Jones gets a handle on big ideas

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Sheilla Jones

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Winnipeg journalist Sheilla Jones will tackle some of the biggest, and smallest, stories in the universe in a book to be released next spring by New York publisher Palgrave Macmillan (a division of St. Martin's Press).

Jones has signed a book deal for What's Wrong with Physics Today, a popular science book that touches on cosmology, particle physics and quantum physics. The book is intended to help non-scientists get a handle on how current big ideas about the universe are increasingly so over the top that they seriously risk undermining scientific credibility. Jones is teaming up with German scientist Alexander Unzicker.

Jones is also the author of The Quantum Ten: A Story of Passion, Tragedy, Ambition and Science (Thomas Allen/Oxford University Press, 2008), a look at "the trouble with quantum physics."

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Winnipeg pop music historian John Einarson has written an armful of books about rock 'n' roll and country rock, but it's not just his subjects that have gone electric.

He has updated his 1992 book on former Winnipeg troubadour Neil Young's early years, Neil Young: Don't be Denied, and brought it back as an ebook through Amazon. Another of his older titles, American Woman, about the Guess Who, will be out as an ebook in the fall.

His most recent book, the Ian & Sylvia bio, Four Strong Winds, comes out in a trade paperback format in the fall.

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From dirty jokes in even dirtier bars to lofty arguments in the Supreme Court of Canada, Winnipeg comedians Gary and Blair MacLean had a career that took them everywhere.

Now their story is told in a book called Was It Something We Said?. The book, written by Blair, who died in 2008, and self-published by his widow Marcia, covers the 30-year career of MacLean & MacLean as they performed raunchy comedy and satirical folk and pop songs across Canada.

Gary died in 2001. The book also includes the pair's legal struggles with Canada's obscenity laws, which saw them appeal all the way to the Supreme Court and win freedom for Canadian performers.

The book includes a forward by the Canadian lawyer Clayton Ruby. It will be launched Thursday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson.

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A Winnipeg writing and editing duo -- Marjorie Anderson, editor of the Dropped Threads non-fiction series, and University of Winnipeg professor and novelist Deborah Schnitzer -- have recruited 13 writers, including novelists Gail Anderson-Dargatz and Jack Hodgins, to write a "collaborative novel."

With the novel, On the Edge, completed except for the final chapter, Anderson and Schnitzer are looking for somebody to finish the project. Interested writers have until June 30 to register their intentions to write a final chapter, and until Sept. 30 to send it in. For more information on the project visit www.unlimitededitions.ca

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You have until June 30 to enter the Winnipeg Public Library's Last Word In First Words contest.

This contest is for anybody -- not just aboriginals, as reported here June 2 -- to write a recommendation for a piece of aboriginal writing from any genre.

Write up to 250 words on why you are recommending this particular piece of work. The top two recommendations will win prizes.

booknewsbob@gmail.com

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 16, 2012 J8