Monday, December 13 2010
None Are So Blind As Those Who Will Not See: ‘The Mind’s Eye’ by Oliver Sacks
In this telling of his own encounter with blindness, the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks reminds us that there are few human failings worse than taking for granted life and its manifold hidden miracles.
Wednesday, November 24 2010
‘Life’: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stone
Because Keith Richards lived the book he’s written, he’s written a book that lives on.
Thursday, November 18 2010
Hip-Hop’s Laboratory of Language
What do William Wordsworth, Robert Frost, Ice Cube, and Ghostface Killah have in common? Finally, they all appear in anthologies.
Wednesday, November 17 2010
Rosanne Cash: More Than Just a Legend’s Daughter
Rosanne Cash’s lyricism plays on the page as if she’s on stage with guitar in hand. You can hear the music as you read. PopMatters Jaime Karnes talks with this gifted writer of songs and stories.
Friday, November 12 2010
Hüsker Dü: The Story of the Noise-Pop Pioneers Who Launched Modern Rock
What the world really needs is a straight-up account of one of the most important rock groups of all time. Now we have it in the form of music scribe Andrew Earles.
Jimi Hendrix, the Patron Saint of Alt-Blackness
Forty years after his death, Jimi Hendrix looms larger - and deeper - than ever within the black cultural pantheon. Even though he wasn't really 'black'.
Thursday, November 4 2010
President Obama and The Long Fade
Two new books on the Obama presidency make clear that the dream, such as it was, is over -- though not necessarily in the way you'd think. Whether or not something has actually died, the obituary has already been written for Barack Obama's promise of progressive reform
Thursday, October 28 2010
‘Poltergeist’: Home Sweet Hell
James Kahn’s version of Poltergeist is a rare example of a book written after a movie is released, which results in a riveting read.
Tuesday, October 26 2010
And Here’s to You, Mr. Robinson: ‘Jerry Robinson: Ambassador of Comics’
In a conversation with Jerry Robinson, the man who created the Joker, we learn he is much like the superheroes with which he will forever be identified; his career reflects a lifetime of pushing boundaries, challenging conventions, and fighting for artistic integrity.
Monday, October 18 2010
The 24-hour News Cycle Rhetoric Yields to Something Far More Human in ‘The Promise: President Obama’
This book works because it doesn't skimp on details: the reason behind every major Obama Year One decision is explained, and the result is fascinating. If only Alter toned down the declarative statements...
Tuesday, October 12 2010
Philip Roth’s ‘Nemesis’: The Case Against God and Man
Here is Philip Roth in his familiar, brutal finery, his most biting and honest eloquence: the great existential wondering which has tormented so many of his characters.
Friday, October 8 2010
‘A Cambodian Odyssey’: Haing Ngor Was Among the Most Consequential Actors of His Time
It isn't often that a brutal personal account of mass murder, slavery, torture and the obliteration of a sovereign nation causes a reader to meditate on the art of acting, but then, Haing Ngor's was no ordinary life.
Thursday, October 7 2010
‘The Grapes of Wrath’: The Specter of Tom Joad Emerges From America’s Dark Past, Once Again
With the current economic climate -- increasing rates of foreclosure, evictions, unemployment, poverty and misery -- this classic story dangerously impinges upon the present to reveal the specter of Tom Joad emerging from the darkness, once again.
Friday, September 10 2010
Ironically Facebook and Its 500 Million Friends Remain Largely a Mystery
In the beginning, Mark Zuckerberg was a socially-awkward teenager, a computer science major at Harvard University, who arrived toting an eight-foot-long whiteboard as a brainstorming tool...
Wednesday, September 8 2010
Philosophical Tactics in International Soccer
What exactly are Marx, Hegel, Aristotle and Socrates doing after Confucius blows the ref’s whistle? They’re not just thinking about soccer. They’re playing... sort of.
Wednesday, September 1 2010
‘Eclipse’: A Sort of Romantic Kind of Fairytale
When I saw Eclipse, a gaggle of teenage girls behind me giggled, gasped and squealed their way through most of the film. Each time their hysteria erupted, it happened during a romantic scene.
Friday, August 27 2010
‘The Men Who Would Be King’ Reveals the Stuff That DreamWorks Was Undone By
With energy and a candor reflecting a veteran journalist unworried whether she'll eat lunch in that town again or not, author Nicole LaPorte reveals the parallels between the DreamWorks story and that of any dream's road to either reality or perdition.
Wednesday, August 4 2010
Feeding an Addiction
Call me a romantic, but after watching so much of that wet and messy business, I crave a less-is-more, simpler, sexier rendition of food porn. Instead, of grotesque, I prefer burlesque and have found that the good stuff isn’t on reality TV.
Thursday, July 29 2010
Future Shock, Postmodern Nostalgia, and Uncanny Technologies
The speed of technological change is unprecedented. Author Anna Jane Grossman finds that it has imbued her "with a kind of odd nostalgia for right now.”
Wednesday, July 21 2010
Manly Love: Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg’s Letters
Kerouac and Ginsberg are cosmic twins borne from Whitman’s Universal skull, bonded as comrades, cerebrally-joined as poets -- but it will sour for Kerouac when Ginsberg uses his poetic voice as a political trump card.
