Admittedly, there is some disconnect between myself, sitting at a desk in downtown New York City, and the tranquil, idyllic spires of Cambridge University. Cambridge University Press is a small part of the goings-on at the University. Having studied there, I have a stronger connection than many of my co-workers, who have never visited.

Even so, I caught news of an experiment this morning that struck me as very, well, Cambridge University.

That’s right: space bears.

These teddy bears were launched into the stratosphere via balloon from Churchill College. This was part of a Cambridge University Space Flight Science Club experiment, conducted by an aerodynamics student and a group of children as a way of getting them interested in science. The suits were made by the kids out of foil and plastic bottles, among other things, with sensors to monitor their temperatures and other forces.

So cool.

They even parachuted gently back to earth, landing about 50 miles from Cambridge.

Get the full story, and more pics, at The Daily Mail.

I’m sorry to say, but our Records of the Salem Witch Trials (yes, ALL of the legal documents!) won’t be out for a couple more months. It’s a big book, but done right.

We do, however, have a fully unauthorized biography of Satan.

This issue of New York Review of Books reviewed our recently published book Ghosts of War in Vietnam, in which ghost stories abound.

Ooh, we’ve also published a social anthropology of Witchcraft and Sorcery.

Finally, if you must dress like a dead person this weekend, know your stuff. Read A Social History of Dying.

For a unique window into what we go through in the publishing industry, even as book review sections and reviewers are slashed left and right, The Guardian’s Book Blog:

There are many zany tactics adopted by publishers and authors to get their books noticed, but how about giving them away for free? John Warner, chief creative tsar of struggling independent publisher TOW Books, is so sick of sending his books out to newspapers and magazines and television shows for review, and hearing nothing back, that he’s decided to give up on the media and send books directly to his readers.

(Behind the decision there is also perhaps a measure of ennui for booksellers, too, after a passing gag he made about a ridiculous preposterous novelty book was taken at face value and generated significant interest from retailers.)

“Really, if you think about it in this day and age of Amazon and blogs and Facebook and MySpace, and LibraryThing, and Shelfari, everyone has a public forum where they can express their opinions,” he writes. The only thing he is asking in return “is that you say something somewhere about them, even if it’s along the lines of ‘U think ur funny, but u suck’.”

For an insider’s look, see John Warner’s own account of what it’s like, and TOW probably sends out more publicity copies than we do. But as he summarizes, books don’t stick to walls when thrown at them, and the wall has many book-sized holes in it.

This week’s lead story in The Economist addresses what folks have suspected for a while — a lot of the institutions that are supposed to promote all sorts of good things like trade, good economic policy, human rights, and stability are getting more than a little outdated.

CLUBS are all too often full of people prattling on about things they no longer know about. On July 7th the leaders of the group that allegedly runs the world—the G7 democracies plus Russia—gather in Japan to review the world economy. But what is the point of their discussing the oil price without Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest producer? Or waffling about the dollar without China, which holds so many American Treasury bills? Or slapping sanctions on Robert Mugabe, with no African present? Or talking about global warming, AIDS or inflation without anybody from the emerging world? Cigar smoke and ignorance are in the air. Read More >>

All that on top of the bad publicity that some leaders like Gordon Brown got for devouring an 8-course dinner after attending G8 meetings on food shortages. Now I have my two cents on this one: the Japanese are among the most gracious hosts in the world, as my wife’s treasure trove of teapots and beautiful stationary from her father’s Japanese colleagues can attest. Should a world leader refuse hospitality fit for a world leader?

Dennis Patterson and Ari Afilalo would have something to say about all this. The G8 and international institutions, not the big, delicious meals.

Turning a big, special meal down would probably be a bit impolite, but the renovations to facilities and infrastructure detailed on the same Independent article are pretty wild, because after all, Japan is in dire need of infrastructure improvement… right?

Oh well. Here I go, shamelessly posting the dinner menu in full, grabbed from The Independent. Whoa. They’re even drinking Latour. And as for the dessert: un-sexiest dessert name ever.

UPDATE: Some blogs have coined this whole affair G-Ate Gate.

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This week — Sweden: the Colonial Power

Neil Kent’s Swedish History Smorgasboard brings us tidbits and snippets about a country that many Americans, myself included, sadly know little about. Here in New York, we have Dutch and English street names, and a flag adapted from the Netherlands’. I grew up in Pennsylvania, surrounded by the descendants of Germans and Poles. Neil Kent, author of A Concise History of Sweden informs us of some surprising colonial activity of the Swedish. They colonized “New England,” were heavily involved in the slave trade, and had their hand in the Caribbean, too.

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Sweden was a North American colonial power until the late nineteenth century. In 1637, it established the colony of New Sweden, with its capital at Fort Kristina, named after Sweden’s famous queen, popularised in the world famous Greta Garbo film of the same name. Later captured by the Dutch, it was ceded to the British and was one of the original thirteen colonies which became the United States: Delaware!

Sweden also had an important colony in the Caribbean: St Bartelemy. It acquired the island from France in 1785. During the Napoleonic Wars it was a very important entrepot for ships from the warring nations, trading with one another. It languished in the nineteenth century and was ceded to France in 1878. Today it is a thriving tourist destination for the seriously rich.

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