AltWeeklies Wire
Achy Obejas Uses the Noir Form to Explore Her Cuban Rootsnew
The 18 stories collected in the anthology Havana Noir are nothing if not messy. The Havana reflected in its pages is coldly violent and explosively loving. It's vibrant, brutal, amoral, sordid, romantic, idealistic, pragmatic, and gleefully ambiguous.
Chicago Reader |
Martha Bayne |
06-02-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Cokie Roberts Looks Back on the Women Who Shaped Americanew
Without the patriotism of women on the home front, Roberts says, the colonies could well have lost the Revolutionary War.
Shepherd Express |
Rex Rutkoski |
05-30-2008 |
Nonfiction
'Lady Lazarus' is a Fictional Critique of American Culture Both Great and Smallnew
Lady Lazarus is about more than the cult of (dead) celebrity worship. It's also about the commodification of art, whether that occurs in the high prices charged for a "definitive boxed set," the creation of artists in graduate programs or the anointing of "stars" in the popular press.
Sacramento News & Review |
Kel Munger |
05-30-2008 |
Fiction
British Scholar Peter Hallward Examines Foreign Meddling in Haitinew
Damming the Flood is a formidably researched account of the 2004 coup that is critical of foreign intervention in Haiti.
Montreal Mirror |
Samer Elatrash |
05-30-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
'Nixonland' Underlines the Real Lesson of 1968
Today that lesson teaches that we should seek a president who can heal the still-festering wounds of race and class, who can lead us out of war and who can move us past the political purgatory Perlstein calls Nixonland. But by invoking that sad chapter in our history, Hillary Clinton has cast herself in the Dick Nixon role.
The Inlander |
Ted S. McGregor Jr. |
05-29-2008 |
Nonfiction
'The Greatest Game' is Filled with Buckner-esque Errorsnew
It's the 30th anniversary of the '78 season and the Yankees are in the cellar again, so comparisons are inevitable. But Richard Bradley's recent book on the '78 Sox season finale, lacks ... well almost everything.
Boston Phoenix |
George Kimball |
05-29-2008 |
Nonfiction
'What It Is' Mixes Workbook, Memoir, and Zen Koansnew
Cartoonist Lynda Barry has adapted some of her “Unthinkable” wisdom for a book called What It Is -- and it is an odd little creature.
San Antonio Current |
John DeFore |
05-28-2008 |
Original Work
Siblings Different as Apples and Orangesnew
In Apples and Oranges, a memoir of sibling discord within her own family, Marie Brenner applies her skills as an investigative reporter to trying to fathom and repair her strained relationship with Carl. Jumping about in space and time, her memoir challenges the reader to find design amid absences and missed connections.
San Antonio Current |
Steven G. Kellman |
05-28-2008 |
Nonfiction
Brendan Mullen Revisits the Burn-hot, Burn-fast Punk Life of L.A.new
As he did in his earlier books, We Got the Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk and Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs, Mullen documents, with hundreds of photos and fliers and memento mori, the history of the Masque.
Willamette Week |
Nancy Rommelmann |
05-28-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Christopher LaMarca's Camera Captures the Standoff Over Old-growth Forestsnew
Armed with only his Hasselblad camera, LaMarca followed the protesters as they set up roadblocks on logging roads and bridges and held continual "tree sits" to stop the Biscuit timber sale.
Willamette Week |
Joseph Watts |
05-28-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Rick Bragg Completes His Family Saganew
In The Prince of Frogtown, the book he wrote to put the ghost of his own father to rest, Bragg concludes the set of family tales he began with All Over But the Shoutin' and expanded on in Ava's Man.
Charleston City Paper |
Jason A. Zwiker |
05-28-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Tags: Rick Bragg, The Prince of Frogtown
'Loose Girl' isn't Satisfyingnew
Rather than a compelling tale of modern sexuality, Loose Girl is a milquetoast rendering of crappy sex and icky moments.
Philadelphia Weekly |
Liz Spikol |
05-27-2008 |
Nonfiction
James Frey on Fact, Fiction and Doing It Once More, with Feelingnew
Frey's Lazarus-like literary return is Bright Shiny Morning, his first (complete) fiction novel. Like most subjects related to Frey, it's causing a polarizing shitstorm.
Philadelphia Weekly |
Bob Hill |
05-27-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
Marisa Silver's Ares Ramirez Only Seems Normalnew
Silver gives voice to real outsiders, society's castoffs who eke out precarious livings around the edges of that other failure, the Salton Sea, a river deflected long ago in hopes of creating a desert oasis for tourists, and now so polluted and oversalinated that it washes up trash and dead fish by the thousand.
L.A. Weekly |
Ella Taylor |
05-27-2008 |
Fiction
Chuck Palahniuk Talks 'Snuff'new
He talks at length about his ninth and latest novel, Fight Club and fainting spells.
Colorado Springs Independent |
Matthew Schniper |
05-23-2008 |
Author Profiles & Interviews
