Freshly Pressed: Lawrence Berkove, Gloria House

Freshly Pressed highlights books written or edited by members of the University of Michigan-Dearborn community. Faculty, staff, alumni and students are welcome to submit their recently published titles to this column by e-mailing Reporter editor Jennifer Thelen at [email protected] with a summary of the book, a high-resolution JPEG of the book’s cover and a URL where readers can purchase the title, if applicable.

Lawrence Berkove, professor emeritus of English language and literature, has edited the volume Critical Insights: Jack London, which is being published by Salem Press this month.

Berkove is an internationally known scholar of American literature of 19th and 20th centuries, and is recognized as an authority on London, Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain and the writers of the "Sagebrush School." He also is a former president of the Jack London Society. In the eight years he's been retired from UM-Dearborn, he's published eight books.

Critical Insights: Jack London is a collection of standard and contemporary articles on Jack London, including biographical material with original essays comparing his career to that of Mark Twain and an examination of his critical reception. London’s interest in Carl Jung, Naturalism and the theme of androgyny throughout his novels also are discussed.

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Gloria House, professor of humanities and African American studies, has written Home Sweet Sanctuary: Idlewild Families Celebrate a Century, which was published by Broadside Press in August.

House, a poet and cultural activist, has been engaged in U.S. and international human rights issues since her work in the southern civil rights movement as a student in the 1960s.

Home Sweet Sanctuary is a cultural study of the community of Idlewild, an African American resort in northern Michigan, one of the few remaining settlements of its kind in the United States. Idlewild was listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.

Earlier books on Idlewild have focused primarily on the period of its popularity as a center of nightclub entertainment. House’s study celebrates Idlewild’s legacy of self-determination and resilience over the long arc of its history, from its founding to the eve of its centennial anniversary in 2012. Drawing from extensive oral history interviews with several generations of Idlewild residents, the text weaves a collective story of the memories and communal aspirations of individuals, both those whose families have been rooted in Idlewild for decades, and those who have settled recently.