Ronald Brownstein Celebrates and Elegizes LA’s ’70s-Era Cultural Dominance
Ronald Brownstein’s ode to ’70s Los Angeles is, like so many California stories, less about a sustained moment than a bright and briefly thrilling mirage.
book feature
Celebrity Stylist Andrew Gelwicks Has a Queer Advantage
Andrew Gelwicks interviews celebrities and other “beautiful people” who have come out of the closet and benefited from it.
‘Black Against Empire’ Assumes a Central and Critical Spot within the Black Panther Canon
Black Against Empire attempts something beyond the scope of power-to-the-people flashbacks of Afros, dashikis, and raised fists: it takes the Black Panther Party seriously as a political entity taking dead aim on American laws and values.
Truths Overlap in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Memoir of German Reunification, ‘Not a Novel’
Living under the repressive East German regime taught its citizens to distrust their government and read through the lines of its proclamations to glean the reality of a situation, Jenny Erpenbeck explains in Not a Novel.
How the Cultural Revolution Turned China Against Itself
Yang Jisheng's remarkable historical autopsy, The World Turned Upside Down, is scrupulous in detailing the Cultural Revolution's horrors and insanities but too often leaves out the human side of history.
Black Diamond Queens: African American Women and Rock and Roll (excerpt)
Ikette Claudia Lennear, rumored to be the inspiration for Mick Jagger's "Brown Sugar", often felt disconnect between her identity as an African American woman and her engagement with rock. Enjoy this excerpt of cultural anthropologist Maureen Mahon's Black Diamond Queens, courtesy of Duke University Press.
Jack Halberstam’s ‘Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire’ (excerpt)
Enjoy this excerpt of Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire, wherein Jack Halberstam offers an alternative history of sexuality by tracing the ways in which wildness has been associated with queerness and queer bodies throughout the 20th century.
Democratizing Our Data: A Manifesto (excerpt)
Just as big tech leads world in data for profit, the US government can produce data for the public good, sans the bureaucracy. This excerpt of Julia Lane's Democratizing Our Data: A Manifesto will whet your appetite for disruptive change in data management, which is critical for democracy's survival.
Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest (excerpt)
In this excerpt of Black in the Middle, PopMatters' Mark Reynolds compares the nearly identical racial divides in his cities, Cleveland and Chicago, that to this day are stubbornly entrenched.
Nicholas Buccola’s ‘The Fire Is Upon Us’ Is Obscured by the Smoke
Nicholas Buccola's The Fire Is Upon US is, at times, marred by glibness, impatience, and ahistorical tendencies that suggest, to an extent, it is also a reflective of the deteriorating conditions that mark our public discourse in 2020.
‘Run-Out Groove’ Shows the Dark Side of Capitol Records
Music promoter Dave Morrell's memoir, Run Out Groove, recalls the underbelly of the mainstream music industry.