If, as Oscar Wilde said, "nothing ages like happiness," then nothing rejuvenates like a pursuit. That is certainly the American way, and in The Promised Folly, Judith Hall takes a fresh look at our American pursuits and supreme fictions. She explores the folly that follows mere existence and gives it back to her readers in different voices-Venus, Walt Whitman, Julius Caesar, Ma Rainey voices that contain multitudes. Whitman will become Falstaff, for example, and Venus becomes Mars. Absurdities and incongruities such as these constitute for Hall opportunities for lyric pleasure. The resulting poems are puckish, sumptuous, and austere, by turns, and not incidentally compassionate.

Chartered in 1869, Southern Illinois University has been a stalwart presence on the southern Illinois landscape for a century and a half. This book celebrates the 150th anniversary of the university’s founding by exploring in depth its history since 1969, when the last book to celebrate a major anniversary was published.

Chapters reflect on SIU’s successful athletics program, the various colleges and departments within the university, the diverse holdings and collections of the library, the unique innovative research enterprises, and special programs such as the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute and Touch of Nature Environmental Center.

Although SIU may be a typical large public university in many ways, its unique location, history, and culture have made it a distinct institution of higher education. Located close to the Shawnee National Forest and Giant City State Park, the landscape is an indelible part of SIU, contributing to both the beauty of the university grounds and the campus culture.

The university’s sesquicentennial provides a wonderful opportunity to revisit all that makes SIU amazing. Illustrated with 306 photographs of theater and music performances, art, sports, past and present students, faculty, staff, administration, politicians, community members, successful alums, distinguished visitors, and patrons of the university buildings, and landscapes, Southern Illinois University at 150 Years captures the university’s story in all its vivid color.
 

Three Trios brings together, for the first time, translations of two ancient texts. The Apocryphal Book of Judith may be the more familiar one--the tale of a widow as warrior-savior. Less familiar may be the possibility that hidden within this narrative is another older sequence, a pagan one. The ritual that initiated a woman into the Dionysian also licensed her to leave her community. That ceremony, for all the running and blood-letting, helped the cultivated woman cultivate her individuation out of a morass of femininity. The "Mysteries" were widely practiced, and yet to preserve their secrecy, any documentary evidence was surely hidden, coded, or bowdlerized. It is possible that the Book of Judith was such a disguised book of common pagan prayer. Three Trios is composed out of this audacious possibility.