AltWeeklies Wire
Gangsta to Gangsternew
Two books about hip-hop expose and explain the scenes in New Orleans and New York.
Boston Phoenix |
James Parker |
12-20-2005 |
Nonfiction
Delivering the Unexpectednew
The award-winning stories in this collection illustrate what separates workaday journalism from craft.
Austin Chronicle |
Nora Ankrum |
12-16-2005 |
Nonfiction
'Shattered Glass' It Ain't
Part confessional, part greatest hits collection, Rabid Nun offers a cursory look at the one place in American journal where it's still okay to lie -- the checkout line tabloids.
Columbus Alive |
J. Caleb Mozzocco |
12-15-2005 |
Nonfiction
Car Talknew
Like many another Jewish writer before him, Rafi Zabor sees family as an epic subject. But a more apt comparison than Saul Bellow is jazz. Zabor writes and riffs -- each tonal shift leading to another alliterative romp.
Boston Phoenix |
John Freeman |
12-13-2005 |
Nonfiction
Tags: I, Wabenzi: A Souvenir, Rafi Zabor
Mississippi Rising
The Coahoma County Survey deserves to be credited as a great success. And now it can be credited to all its participants.
Washington City Paper |
Avi Klein |
12-09-2005 |
Nonfiction
Tales From the Wrongfully Convictednew
Surviving Justice, a collaboration between McSweeney's and the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is a well-researched exploration of America's unjust system of criminal conviction and exoneration.
Dig Boston |
Paul McMorrow |
12-08-2005 |
Nonfiction
Jingle Booksnew
Have yourself a literary holiday with some unusual small-press publications.
Tucson Weekly |
Jarret Keene |
12-07-2005 |
Nonfiction
Queer Scarenew
In 1920, Harvard president, A. Lawrence Lowell, put into action an inquisitorial secret court to ferret out, expel, castigate, and humiliate homosexual students.
Boston Phoenix |
Michael Bronski |
12-05-2005 |
Nonfiction
Gods and Generals
Lucy Hughes-Hallett argues that we find heroes when we need them. She doesn't consider what may be our special sorrow: both to need heroes and to lack them.
Washington City Paper |
Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow |
12-02-2005 |
Nonfiction
New Frontiersnew
In his debut book, television host and documentarian Louis Theroux chronicles his follow-up encounters with the people who populated his BBC show Weird Weekends.
Orlando Weekly |
Louis Theroux |
12-01-2005 |
Nonfiction
Author Aims for Claritynew
Though this book is a bit plodding and overwritten at times, it's a smart book worth the effort if you want to move beyond the current mess of muddled political posturing.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Thomas Bell |
12-01-2005 |
Nonfiction
Eclectic Masternew
A profoundly gratifying new two-volume Library of America collection of James Agee's works makes it clear that his broad range of literary output is unified by the beauty of his prose.
Boston Phoenix |
Steve Vineberg |
11-22-2005 |
Nonfiction
First, Last, Alwaysnew
Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, winner of this year's National Book Award for nonfiction, holds nothing back.
Sacramento News & Review |
Kel Munger |
11-17-2005 |
Nonfiction
Book Has Become Valuable History After Hurricanenew
The author's love (an angry, desperate, grieving, intimate love) for the culture reads sincere, offering a full sensory tour of a part of New Orleans that was always way off the tourist map and may now be gone forever.
Creative Loafing (Atlanta) |
Thomas Bell |
11-17-2005 |
Nonfiction
An Art-History Detective Story
A new book about Italian artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio demonstrates that geniuses, especially in their personal lives, aren't always what they're cracked up to be.
The Inlander |
Michael Bowen |
11-16-2005 |
Nonfiction
Tags: Jonathan Harr, The Lost Painting
