Willie Davis Tonight (December 10), Alice Beck Kehoe on Wednesday (December 12).

We have a couple of events going on this week.

Monday, December 10, 7 pm, signing at Boswell:
Willie Davis, author of Closing the Gap.
We're still trying to decide what we should do about our book situation. We have about 60 in stock, and have so far pre-sold about 20.  I figured that since there were several other events going on around town, we'd all split the market. Now that those other events have happened, this may not be the case. We might procure some more books in time for the event, or it's possible Davis will add more dates to his schedule. Right now, if you want one, I'd call and reserve a copy (personalization requires prepayment, by the way).

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Bob Wolfley attended the Milwaukee Press Club Lunch for Davis, when someone asked him about head shots. Here's his reply: "I look at the game today and I say, is this the same game?" Davis said. "The hits above the shoulder pads, the concussions . . . was that a part of the game when I played? I honestly can’t give you an answer much beyond I don’t believe (we) had . . . intentional hits above the shoulder as much as they have today. . . . I’m glad the league is taking the position that it has no place in the game. I do respect (NFL commissioner) Roger Goodell for trying to do something to put a curb to it." Read the rest of Wolfley's piece here.

Wednesday, December 12, 7 pm, talk at Boswell:
Alice Kehoe, author of Militant Chrisianity: An Anthropological History.
Kehoe is a professor of anthropology emeritus at Marquette University, and author of numerous books about native cultures and anthropology processes. Her research also includes archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork on the Northwestern Plains, ethnographic fieldwork in an Aymara Indian village in Bolivia, and continued collaboration with Amskapi Pikuni, Blackfeet Reservation, Montana, for whom she prepared a history, Amskapi Pikuni: The Blackfeet People.

If you do not know Kehoe from her work, you may have spotted her traveling about Milwaukee on her bicycle. She was very close to getting us to have a anthropology subsection, but in the end, we couldn't find the right books to make the section work, and we put her other titles (which Jason brought in from an independent press) into history instead.

Here's a recommendation from Daniel Maguire, religious studies professor at Marquette: "A well-written, well researched nook on the religious right that does what no other book on the religious right does. As the paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin said, 'Nothing is intelligible outside of history.' It took an anthropologist like Kehoe to go to the historical, cultural, and anthropological roots of the complex Christian Right phenomenon. This book is useful for classes in political science, sociology, anthropology, religious studies, law and in other disciplines where the major influence of the religious right is now being discussed."