MSI Press Blog

  Today's book back story is about The Subversive Utopia by Dr. Yasir Sakr. From the publisher: In early 2006, through a mutual friend, while living in Jordan, the owners of MSI Press (at that time, not yet an incorporated business) met a young professor of architecture, Dr. Yasir Sakr, at his home where his young son, Abdelrahim, was present. Abdelrahim was about five years old and pretty much the same as 5-year-olds everywhere.  Yasir had a book idea, based on his dissertation. The topic was to share research he had accomplished on the National Jewish architectural style in Jerusalem and the influence of Louis Kahn, an American architect born in Estonia when that country was part of Russia and transported to the US when his parents emigrated and whose design for the Hurva Synagogue, while never adopted did influence subsequent design for the synagogue and other sacred buildings.  The typesetting of the book was a challenge, fitting immense drawings into small book pages, especia

  Today's book back story is about The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society  by Dr. Omar Imady. From the publisher: In 2005, MSI Press was a very young specialty press, established to publish materials for promoting higher levels of language learning, associated with the Coalition of Distinguished Language Center. Dr. Omar Imady, originally from Damascus, was a professor at the New York Institute of Technology in Amman, Jordan, where Dr. Betty Lou Leaver, co-founder of MSI Press LLC, was dean. He approached her with the suggestion of a modest expansion of publishing lines -- adding books on culture to those on language. The first two to be published was his book on metaphors of Islamic humanism and the book, The Rise and Fall of Muslim Civil Society.  The latter was based on his dissertation at the University of Pennsylvania and served an important, and broader, function: to shed light on the institutional roots of organizations that sanction the use of indiscriminate violence to

  Today's book back story is about The Pandemic and Hope by Dr. Dennis Ortman From the publisher: In 2020, everyone was reeling, caught off-guard by the coronavirus that descended quickly and viciously. Work places closed, families grouped together in lockdown (and sometimes the coronavirus ran right into those families, and people were dying. There was much confusion and much fear. At that time, MSI Press asked its authors, who are nearly all specialists in one domain or another, to prepare "little" books (a few dozen pages) of information in their fields for people coping with the pandemic. Fifteen responded; that become our popular pandemic series. One of those little books was The Pandemic and Hope. Not long thereafter, Dr, Ortman expanded the information into a full-sized book, Life, Liberty, and COVID-19 . Read more posts about Dennis and his books, click HERE .  For more book back stories, click  HERE . To purchase copies of this book at 25% discount, use code FF2

  Today's book back story is about  The Musings of a Carolina Yankee  by Wally Amidon. From the publisher: Wally's book did not land at my doorstep in the traditional way--not as a proposal in any form either via mail or email. Rather, it showed up as a self-published book literally on my doorstep, sent as a gift by childhood friend, Wally, who had moved from Yankee territory (the Maine-New Hampshire border) to redneck country (rural South Carolina). I was aghast at the production, and I often use it as a sample of the difference between self-publication (especially when authors are taken in by a vanity press that does no extra work) and a professional publication. Certainly, self-published authors can produce quality books, but that was not the case with Wally's. The vanity press had just published it exactly the way he had written it. It looked like they had just scanned typewritten pages. The content was good, and the humor could prompt out-loud laughing, but the present