Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we continue our review of “New Year, New in Paperback” books that were originally published in hardcover by SIU Press.
This week, we’ll wrap up our discussion and get a brief preview of a couple on the way in the Press’s current season.
From Slave to State Legislator: John W. E. Thomas, Illinois' First African American Lawmaker, by David A. Joens, won a Superior Achievement award from the Illinois State Historical Society in 2013 in its original hardcover iteration. As the first African American elected to the Illinois general assembly, John W. E. Thomas was the recognized leader of the state’s African American community for nearly twenty years and laid the groundwork for the success of future Black leaders in Chicago politics.
In the wide-ranging analysis Shaping Information: The Rhetoric of Visual Conventions, Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett demonstrate how visual language in professional communication—text design, data displays, illustrations—is shaped by conventional practices that are invented, codified, and modified by users in visual discourse communities.
