Recent Books Features

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Wednesday, November 4 2009

Leaving Las Vegas and Leaving for Good

By Aaron Knier

Using Ben in Leaving Las Vegas as a gauge to measure myself against, my life wasn’t anywhere close to as bad as it could be, but people who thought they had better control of their drinking than me still fuck their lives right up, so....

Nicholson Baker’s Enthusiasms and Passionate Obsessions

By Christopher Guerin

Nicholson Baker writes from his enthusiasms, which are many and ever changing. Among other things, his books have focused on sex, John Updike, public libraries, and pacifism and World War II. His latest, The Anthologist, is his love letter to poetry.

Monday, November 2 2009

How Far Is Too Far?: Navigating the World of Young Adult Fiction

By Beth Greaves

In the world of "edgy" young adult fiction, there's a tendency to either bury real world consequences, or exploit the darker material for all it's worth. But where does that leave the young readers grappling with the content?

Tuesday, October 27 2009

Barb Johnson

By PopMatters Staff

From a balcony overlooking the flood of New Orleans to 'The Bubble' laundromat, where the city's characters come to wash it all out, award-winning author Barb Johnson talks with PopMatters 20 Questions.

Friday, October 23 2009

PopMatters @ 10

By PopMatters Staff

PopMatters celebrates its birthday this week with a series of essays on cultural changes over our 10-year lifespan. Today: Mark Reynolds on "The Long and Short of Long-Form Journalism" and Nikki Tranter on "Exit from Nowheresville: My 10 Years with PopMatters".

Sunday, October 18 2009

Patricia Cornwell

By PopMatters Staff

20 Questions caught up with award-winning, international best-selling author Patricia Cornwell in a rare moment when her feet were on the ground.

Wednesday, October 14 2009

Await Your Reply: Dan Chaon Talks About Self-invention

By Jack Patrick Rodgers

Lost, indie music and Final Destination inspired Dan Chaon's latest novel, Await Your Reply -- all deal with issues of self-invention and how we conceptualize the self, he tells PopMatters.

Friday, October 2 2009

American Liars and the Enforcers of Honesty

By Oliver Ho

A hard-boiled history of the lie detector revels in the seedy deceptions at the roots of the search for a truth-telling machine (plus: it exposes the kinky origins of Wonder Woman).

Wednesday, September 30 2009

The New American Spook Country

By L.B. Jeffries

Spook Country is about America’s loss of innocence, its various ways of remembering the past, and an attempt to find a way of reconciling those memories with the present.

Thursday, September 17 2009

The Frankfurt School in Exile

By Rob Horning

The positivists regarded Hegelian dialectics as metaphysical voodoo; the New York Intellectuals thought the Frankfurt School's associates were closet Stalinists.

Tuesday, September 15 2009

China’s Factory Girls: A Conversation with Author Leslie T. Chang

By Jack Patrick Rodgers

Traditional and often sensational coverage of China is only a partial interpretation: the people themselves are being lost in the translation.

Sunday, September 13 2009

Nick Hornby

By PopMatters Staff

Nick Hornby tells PopMatters 20 Questions about his affiliation with Seinfeld’s George Costanza, his soon-to-be-released album with Ben Folds, and this great bargain he got from a Russian website…

Friday, September 4 2009

Airplane Books, Junk Literature, and the Western Canon: All Novels Are Lies, Some Lies Are Better

By Kelly Roberts

Reading deeply and widely at the very least makes us less dull and more patient, and it happens to be the only way to make informed, qualitative judgments within and across genres.

Wednesday, September 2 2009

Who Are You: Tom Waits and ‘Lowside of the Road’ by Barney Hoskyns

By Robert Loss

Waits is a deconstructionist vaudevillian with a heart who rails against cynicism; a furious bluesman blaring unabashedly about the soul-- his words and music stretch into a bizarre land, where the light is slanted, eerie.

Tuesday, September 1 2009

Explainers: Back to the ‘50’s and Up to the Present

By Sarah Boslaugh

Jules Feiffer's groundbreaking Village Voice comics delivered a satirical take on current events and paved the way for many contemporary strips.

Tuesday, August 11 2009

Chronicling Catastrophe: Dave Eggers and the American Nonfiction Novel

By Chris Barsanti

When faced with catastrophe, from wars to natural disasters, the nonfiction novel is sometimes the only medium that can do justice to the chaos.

Wednesday, August 5 2009

Pot, Skinny-Dipping, and Freedom Rock: Woodstock and the Year of the Outdoor Music Festival (Part 2)

By Rob Kirkpatrick

PopMatters presents the second part of a chapter on Woodstock from Kirkpatrick's recent book 1969: The Year Everything Changed. Part two covers Woodstock appearances by the Who, the Band, Jimi Hendrix and more.

Monday, August 3 2009

James Rollins

By PopMatters Staff

Best-selling author James Rollins reveals a talent to PopMatters 20 Questions not otherwise seen in his many books -- beware, kitties and politicians, lest he approach you wielding a scalpel.

Pot, Skinny-Dipping, and Freedom Rock: Woodstock and the Year of the Outdoor Music Festival (Part 1)

By Rob Kirkpatrick

Today and Wednesday, PopMatters is presenting a chapter on Woodstock from Kirkpatrick's recent book 1969: The Year Everything Changed. Part one covers the run-up to the festival as well as those early sets by the Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin.

Wednesday, July 29 2009

It’s All Too Beautiful

By David Banash

A suspicion of beauty is vital if one hopes to have any relation to it that isn't completely compromised; as Walter Benjamin said, beauty is the other side of the coin of injustice.

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