AltWeeklies Wire
Elijah Wald Explains How the Uncool Music of Yesteryear Shapes Today's Tunesnew
No one makes music in a vacuum, completely detached from the pop mainstream and his or her potential audience. Wald argues that nobody should be trying to, since how many people music appeals to in its own time is at least as important as how many rock writers it appeals to in 30 years.
Chicago Reader |
Miles Raymer |
06-15-2009 |
Nonfiction
Mark Rudd: Political Organizer, Ex-Federal Fugitive, Pseudo-Stepdadnew
Mark Rudd and his sort-of stepson recently chatted over crackers and hummus about Rudd's days in SDS, the Weather Underground -- and about the biggest mistakes he made along the way.
Weekly Alibi |
Simon McCormack |
06-01-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Ted Gioia's 'Delta Blues' Catalogs the Bluesnew
Delta Blues rambles from Mississippi to Memphis, from Chicago to New York and across Europe, just like the musicians it documents.
Jackson Free Press |
Walter Biggins |
02-19-2009 |
Nonfiction
'Dynamite Club' Revisits the Bomb Heard 'round the Worldnew
John Merriman examines how an 1894 anarchist bombing in Paris kicked off the age of modern terrorism, and what we stand to learn from the bomber.
The Texas Observer |
Tom Palaima |
01-16-2009 |
Nonfiction
Pink Floyd Bio Reveals All the Cracks in the Wallnew
Nothing in these pages is pretty, and the collective story doesn't seem to be so much about rock stars as about human beings going through the trajectory of life: being young and having a dream, moving toward the realization of that dream, achieving success and then dealing with the emotional and psychological fallout.
New York Press |
Aileen Torres |
01-15-2009 |
Nonfiction
'Drum of War' Looks at Walt Whitman's Nonreligious Ministry During the Civil Warnew
Whitman recognized something that few writers of that era or after did: the Civil War's true meaning lay in the "valor of suffering -- not of men firing rifles," and certainly not in the fascination with battles and troop movements that has dominated Civil War studies.
Metro Silicon Valley |
Michael S. Gant |
01-09-2009 |
Nonfiction
'Pathway to the Gods' Brings to Life the World's First Chocolate Obsessionnew
For centuries, it has captivated humans and gods. It's been associated with worship, commerce, romance and comfort. But why has it so completely seduced the world? Just what's so special about chocolate? Meredith L. Dreiss and Sharon Edgar Greenhill travel back in time to Mesoamerica to answer these questions. With recipe for Mayan Hot Chocolate.
Weekly Alibi |
Maren Tarro |
01-06-2009 |
Nonfiction
Two Photography Books Remember Punk's Growth Spurtsnew
Punk may roll a little in its grave now that it's been mythologized, but if it's going to get the coffee table treatment at least Skins & Punks and Radio Silence: A Selected Visual History of American Hardcore Music offer it respect.
Baltimore City Paper |
Tony Ware |
12-30-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Slavery by Another Name' Examines Post-Civil War Convict Labornew
Douglas Blackmon argues -- passionately, forcefully and convincingly -- that by any measure, blacks in the states of the former Confederacy saw their freedom so warped and constrained in the decades after the Civil War that the overwhelming majority were not in any meaningful way free.
The Texas Observer |
Todd Moye |
12-17-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Awaiting the Heavenly Country' Examines the American Death Cultnew
With generous illustrated examples, Professor Mark S. Schantz depicts an America preoccupied with death. In this America, Shakespeare and militaristic Greek classicists like Herodotus were popular reading, and families of the 1830s and 1840s treasured photographic portraits of the freshly dead, including infants and children.
Shepherd Express |
Eric Beaumont |
11-10-2008 |
Nonfiction
'The B List' Celebrates The So-Called Lower Rung of Auteursnew
If you're looking for a guide through film's funkier tributaries, this is intellectual criticism written with the urgency of a fan juiced to share some odd object of infatuation with a world that likely missed it the first time around.
Baltimore City Paper |
Jess Harvell |
11-04-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Deanne Stillman's 'Mustang' is Heartbreaking and Enragingnew
Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West is an exhaustively researched, eloquently written wake-up call.
Pasadena Weekly |
Bliss |
11-04-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Author Geoff Nicholson Gets Pedestriannew
The Lost Art of Walking explores the creative fuel for history's greatest thinkers.
L.A. Weekly |
Matthew Fleischer |
10-31-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Veeps' is an Irreverent Guide to the History of the Vice Presidencynew
There are three people on the blue side of the political spectrum who benefited from the selection of the profoundly terrifying Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidate: Tina Fey, Bill Kelter, and Wayne Shellabarger.
The Portland Mercury |
Alison Hallett |
10-24-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Bordertown' Depicts True Life and History on the Mexican Bordernew
With Bordertown, Gusky and Johnson intend to provide a historical and cultural narrative that seems to be missing from contemporary conflicts.
Dallas Observer |
Megan Feldman |
10-20-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
