from former President George H. W. Bush–a copy of his 2008 book. The book is a day-by-day account of President Bush’s time in China as head of the United States Liaison Office in Beijing . The entries from 1974 and 1975 capture the culture (biking around Beijing) and the political conflicts (most famously with Henry Kissinger) of the era.

As I posted earlier, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger was interviewed “live” on the Metanomics program in Second Life. Here are some screen shots from the interview. As you’ll see, it was really well attended.

The Metanomics studio space in Second Life. The view from the top of the auditorium.

Metanomics host Robert Bloomfield (right) interviews Viktor Mayer-Schonberger.

An attentive, and interactive audience, listened in and posted questions via the chat function.

Viktor Mayer-Schonberger fields questions from the audience.