AltWeeklies Wire
A Duke Historian Unearths a Motherlode of Forgotten Jazz Recordingsnew
Sam Stephenson has been studying W. Eugene Smith for 12 years. His second book, The Jazz Loft, is a massive oral history of Smith's former home in New York City.
INDY Week |
Jesse Jarnow |
03-26-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Industrial Icon Martin Atkins Knows From Touringnew
Martin Atkins has played with just about every metallic industrial band that matters, and released many more on his 20-year-old Invisible Records imprint. These days he's also the author of Tour:Smart, a universally acclaimed soup-to-nuts guide to life on the road now in its second printing.
Houston Press |
Chris Gray |
03-24-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Will Your Favorite Indie Book Store Survive or Be Swallowed Whole?new
More than a decade deep into Amazon, Borders and Barnes & Noble's ravenous gangbang of all things mom-and-pop, local bookstores are now staring down the barrel of Depression 2.0.
Philadelphia City Paper |
Jakob Dorof |
03-24-2009 |
Books
'The Lost City of Z' Maps an Amazon Mysterynew
As David Grann describes him in The Lost City of Z, British explorer Percy Fawcett was the last of the Victorian era's hard-bitten adventurers, a man who waded "into uncharted realms with little more than a machete, a compass, and an almost divine sense of purpose."
The Georgia Straight |
Brian Lynch |
03-23-2009 |
Nonfiction
'Land of Marvels' Foreshadows Iraq Debaclenew
John Somerville, Barry Unsworth's archaeologist hero, is a typical Edwardian abroad. He's a wealthy Englishman who means to do well by others, but in Land of Marvels he's at sea in an ocean of stones.
The Georgia Straight |
Alexander Varty |
03-23-2009 |
Fiction
He Survived the Pickup-Artist Scene, Now He Wants to Survive the Apocalypsenew
Neil Strauss' own press materials call him "the world's most legendary pickup artist," but his new game is all about learning to survive not dating disasters but actual life-threatening, end-days disasters, an obsession that brings plenty of its own worries.
L.A. Weekly |
Gendy Alimurung |
03-20-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Memoirist Robert Goolrick Tackles the Novelnew
Robert Goolrick, a former advertising exec turned writer, explores the difficulties of "simple" married life and the dark family landscape within which it exists in his new novel. He talks here about writing fiction, the appeal of Wisconsin and where his writing career is headed.
New York Press |
Stephanie Lee |
03-19-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
'MAD' Men: 'The Wolverton Bible' and 'Humbug'new
Two new books published by Fantagraphics capture sides of artists that went unexposed under the auspices of Alfred E. Neuman, which makes them all the more appealing.
San Antonio Current |
John Defore |
03-18-2009 |
Nonfiction
Quincy Jones Can't Help But Look Back on His Life and Legacynew
Jones' mesmerizing coffee-table history is cobbled together from the scraps of a life collected by his sister-in-law Gloria and bookended by a Maya Angelou preface, a Clint Eastwood foreword, a Bono introduction and a Sidney Poitier afterword.
Dallas Observer |
Robert Wilonsky |
03-16-2009 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Rethinking Canada's Founding Fathernew
For many reasons, historians have been coming together recently in an effort to give Samuel de Champlain a greater place in world history.
Montreal Mirror |
Juliet Waters |
03-13-2009 |
Nonfiction
A Portland Novelist Rewrites a True Storynew
Portland’s Forest Park was a great place to get off the grid and stay off for a Vietnam vet with PTSD and his 13-year-old daughter. Novelist Peter Rock re-imagines: Where did this real-life father and daughter disappear to?
The Inlander |
Michael Bowen |
03-12-2009 |
Fiction
One Day in Dallasnew
Adam Braver’s book deserves to be known; it ranks first among novels focused on the death of JFK.
The Texas Observer |
Don Graham |
03-12-2009 |
Fiction
You Have the Right to Sue. Right?new
The American citizen’s access to trial by jury—taken for granted as it is—plays a salutary role in curbing corporate abuse. It should be no surprise that such access is under attack, or that the battle reached a fever pitch during the Bush years.
The Texas Observer |
Dave Richards |
03-12-2009 |
Nonfiction
Samantha Hunt Weaves Historical Fiction From Nikola Tesla's Biographynew
Despite being overstuffed with tangential subplots, too-convenient characters, and predictable plot mechanics, The Invention of Everything Else brims with Tesla's prescient ideas about energy.
Portland Phoenix |
Christopher Gray |
03-12-2009 |
Fiction
Zoe Heller's 'Believers' Captivates Despite a Weak Plotnew
Heller’s treatment of fraught and contradictory emotions, together with her unabashed exploration of intellectual musings, endows the story’s eponymous believers with an all-too-rare profundity.
New York Press |
Rayyan Al-Shawaf |
03-05-2009 |
Fiction
