A loyal partisan and highly principled public official whose career overlapped with those of many legends of Illinois politics-including Mayor Richard J. Daley, Governor James Thompson, and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan-Democrat Philip J. Rock served twenty-two years in the Illinois Senate. Fourteen of those years were spent as senate president, the longest tenure anyone has served in that position. This nuanced political biography, which draws on dozens of interviews conducted by Ed Wojcicki to present the longtime senate president's story in his own words, is also a rare insider's perspective on Illinois politics in the last three decades of the twentieth century. 

A native of Chicago's West Side, Rock became one of the most influential politicians in Illinois during the 1970s and 1980s. As a senator in the 1970s and senate president from 1979 to 1993, he sponsored historic legislation to assist abused and neglected children and victims of domestic violence, ushered the state through difficult income tax increases and economic development decisions, shepherded an unruly and fragmented Democratic senate caucus, and always was fair to his Republican counterparts. Covering in great detail a critical period in Illinois political history for the first time, Rock explains how making life better for others drove his decisions in office, while also espousing the seven principles he advocates for effective leadership and providing context for how he applied those principles to the legislative battles of the era. 

Unlike many Illinois politicians, Rock, a former seminarian, was known for having a greater interest in issues than in partisan politics. Considered a true statesman, he also was known as a skilled orator who could silence a busy floor of legislators with his commentary on important issues and as a devoted public servant who handled tens of thousands of bills and sponsored nearly five hundred of them himself. 

Nobody Calls Just to Say Hello, which takes its title from the volume of calls and visits to elected officials from constituents in need of help, perfectly captures Rock's profound reverence for the institutions of government, his respect for other government offices, and his reputation as a problem solver who, despite his ardent Democratic beliefs, disavowed political self-preservation to cross party lines and make government work for the people. Taking readers through his legislative successes, bipartisan efforts, and political defeats-including a heartbreaking loss in the U.S. Senate primary to Paul Simon in 1984-Rock passionately articulates his belief that government's primary role is to help people, offering an antidote to the current political climate with the simple legislative advice, "Just try to be fair, give everyone a chance, and everything else comes after that."

Walter E. Klippel came to the University of Tennessee in 1977 as an assistant professor of anthropology. In the forty years that followed, he supervised and mentored countless students in archaeology and biological anthropology, published more than fifty journal articles and book chapters, and assembled a zooarchaeological comparative collection of national significance. During his tenure, Klippel’s important contributions to the field of zooarchaeology would impact not only his students and colleagues but the development of zooarchaeological research as a whole. Even after his retirement in 2017, Klippel’s influence is readily apparent in the studies of his contemporaries. North American Zooarchaeology: Reflections on History and Continuity is their tribute to his work.

Developed by friends, students, and colleagues of Walter Klippel, North American Zooarchaeology presents a wide-ranging collection of essays through the lens of his remarkable career. Each chapter of the volume represents a prevailing theme notable in Klippel’s research, including geological and landscape contexts, taphonomy, and the incorporation of actualistic methodologies and new technologies into zooarchaeological analyses. The diversity of topics represented across the ten chapters showcase just how extensive Klippel’s research interests are and suggest how much contemporary zooarchaeology owes to his vision. The authors take up this broad palette to explore the various ways in which the framework of zooarchaeology can be used and applied in nontraditional settings.

With a foreword by Bonnie Styles and Bruce McMillan, longtime friends and colleagues of Walter Klippel, this volume reflects on the history and continuity of zooarchaeology in North America and honors one of its most notable contemporary contributors. With its multifaceted approach, this volume is sure to appeal to a broad array of practitioners in the field of zooarchaeology.

A North Country Almanac: Reflections of an Old-School Conservationist in a Modern World includes the musings of an independent mind on wilderness, the conservation ethic, and the joys of loving the outdoors. Although a lifelong conservationist, Thomas C. Bailey has never unquestioningly accepted environmental dogma. The essays here often challenge familiar assumptions about stewardship of natural resources. The former National Park ranger, fishing guide, and conservancy director offers a rich variety of perspectives on an interesting array of topics, returning always to his fundamental belief that conservation pioneers such as John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Aldo Leopold had it right when they affirmed Walt Whitman’s observation that “the secret of making the best person . . . is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”