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Are you looking for presents that are easy to wrap? Get books for the people in your life! To help make your holiday shopping easier, the University of Michigan Press has chosen to highlight some of our newest books for you to share with the readers in your life.

Don’t forget to take advantage of our holiday sale by using the discount code HOLIDAY24 at checkout! This year we’re excited to offer 50% off our entire list of titles during our sale (November 25th to December 31st). Since the holiday shipping is expected to be busy once again, we encourage customers to place their orders as early as possible if books are needed for the holiday season!

Our Michigan edited by James Tobin, Kim Clarke, and Deborah Holdship

This book is the gift for University of Michigan fans. Brand new and richly illustrated with over 250 color photos, Our Michigan presents the University of Michigan’s story in a mosaic of fascinating details—leaders who steered the university; faculty who changed students’ lives; alumni who changed the world; favorite places and treasured moments. Perfect for alumni who want to reminisce as well as for inspiring current (or future) students!

The Bastard Instrument: A Cultural History of the Electric Bass by Brian F. Wright

Declared “a must for those wishing to broaden their knowledge of bass history” by Leland Sklar, the bassist for James Taylor and Phil Collins, The Bastard Instrument gives early electric bassists credit for the significance of their accomplishments and demonstrates how they fundamentally altered the trajectory of popular music. It will be enjoyed by bass players and music enthusiasts alike and includes a Spotify playlist for readers to enjoy.

Lessons in Gratitude: A Memoir on Race, the Arts, and Mental Health by Aaron P. Dworkin

Lessons in Gratitude tells the story of Aaron Dworkin, a MacArthur Fellow, social entrepreneur, and spoken word artist who has dedicated his life’s work to changing the face of classical arts in the world. Inspire the musicians in your life with a story that, according to NPR’s Lara Downes, is “proof positive of the immense power of the arts to change the world for the better, in ways both big and small, immediate and long-lasting.”

Concrete Century: Julius Kahn and the Construction Revolution by Michael G. Smith

Concrete Century will delight readers intrigued by architecture, construction, or Detroit history with the true origin story of modern concrete buildings. The unsung brother of architect Albert Kahn, Julius Kahn worked to turn the tide against widespread destruction of buildings by fire. Drawing upon Kahn’s personal correspondence, architectural drawings, company records, and contemporary news and journal articles, Michael G. Smith reveals how this man—whose family had immigrated to the US to escape antisemitism in Germany—played an important role in the rise of concrete.

Firsthand: How I Solved a Literary Mystery and Learned to Play Kickass Tennis while Coming to Grips with the Disorder of Things by Keith Gandal

“An excellent read full of humor and intellectual and emotional depth. Anyone who is a writer or a want-to-be writer will appreciate this book,” summarizes Nancy Gentile Ford, author of Americans All! Foreign-born Soldiers in World War I. Firsthand combines a scholarly detective story with a comic personal narrative that incorporates stories from the author’s experiences of the hyper-competitive world of middle-aged men’s tennis, adopting pitbulls, and discussing Michel Foucault.

Joy (Or Something Darker, but Like It): poetry & parenting by Nathaniel Perry

This first nonfiction book by poet Nathaniel Perry considers poetry in the context of parenting—what poems and poets might teach us about parenting, what parenting might teach us about poetry, and also, what either of those things might have to teach us about simply being human. Described by Maurice Manning as, “a whole new genre—the close reading of poems as a step-by-step parenting guide,” this book will inspire readers with “the implied understanding that most of us live with hope, and a hope that will get us through.”

How to Draw a Circle: On Reading and Writing by Dan Beachy-Quick

What is it to write a poem? This Poets on Poetry book is the perfect gift for the poet in your life. Midwest Book Review wrote that, “One of the best critiques and commentaries on the art and impact of poetry and verse upon the human mind and emotions in many a year, this paperback edition of Dan Beachy-Quick's How to Draw a Circle: On Reading and Writing from the University of Michigan Press is a thoughtful and thought-provoking study that is unreservedly recommended…”

Cue Tears: On the Act of Crying by Daniel Sack

Do you have an aspiring actor or a theater fan in your life? They will be intrigued by this collection of essays on the mechanisms of tear production, internal and external techniques that actors use to weep, and the effects of tears in performance situations on the stage, in the gallery, and in the classroom. With autobiographical stories from the author’s childhood of collecting tears for his biochemist father, Cue Tears offers lively insight into what makes a tear real.

Greasepaint Puritan: Boston to 42nd Street in the Queer Backstage Novels of Bradford Ropes by Maya Cantu

Many theater fans will be familiar with 42nd Street, but far fewer know of the author Bradford Ropes. Greasepaint Puritan chronicles Ropes’s career as a successful screenwriter in 1930s and ’40s Hollywood, where he continued to be a part of a dynamic gay subculture within the movie industry before returning to obscurity in the 1950s. Library Journal identified this book as perfect for “fans, performers, and creators of musical theater.”

Project Management for Researchers: A Practical, Stress-Free Guide to Getting Organized by Shiri Noy

“I wish I had this book earlier in my own career” and “this is the book I have been looking for the past twenty years I have been doing research,” wrote Professors Kristin Luker and Elaine Howard Ecklund. Help out the researchers in your life and get them this step-by-step guide to choosing tools and developing a personalized system that will help the reader manage and organize their research! Adaptable for those working alone, with others, or as team managers, Project Management for Researchers will guide readers between various research stages–from planning, to execution, to adjustment of research projects big and small.

Find more great gifts from University of Michigan Press at press.umich.edu.