Ryan Walsh chronicles the making of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and the chaotic Boston scene that gave birth to it and tells us all about it in this expansive interview.
Replete with intense drama, moral dilemmas, and interpersonal conflict, Hideo Yokoyama provides a remarkably well-constructed illustration of the dilemmas journalists face in difficult situations.
Anthony Bourdain was loved not for his wit or charming temerity, but for confronting us with our own alienation and cultural isolation. He reminded us that there were connections to be made over the dinner table.
The Order of Time is a little wonder of a book. It provides surprising insights into an increasingly mysterious world, offers warmly humane reflections on our existential condition, and sustains a virtual conversation that will continue long after the reading has ceased.
The Art of Vanishing is strongest when it covers the life of an independent girl, Barbara Follett, a prodigy molded almost to death by demanding parents.
Spanning 60-some years, Arif Anwar's debut novel explores aspects of Bangladesh's history and how matters of race, religion, and nationality have shaped personal lives.
As Splendor and Misery in the Weimar Republic conveys, Expressionism seems to proclaim, we feel alike; whereas New Objectivity doesn't attempt to express alienation -- it induces it.
In this collection of stories, it's as though the author recognized a number of ingredients that had potential to produce a superb dish, but either didn't know how to combine them or lacked the enthusiasm and spirit to bring the stories to life.
Víctor del Árbol's A Million Drops is a mystery-thriller in the best tradition of the genre, one which offers an intricately-researched historical tale while also trying to say something appreciably profound about human nature.
Wolitzer is an aware author who clearly understands how matrices of power oppress and subjugate. Yet here, her characters only occasionally check their power or privilege.
As with the media surrounding the Krim children murders, Leila Slimani's book asks, what went wrong?
Travel of the kind Theroux has spent a lifetime doing would compel anyone to develop patience, a love of solitude and anonymity, a constant alertness, and a resourceful toughness.
Curtis White gives a hilarious display of creative destruction.
A tender tale of survival and legacy, Lauren Grodstein meditates on the love and grief between a dying mother and her son.
Lauren Grodstein reads from Our Short History -- a warm, complicated, and at times angry and sarcastic missive to a grown man his mother will never know.
We just keep standing there, digging our heels into the mainstream D-list—also known as the queer A-list—and running our mouths for decade after decade at top volume.
If All Gates Open isn't the full picture of Irmin Schmidt and Can, then the real McCoy must give one a hernia.
Culling local storytellers' accounts, land valuation records, field maps and more, Mac Suibhne exposes the clash between the secret society of the "Molly Maguires" in their homeland with the forces of law and order in this history of Ireland.
Adam Rapp's characters have to kill and bag children to earn their keep. How does one depict that on stage and on page?
He finds people who find his writing offensive interesting. He feels the pressures of a right-wing and left-wing audience equally. And the lines for book signings go on, and on. As do delightful interviews with this irrepressible man, such as this one.
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