Read PopMatters on your Kindle


Chris Barsanti

Features

Featured Article

Books

Brave New World

[28.Nov.07] :. Naomi Klein convincingly argues in her crushingly pessimistic but magisterial work The Shock Doctrine that the future could well be a "cruel and ruthlessly divided" place where "money and race buy survival".

Recent features

 
Featured Article

Books

A Lost Cause: Tim Weiner's History of the C.I.A.

[24.Jul.07] :. Deep down, most of us probably know that the Central Intelligence Agency can't be nearly as cool as our popular media would have us believe.

Recent features

 

Reviews

Books

The Complex by Nick Turse

[9.May.08] :. This could've been written while sitting at one desk and never even seeing the inside of the Pentagon, or any military establishment, or speaking to a single person with any knowledge on the subject.

Recent Book reviews

 

DVDs

Bonnie and Clyde

[1.May.08] :. This film carries a bedrock rebelliousness and shocking ugliness that firmly resonates today.

Recent DVD reviews

 
PopMatters Pick

Books

Corporate Warriors by P. W. Singer

[25.Apr.08] :. By refusing to cast himself as a finger-wagging scold on the subject of military contractors, Singer’s concerns have all that much more power.

Recent Book reviews

 

Books

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell

[2.Apr.08] :. Besotted on Kafka-esque absurdity and Herbert Asbury-like carnivals of crime, O'Connell is a pulp author of the first order, but it's possible that it's time for him to become a little more of a pulp writer.

Recent Book reviews

 

Books

The Girl on the Fridge by Etgar Keret

[31.Mar.08] :. There’s no escaping the sinking suspicion that no matter how entertaining Keret’s goof can be for the short haul, he could (and probably should) do better.

Recent Book reviews

 

Books   The Delighted States by Adam Thirlwell

PopMatters Pick

Books

Our Daily Meds by Melody Petersen

[11.Mar.08] :. It's hard to read Our Daily Meds without thinking of Americans as shaven-head underground dwellers of THX-1138, shuffling through their twilight days in a prescription-drug-haze.

Recent Book reviews

 

Books   Against the Machine by Lee Siegel

Books   American Creation by Joseph J. Ellis

Books   Baltimore by Mike Mignola, Christopher Golden

Books   The Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa

PopMatters Pick

DVDs

I Am Cuba (Soy Cuba)

[10.Dec.07] :. The high-flying poem of a plot, the daredevil cinematography that nearly dances, the pulse-quickening humanism: all mark I Am Cuba as a rare emblem of a more idealistic past.

Recent DVD reviews

 

Books   Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson

Books   The Assault on Reason by Al Gore

Books   Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during World War II by The United States Army

Books   Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns

Books   On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

Books   The Yiddish Policemens Union by Michael Chabon

Books   God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens

Books   The Changing Face of War by Martin Van Creveld

Books   The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber

PopMatters Pick

Books

The Road by Cormac McCarthy / Oprah's Book Club selection

[28.Mar.07] :. Oprah loves the father-son journey of Cormac McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel and has made it the newest pick in the influential Oprah's Book Club.

Recent Book reviews

 

Books   Power, Faith, and Fantasy by Michael B. Oren

Books   You Dont Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem

Books   Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson

Books   Murder City by Michael Lesy

Books   The Mathematics of Love by Emma Darwin

Books   Alternadad by Neal Pollack

Books   Dangerous Nation by Robert Kagan

Books   State of Denial by Bob Woodward

Books   Conservatize Me by John Moe

Books   Liseys Story by Stephen King

Books   Homicide by David Simon

Books   The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Boullier, translated by Lorin Stein

Books   The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Featured Article

DVDs

Kicking and Screaming (2006)

[25.Aug.06] :. Behind all the banter and postgraduate trauma, Kicking and Screaming is a love story, only it's a fairly sour one that unfolds in reverse.

Recent DVD reviews

 

Books   The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind

Books   BOFFO! by Peter Bart

Featured Article

DVDs

Dazed and Confused: Criterion Collection (1993)

[20.Jul.06] :. Criterion's DVD appreciates the film itself, without trying too hard to analyze or understand it, thank god.

Recent DVD reviews

 
Featured Article

Film

A Scanner Darkly (2006)

[6.Jul.06] :. The suits make for images so fascinating they feel nearly "addictive," appropriate given that the film is about (among other things), viewing, reality, and addiction.

Recent Film reviews

 

Books   The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley

Film   Three Times (Zui hao de shi guang) (2006)

TV   The Henry Rollins Show

Blog posts

Re:Print

The Graphic Report: The Killing Joke

[31.Mar.08] :. In a storyline that’s been retold almost as often as the Depression-era rough-and-tumble beginnings of the comics trade, the mid-to-late 1980s saw a rebirth for comics, spearheaded by a...

Re:Print

 

Re:Print

The Graphic Edition: Paul Goes Fishing

[22.Mar.08] :. Maybe it’s true that Canadians are just simply nicer. While American graphic novels of late have been concerning themselves with abject self hatred (Adrian Tomine), vampire slackers (Jessica...

Re:Print

 

Re:Print

The Will Eisner Edition

[23.Jan.08] :. While 2007 was a busy year for new graphic novelists and cartoon artists of all kinds, particularly now that they're getting some long overdue respect, one of the real treats for the genre came late...

Re:Print

 

Re:Print

Mexican Radio

[11.Jan.08] :. In the city of Nezahualcoyotl, 60 miles east of Mexico City, police supervisors had a great idea a few years back about introducing their rank and file officers (many of whom had been ill-served by...

Re:Print

 

Re:Print

The Graphic Edition

[7.Jan.08] :. As 2007 was coming to a close, time, and the allocation thereof, took a runner, and left many of us in the critical appraisal business with too much to opine upon and a shortage of waking hours in...

Re:Print

 

Re:Print   National Book Awards

Re:Print   Truth in Comics: After the Deluge

Re:Print   Bookmarks: The Book of Vices

Re:Print   We Are (Somewhat) Amused

Re:Print   Winning the Right War

Re:Print   The World Without Us

Re:Print   Getting Biblical

Re:Print   Soon-Forgotten Harry

Re:Print   Vampire Love Triangle

Re:Print   The next Potter?

 
TODAY ON POPMATTERS
Columns | recent
Dread Reckoning: The Demise of Horror Culture?
Global Beat Fusion: Three Nights in France
RECENT MUSIC

In bold are PopMatters Picks, the best in new music.