During the holidays, the post office and other carriers take longer to deliver packages. This year, delivery time for USPS has also been impacted by reorganizational changes begun by the new postmaster general in August as well as delays caused by the increase in mail due to the pandemic.
Normally, we can expect that orders placed with us on or before December 12 have a good chance of delivery before December 25 in the continental United States, but this year is different (as it has been in so many unexpected ways).
This year, to help us accommodate the post office, which handles 99 percent of our orders, and to help our team limit potential exposure to the virus, we are changing our expectations. For this year, we expect that orders placed with us on or before December 1 have a good chance of delivery before December 25 in the continental United States.
We thank you for your business and your support during what has certainly been the most challenging time we've experienced, and we hope that the books you receive from us help you to learn something new and rise above the situation or at least enjoy a few pleasant hours of escape.
—Cris Trautner
]]>One person was very kind to send me a photo of what the line item charge looked like:
When a business sets up a merchant account to process credit cards, it can choose whatever text it likes to identify the business name on statement lines. Even for legitimate businesses, the identifying text can be different than the name you might expect; for example, when you're working with a business that has a parent company and uses that name on the statement or when the business name is too long to fit easily into the character limit so it's garbled and not immediately recognizable.
It is unfortunate that this particular scammer has chosen our name for his or her scamming efforts.
The good news is the people I talked to were able to have the charges investigated by their credit card companies or banks and get them reversed, so no harm done. But it also required that their card be canceled and a new one issued, which I know from my own experience is a pain in the butt.
We've been considering rebranding and changing our name for a few years now so we could expand beyond just books related to Nebraska, and this incident has brought the idea back to the forefront of my thinking.
We are also in the process of redesigning our website on a different platform, which I expect to complete by the end of the year. We may roll out the rebrand at the same time as the website redesign, or we may wait. We've been Nebraska Book Source for a very long time, so this isn't a decision to take lightly.
If you discover a charge on your account that you don't think is legit and that has our name on it, please first contact your bank or credit card company to report it so they can start the process of reversing the charge and issuing you a new card. Then please let me know: cris@infusion.media or (402) 477-2065. We're keeping track of these incidents in case it's helpful for law enforcement.
—Cris Trautner
]]>From the epilogue: "Every day of my career I made decisions that were based on lessons that I had learned in Fairbury, Nebraska, and on a farm in Mahaska, Kansas. For the most part, my decisions were good, but I made mistakes—sometimes, doozies. But I knew that my childhood had given me the tools necessary to succeed and to approach situations in a logical manner. I had been taught to be decisive in my decision making, but most of all, I had been taught—no, commanded—to listen. …You can learn a lot from other people, good things and bad things, if you will just listen—I made a career of it."
Readers of A Piece of Kansas Soil by Jim Cossaart may remember Jim's great-uncle, Leslie Cossaart. Leslie Cossaart was Dennis Jones's grandfather.
Check out Parables from the Prairie: How an Admiral Was Trained on Dry Land.
]]>Mahaska is just across the Nebraska state line, and Jim and his family have spent enough time in Nebraska that we feel comfortable including his book on Nebraska Book Source—in addition, the book was published by Nebraska publisher Infusionmedia of Lincoln.
Jim's stories are beautifully written with humor balanced by the tragedy of situations and behavior. His writing explores the good and the bad of human nature, small towns, and family farms. Not to give away the ending, but Jim ends up as a dentist—first in Nebraska, then in Vermont. You'll have to read the book, A Piece of Kansas Soil, to find out how.
Update 5/12/17: Dennis Jones has just published Parables from the Prairie: How an Admiral Was Trained on Dry Land. Leslie Cossaart, Jim's great-uncle, was Dennis's grandfather.
]]>The Sunflower Forest: Ecological Restoration and the New Communion with Nature, first published in 2003, will soon be available on our website. For those who are interested in humanity's relationship to nature and who want to learn more about the ecological restoration environmental movement, this is the first book to read. Quantities will be very limited at first, but we're hoping a new supplier will solve that problem for us.
It may be stretching things a bit to include Jordan's book in our catalog, but the phrase "the sunflower forest" is straight out of Eiseley, one of Nebraska's noted nature writers, and on page 54 of Jordan's book, he references Eiseley, the sunflower forest, and The Invisible Pyramid.
(No, we will likely not be carrying Torey Hayden's similarly named novel The Sunflower Forest. It doesn't appear to mention Eiseley, or Nebraska, at all. The sunflower forest, in this case, is apparently in Wales.)
]]>Books arrived this afternoon, so if you were waiting until they were in stock to order your copy of Natural Treasures of the Great Plains, now's your chance.
]]>Our book design and custom publishing counterpart, Infusionmedia, has continued to expand to the point where me personally vetting each and every book for Nebraska Book Source is just impossible. That's a good thing. It also means some changes need to be made.
My apologies to all who have sent me a book to consider for NBS. If I still have contact information, I will be in touch, and we'll discuss possibilities.
For those authors and publishers who wish to submit a book for consideration, here are our new rules:
If you have questions, email me at cris@infusion.media.
]]>If you have questions about your book order, please email cris@infusionmediadesign.com or call 402-477-2065.
We hope you and yours have a wonderful holiday and are able to take time off to rest and renew, to be with family and friends, and to enjoy the season.
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Deb Derrick, a longtime member and former secretary of the Loren Eiseley Society, wrote a review of The Immense Journey. Here, to me, is one of her best descriptions of Eiseley and this first work:
Like the narrator of a play who observes the drama unfold from the sidelines, Eiseley observes the story of life unfolding throughout history, recounting some of it to us in his own story. "Forward and backward I have gone, and for me it has been an immense journey" (13). By the time we read these words we have come to realize that Eiseley is not just talking about his own life's journey. Eiseley's narrator is metaphor for the journey of all humankind through the vast dimension of time and space—a journey filled with perplexity, delight, and impermanence. Eiseley might refute that, if he were alive today. He claims he does not pretend to speak for anyone but himself.
Nebraska Book Source will be offering The Immense Journey for sale in the next few weeks, adding to our Eiseley collection. We hope you enjoy the read.
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A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Eiseley was a professor of anthropology and a prolific writer and poet who worked to bring an understanding of science to the general public, incorporating religion, philosophy, and science into his explorations of the human mind and the passage of time.
As a writer who bridged the sciences and the humanities, Eiseley is a challenge for scholars locked into rigid discplinary boundaries. "Artifacts and Illuminations," the first full-length collection of critical essays on the writing of Eiseley, situates his work in the genres of creative nonfiction and nature writing. The contributing scholars apply a variety of critical approaches, including ecocriticism and place-oriented studies ranging across prairie, urban, and international contexts. Contributors explore such diverse topics as Eiseley's use of anthropomorphism and Jungian concepts and examine how his work was informed by synecdoche. Long overdue, this collection demonstrates Eiseley's continuing relevance as both a skilled literary craftsman and a profound thinker about the human place in the natural world.
Having recently seen a presentation on the book, I'm very interested in reading this scholarly examination of Eiseley the writer.
Nebraska Book Source also carries other titles either by or related to Eiseley. Take a look under the Science & Nature or the Biography & Autobiography collections—or search for "Eiseley" in our search box.
]]>Regular visitors may notice that our shipping method has changed from item-based shipping (shipping cost increases depending on the number of items you order) to weight-based shipping (shipping cost increases based on the accumulated weight of the items ordered). We're experimenting to see how the weight-based shipping cost compares to our shipping and packaging cost, so you may see some adjustment of the weight levels down the road.
Along with the shipping change, we are making a significant change to our packaging. Most orders will now be shipped in double-wrapped B-flute corrugated cardboard, with the books themselves covered in plastic wrap to foil any potential moisture damage. This has slightly increased our postage and materials cost per shipment, but the added protection for the books as they go through the delivery process is a great benefit both to you and us.
For customers who are receiving orders in the new packaging (you'll know by the oblong size of the cardboard wrapper), let us know how it worked for your books: did they arrive OK? no bent corners? no moisture problems? We want to make sure that our new packaging passes the ultimate test and keeps your books safe.
We have also increased the inventory of titles available on the store, and we will continue to add new titles. We are particularly pleased with the new selections for the Science Fiction & Fantasy collection, and we hope you enjoy them as well.
(There have been some interesting issues with book cover images and how they show up on the store. Bear with us as we work through the problem; it will be fixed shortly.)
Let us know what you think about the new store—email cris@infusionmediadesign.com. Suggestions are always welcome!