The best-selling Princeton field guide to the land and marine mammals of the United States and Canada is now available in digital form on the App Store. We will be giving the Mammals of North America App away to one lucky follower on our Mammals App Facebook page at:

http://on.fb.me/MammalsNAapp

The random draw for this app will be Friday August 26th at 3:30 pm EST. Be sure to “Like” us on the Mammals App Facebook page to be entered to win!

All the beautiful and accurate illustrations as well as the easy-to-use functionality of the book have been kept while also adding extra features such as:

• The ability to expand the high-resolution images by tapping or rotating the device
• Photographs that complement the illustrations of certain species
• Calls for over 150 species (including multiple calls for some species)
• Quick swiping through the 462 mammals
• The ability to easily find a species using either common or scientific names and in taxonomic or alphabetic order
• The ability to only show species for a specified postal code
• A compare feature that lets you view two species at the same time on the same screen
• Interactive tracks that quickly link to the associated mammal
• A personal record of mammal sightings that can be exported using email*

*Uninstalling/reinstalling the program will result in the loss of your list; it is recommended that you export the list regularly to avoid any loss of data.
We invite all users to share their comments and ideas on our forum at www.mydigitalearth.com

Please note: This Application WILL ONLY work on an iPhone or iPod Touch (2nd GEN) running OS V3.0 or higher NOT A NORMAL IPOD CLASSIC/NANO, and the download is about 80MB.

Copyright:
2011 Cool Ideas LLC
Application URL:
http://www.mydigitalearth.com
Also available:
Mammals of North America:
(Second Edition)
Roland W. Kays & Don E. Wilson

Publishers Weekly ran a news item today confirming that Princeton University Press has signed up with Ebook Services to offer e-Review copies and e-Galleys of our books for review and possible course adoption. We are as excited about technology as anyone else and are doubly pleased that to celebrate our new partnership Ebook Services is offering complimentary digital comps of International Theories of Politics and Zombies by Dan Drezner to reviewers. This was one of our best-selling titles of the last year, so grab your freebie while you can (visit the Ebook Services site for details and limitations).

Links:
Ebook Services announcement: http://blog.ebookservices.com/2011/08/02/ebook-services-signs-princeton-university-press/
Publishers Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/48431-ebook-services-enters-e-galley-arena-with-digital-comps.html

The Economic Benefits of Beauty

Could looks amount to a 12% difference in wages between two people?

Consider what UT Economist and PUP author Daniel Hamermesh has to say about beauty’s impact on economic benefits:

This is the fourth of five videos in which Hamermesh explains some of the research he did for Beauty Pays. Tomorrow: “The scarcity of beauty.”

Dimitri Karetnikov, Princeton University Press’ Illustration Manager, drew the artwork for the cover of Paul Nahin’s new book (Carmina Alvarez was the jacket designer who put it all together), Number Crunching: Taming Unruly Computational Problems from Mathematical Physics to Science Fiction. In addition to being a fantastic artist, he has a great sense of humor, and an eye for detail.

Buried in our superhero’s fists are 12 numbers that are significant to the Press, mathematics, and history. Can you find all of them? Post your guesses below, or on the book’s facebook page (you might get more feedback there from others too, plus we could use some company so become a fan by liking the page). If you get stumped, check back next week and we will give you some hints.

Click on the cover image below to view it at a much larger size. Good luck!

Talk of patents (and of patent reform) has been the hot tech topic this summer, with every outlet from “This American Life” from WBEZ (“When Patents Attack!”) to the Economist weighing in on the patent “arms race.”

Just last week, Google announced it is buying Motorola Mobility (and, by extension, Motorola’s library of an estimated 25,000 patents) for a neat $12.5 billion. Intellectual property scholars James Bessen and Michael J. Meurer, co-authors of Patent Failure: How Judges, Bureaucrats, and Lawyers Put Innovators at Risk, have been all over the news arguing that such deals don’t bode well for future innovation.

Bessen, Meurer, and their path-breaking 2008 title have been mentioned in Corporate Consul magazine, Techdirt, and the San Francisco Chronicle, just to name a few. In an article by Peter Svensson syndicated in the Washington Times, James Bessen sums up the problem, saying, “Patents have become legal weapons–they’re not representing ideas anymore.” Bessen is likewise quoted in a recent article at the Huffington Post, and his comments were picked up in a piece by Rhodri Marsden in the Independent.

If you want to be the most tech-savvy person at your Labor Day BBQ, you can read the first chapter of Patent Failure here.

Why, it’s Vice President Joe Biden clutching a copy of Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power!

This photo was taken at Chengdu Airport after Mr. Biden’s August 20 meeting in Beijing with five prominent Chinese scholars, among whom was the book’s author, Yan Xuetong. Solid publicity gold, thanks to our VP.

it is easy to see why PUP boasts one of the most exciting social sciences publishing programs. Come meet Eric Schwartz at Booth 205 to learn more about our catalog of books and how to publish with us!

Birding of course!

Birders (and bird book publicists?) everywhere are obsessing over the release of The Big Year starring Steve Martin, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black on October 14th. Don’t believe me?

Read the Birdchick for the low down on the binoculars the guys are carrying, or the Wingnut for an explanation about just what a big year is, or Wild Bird Blog for even more.

So what to do while we wait for the premiere of the first (?) birding movie? Read books of course! Check out our birding and natural history titles here.

Why Economists care about Beauty

Did you ever think beauty might have a direct effect on national policy?

Consider what UT Economist and PUP author Daniel Hamermesh has to say about why economists should care about beauty:

This is the third of five videos in which Hamermesh explains some of the research he did for Beauty Pays. Monday: “The economic benefits of beauty.”

FACT: “In 2008, the average American household spent $718 on women’s and girls’ clothing; $427 on men’s and boys’ clothing; $655 on infants’ clothing, footwear, and other apparel products and services; and $616 on personal care products and services. Such spending totaled roughly $400 billion and accounted for nearly 5 percent of all consumer spending that year.”

Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People Are More Successful
Daniel S. Hamermesh

Most of us know there is a payoff to looking good, and in the quest for beauty we spend countless hours and billions of dollars on personal grooming, cosmetics, and plastic surgery. But how much better off are the better looking? Based on the evidence, quite a lot. The first book to seriously measure the advantages of beauty, Beauty Pays demonstrates how society favors the beautiful and how better-looking people experience startling but undeniable benefits in all aspects of life. Noted economist Daniel Hamermesh shows that the attractive are more likely to be employed, work more productively and profitably, receive more substantial pay, obtain loan approvals, negotiate loans with better terms, and have more handsome and highly educated spouses. Hamermesh explains why this happens and what it means for the beautiful—and the not-so-beautiful—among us.

Exploring whether a universal standard of beauty exists, Hamermesh illustrates how attractive workers make more money, how these amounts differ by gender, and how looks are valued differently based on profession. He considers whether extra pay for good-looking people represents discrimination, and, if so, who is discriminating. Hamermesh investigates the commodification of beauty in dating and how this influences the search for intelligent or high-earning mates, and even examines whether government programs should aid the ugly. He also discusses whether the economic benefits of beauty will persist into the foreseeable future and what the “looks-challenged” can do to overcome their disadvantage.

Reflecting on a sensitive issue that touches everyone, Beauty Pays proves that beauty’s rewards are anything but superficial.

“If there was ever any doubt that Dan Hamermesh is the dean of beauty—of explaining beauty, at least—this book should put that to rest. He writes so lucidly and charmingly about such a compelling subject that you will never again look at a beautiful face (or an ugly one) without thinking of the many economic consequences. Bravo!”—Stephen J. Dubner, coauthor of Freakonomics

We invite you to read Chapter 1 here: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s9516.pdf

Why Beauty is Good for Business

UT Economist and PUP author Daniel Hamermesh on why beauty if good for business.

“Some of our papers show that those companies that had better looking executives–same location, same size–had better sales. And the effect was not small.”

This is the second of five videos in which he explains some of the research he did for Beauty Pays. Tomorrow: “why economists care about beauty.”

Beauty and Happiness

Daniel Hamermesh, UT Economist and author of Beauty Pays, created a series of five videos describing his research. This first is on the relationship between beauty and Happiness–check back for more on the PUP blog!