Daniel A. Bell, co-author of The Spirit of Cities: Why the Identity of a City Matters in a Global Age with Avner de-Shalit, visited Hub’s Davos Pavilion and spoke with Hub Culture’s Executive Editor Edie Lush during his recent trip to the World Economic Forum. Professor Bell uses “I Heart NY” as the best known example of “civicism,” the term for urban pride he and de-Shalit coined in their recent PUP book, but from the looks of it, perhaps “I Heart Davos” is next:

Banding Together:
How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music
by Jennifer C. Lena

Why do some music styles gain mass popularity while others thrive in small niches? Banding Together explores this question and reveals the attributes that together explain the growth of twentieth-century American popular music. Drawing on a vast array of examples from sixty musical styles—ranging from rap and bluegrass to death metal and South Texas polka, and including several created outside the United States—Jennifer Lena uncovers the shared grammar that allows us to understand the cultural language and evolution of popular music.

What are the common economic, organizational, ideological, and aesthetic traits among contemporary genres? Do genres follow patterns in their development? Lena discovers four dominant forms—Avant-garde, Scene-based, Industry-based, and Traditionalist—and two dominant trajectories that describe how American pop music genres develop. Outside the United States there exists a fifth form: the Government-purposed genre, which she examines in the music of China, Serbia, Nigeria, and Chile. Offering a rare analysis of how music communities operate, she looks at the shared obstacles and opportunities creative people face and reveals the ways in which people collaborate around ideas, artworks, individuals, and organizations that support their work.

This week’s “featured creature” is the California Chipmunk, a member of the squirrel family. This particular species is normally found — you guessed it! — in California and and some Mexican states. Some chipmunks in captivity have lived up to nine years, but their life expectancy is around 3 years in the wild.

Chipmunks are known for their cuteness, and have played some starring roles in animated films — does anyone remember the original “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movie?

For more information, check out our nifty Mammals of North America App, now available for iPhone and Android!

Previous Mammals Monday posts:

the American badger

the harp seal

the black bear

the chipmunk

the blue whale

the reindeer

On Thursday, February 2nd, the 2012 PROSE Awards will be livestreamed from Washington D.C. Hopefully Princeton University Press will be bringing home some prizes! “The PROSE Awards annually recognize the very best in professional and scholarly publishing by bringing attention to distinguished books, journals, and electronic content in over 40 categories. Judged by peer publishers, librarians, and medical professionals since 1976, the PROSE Awards are extraordinary for their breadth and depth.”

Check out the broadcast from 12-1:30 EST here: http://www.proseawards.com/video.html

Philip Feeman, the translator of our timely new book HOW TO WIN AN ELECTION: An Ancient Guide for Modern Politicans, had his recent op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times yesterday. Take a look to see which Republican candidate(s) would have done right by Quintus Cicero’s (Marcus’s lesser-known brother) advice. The “advice” was originally from a letter sent to Marcus when he was in the running for the biggest job in Rome.

FACT: “On the night of July 7, 1937, skirmishes between Chinese and Japanese troops near Beijing’s Marco Polo Bridge broke out, marking the beginning of World War II in China. The fighting quickly spread, and by month end Japanese forces had consolidated control over the region. An all-out assault on Shanghai in August, followed by the December slaughter of civilians and soldiers in Nanjing, forced the Nationalist government to flee. Chiang Kai-shek led his troops and supporters first to Wuhan, then to Sichuan, where he set up a temporary capital in Chongqing in October 1938.”

Guilty of Indigence: The Urban Poor in China, 1900-1953
by Janet Y. Chen

In the early twentieth century, a time of political fragmentation and social upheaval in China, poverty became the focus of an anguished national conversation about the future of the country. Investigating the lives of the urban poor in China during this critical era, Guilty of Indigence examines the solutions implemented by a nation attempting to deal with “society’s most fundamental problem.” Interweaving analysis of shifting social viewpoints, the evolution of poor relief institutions, and the lived experiences of the urban poor, Janet Chen explores the development of Chinese attitudes toward urban poverty and of policies intended for its alleviation.

  We are delighted to announce that Professor Paul Seabright will deliver the second annual Princeton University Press in Europe lecture during the London Book Fair. This year’s lecture, which marks our annual celebration of the Princeton University Press European Advisory Board, will take place on Wednesday 18th April at Goodenough College in London, under the [...]

David Scheffer, the first US ambassador for war crimes, has recently published All the Missing Souls: A Personal History of the War Crimes Tribunals with Princeton University Press. In the book, he discusses bringing some of the most notorious war criminals to justice. David was interviewed on BBC Radio 3 NightWaves on 25th January and the interview is now available to listen again here.

“Are the champions of the capitalist system now turning against the super-rich? And if they are, what will they now do about it? How can change be achieved without undermining the logic of capitalism?” Raghuram Rajan, author of Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy joins a panel to discuss these questions on Analysis on BBC Radio 4. The interview is now available to listen to online on the Analysis website.

Think solar flares are going to wreak havoc now? Wait till you read what happened in the 19th century:

“In September of 1859, the entire Earth was engulfed in a gigantic cloud of seething gas, and a blood-red aurora erupted across the planet from the poles to the tropics. Around the world, telegraph systems crashed, machines burst into flames, and electric shocks rendered operators unconscious. Compasses and other sensitive instruments reeled as if struck by a massive magnetic fist….Nobody knew what could have released such strange forces upon the Earth–nobody, that is, except the amateur English astronomer Richard Carrington who had observed a mysterious explosion on the surface of the Sun…”

Read The Sun Kings to learn more about Carrington and the solar flares of 1859..

Are you following PUP on Google+ yet? If not, today’s the day to add us to your circle—we’re giving away a copy of Magical Mathematics by Persi Diaconis & Ron Graham, along with a Magical Mathematics deck of cards to practice your magic tricks! Follow us by Friday to win!

Magical Mathematics: The Mathematical Ideas that Animate Great Magic Tricks
by Persi Diaconis & Ron Graham, with a foreword by Martin Gardner

Magical Mathematics reveals the secrets of amazing, fun-to-perform card tricks—and the profound mathematical ideas behind them—that will astound even the most accomplished magician. Persi Diaconis and Ron Graham provide easy, step-by-step instructions for each trick, explaining how to set up the effect and offering tips on what to say and do while performing it. Each card trick introduces a new mathematical idea, and varying the tricks in turn takes readers to the very threshold of today’s mathematical knowledge. For example, the Gilbreath Principle—a fantastic effect where the cards remain in control despite being shuffled—is found to share an intimate connection with the Mandelbrot set. Other card tricks link to the mathematical secrets of combinatorics, graph theory, number theory, topology, the Riemann hypothesis, and even Fermat’s last theorem.