Books published by University of Illinois Press

Written by an award-winning composer whose music has been performed in the US, Europe, and the Far East, this title combines the whimsical and the treacherous into a chronicle that takes in various things from the KGB to Macy's store windows, Alcatraz to the Beach Boys, Hollywood thrillers to the United Nations, Joseph Stalin to Shirley Temple.

A nuanced exploration of one of the largest and least understood indigenous peoples

Shannon's major precept, that all communication is essentially digital, is commonplace among the digitalia that many wonder why Shannon needed to state such an obvious axiom.

Opening on a scene of tawdry sensationalism, this novel shifts decisively to a world of black middle-class respectability, defined by intellectual values, professional ambition, and an acute consciousness of class and racial identity.

Discrimination by Design is a fascinating account of the complex social processes and power struggles involved in building and controlling space. Leslie Kanes Weisman offers a new framework for understanding the spatial dimensions of gender and race as well as class. She traces the social and architectural histories of the skyscraper, maternity hospital, department store, shopping mall, nuclear family dream house, and public housing high rise. Her vivid prose is based on exhaustive research and documents how each setting, along with public parks and streets, embodies and transmits the privileges and penalties of social caste. In presenting feminist themes from a spatial perspective, Weisman raises many new and important questions. When do women feel unsafe in cities, and why? Why do so many homeless people prefer to sleep on the streets rather than in city-run shelters? Why does the current housing crisis pose a greater threat to women than to men? How would dwellings, communities, and public buildings look if they were designed to foster relationships of equality and environmental wholeness? And how can we begin to imagine such a radically different landscape? In exploring the answers, the author introduces us to the people, policies, architectural innovations, and ideologies working today to shape a future in which all people matter. Richly illustrated with photographs and drawings, Discrimination by Design is an invaluable and pioneering contribution to our understanding of the issues of our time--health care for the elderly and people with AIDS, homelessness, racial justice, changing conditions of work and family life, affordable housing, militarism, energy conservation, and thepreservation of the environment. This thoroughly readable book provides practical guidance to policymakers, architects, planners, and housing activists. It should be read by all who are interested in understanding how the built environment shapes the experiences of their daily

This first volume of Music in Black American Life collects research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and the Black Music Research Journal, and in the University of Illinois Press's acclaimed book series Music in American Life. In these selections, experts from a cross-section of disciplines engage with fundamental issues in ways that changed our perceptions of Black music. The topics includes the culturally and musically complex Black music-making of colonial America; string bands and other lesser-known genres practiced by Black artists; the jubilee industry and its audiences; and innovators in jazz, blues, and Black gospel. Eclectic and essential, Music in Black American Life, 1600–1945 offers specialists and students alike a gateway to the history and impact of Black music in the United States.Contributors: R. Reid Badger, Rae Linda Brown, Samuel A. Floyd Jr., Sandra Jean Graham, Jeffrey Magee, Robert M. Marovich, Harriet Ottenheimer, Eileen Southern, Katrina Dyonne Thompson, Stephen Wade, and Charles Wolfe