As a television critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Nachman's first review was of the Ed Sullivan Show. "I packed the review with wisecracks," he recalls in the book. Nachman (above, at a book launch party hosted by friends) characterizes primordial TV as a grey and dismal entity, shrouded in the shadow of radio and Hollywood, and the Ed Sullivan show as a kind of revolution, a catalyst not only for TV's initial success, but for popular culture across America: "Sullivan's show was something beyond even what it first envisioned for itself: it became the great equalizer, relentlessly democratic, cutting across all age, class, cultural, and ethnic boundaries..." he says in the book. It was the place for aging stars and new talent, and and harnessed the social changes that were transforming the country, entertainment, and celebrity. And it brought people together—as Sullivan and McMahon both point out, the Ed Sullivan Show drew 47 million viewers on a weekly basis in 1955, compared to 35 million who watched the American Idol finale in 2008.

Read the San Francisco Chronicle article, A Toast to Bygone Era of 'Ed Sullivan Show'

Listen to an interview with Gerald Nachman on our podcast page

You may subscribe to the monthly podcast feed that contains the individual episodes using your RSS aggregator or directly via the iTunes store. You can listen to individual author interviews from the episodes at our podcast page. Listen to this podcast now.

You may subscribe to the monthly podcast feed that contains the individual episodes using your RSS aggregator or directly via the iTunes store. You can listen to individual author interviews from the episodes at our podcast page. Listen to this podcast now.

In his book Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in a Web of Life, Sampson places dinosaurs in the context of the entire natural world, from the origins of life to the present. Illustrating how dinosaurs lived and what we can learn from them, Sampson imparts a sense of wonder about paleontology and the scientific revelations that still wait to be unearthed. 

Sampson now lives in California, and continues his research while taking on new projects related to education. He is the paleontologist and host of the Discovery Channel series Dinosaur Planet, and of the PBS Kids series Dinosaur Train, produced by the Jim Henson Company. In the video below, from PBS's coverage of the of the TV Critics Press Tour, Sampson talks to Zadi Diaz about Dinosaur Train, and how learning about dinosaurs is a great way to start learning about science and the natural world.

From Janet and David Carle's blog, Parallel Universe: 38º N:

The Headwaters State—Colorado

We reached Salida, Colorado along with a night of winter weather. So we stayed two nights with our former Mono Basin neighbors, Shannon and Brett, took a day off from traveling, and learned about a battle led by local citizens against the export of nearby mountain "springwater" (actually groundwater) by the Nestle Co. to their Denver bottling plant....Read More

Telluride 350

A lot of planning has gone into this trip, but the surprises keep coming and have made for some of our best experiences. Telluride is a ski town that used to be a mining town and is almost right on the 38th parallel. We planned to look into water issues (Sam Miguel Creek runs right through town), then learned that a 350 Global Climate Change event was scheduled for October 24....Read More

Radioactive Cleanup on the Colorado

In Moab, UT, 38 34', 109 32'; we met Kimberly Schappert by choosing the Up the Creek tents-only campground in the middle of town. Kim came to Moab over 20 years ago, and started a mountain biking magazine. She has seen Moab change from a small mining town with a Uranium Cafe and Atomic Grill, into a mecca for outdoor recreation....Read More

Water Grab in Eastern Nevada

We arrived in the old mining town of Pioche, 37°56', 114°27', on a bitterly cold afternoon. The local history museum provided a warm shelter and many interesting exhibits. It was staffed by Barbara Zelch, who told us her husband has been very involved in the battle over Las Vegas planning to export groundwater from eastern Nevada valleys....Read More

A Problem of Presence is a historical ethnography of the Friday Masowe apostolics of Zimbabwe. Members of this Christian movement do not read the Bible, and instead embrace a live and direct faith in which God's presence is immediate and not mediated by a church, written text, or any other material thing. Exploring wider issues of textual authority and material culture, Engelke examines how the Friday Masowe construct a relationship with the divine.

The SHA awards this prize annually in honor of the anthropologist Victor Turner. “Turner devoted his career to seeking a language that would reopen anthropology to the human subject, and the prize will be given in recognition of an innovative book that furthers this project,” says the SHA. Engelke is a senior lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and the editor of Prickly Paradigm Press. In 2008, A Problem of Presence won the Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.

Cancer is complicated, and there are no simple answers--the decision to screen or not to screen depends on many factors, and ultimately lies with the individual and his or her doctor. Challenging the idea that more testing is always better, H. Gilbert Welch (pictured), a physician, researcher, and the author of Should I Be Tested for Cancer? Maybe Not and Here's Why, encourages people to approach cancer screening with a full understanding of both its advantages and its risks. In the book, he explores the issues raised by screening and early detection, including the risks of overdiagnosis and overtreatment, and presents a detailed picture of what cancer screening tests can and cannot do. In order to help improve the communication and understanding of health data, Welch and his colleagues Steven Woloshin and Lisa M. Schwartz co-authored Know Your Chances: Understanding Health Statistics, which provides readers with the tools to interpret health statistics and better understand risk.

 We've been exploring one slice of the vast Ohio River watershed ever since we entered West Virginia: the New and Gauley Rivers, the Kentucky River, and the main course of the Ohio itself....Read More

A Pioneering Pioneer Forest and the Population Center of the U.S.

Wendell Berry had suggested a visit to the Pioneer Forest in Salem, Missouri (37°34') to learn about a half-century long experiment in sustainable forestry....Read More

"One would as soon expect to see seagulls in Kansas" Mark Twain about Mono Lake 

Well, we discovered there ARE seagulls in Kansas, and lots of them. Also cormorants, white pelicans and phalaropes. Central Kansas has the largest inland wetlands in the country....Read More

Mining the Ogllala

We had experienced a lot of surface water when we visited the wildlife refuges in the middle of Kansas. Farther west, we are now in an entirely different water basin, a portion of the vast Ogallala Aquifer that extends from Nebraska down to Texas....Read More

Santa Fe Trail--Kansas to Eastern Colorado

Across much of Kansas, the historic Santa Fe Trail closely follows our target latitude line and, not coincidentally, also closely follows the Arkansas River, the major surface water source in this part of the country....Read More