Nigam Nuggehalli
It’s gratifying to find an author who investigates a subject from first principles. Such studies are not only illuminating, they are easier to digest for people unfamiliar with the subject. Haberski’s book, a study of film as a cultural ...
Eva Hunter
Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir Andrew Dickos spins a good web for film noir addicts in Street with No Name. Although the book ...
Eva Hunter
It’s not uncommon for chapbooks to grow out of literary festivals at all, so Sonny Brewer has done nothing new in publishing “stories” written, at least in part, by the eclectic group of writers who appeared at a somewhat ...
Phil Freeman
The story of the West Memphis 3 is the kind of perversion of justice that fuels East and West Coast natives’ nightmares about finding themselves trapped in “flyover country.” Three teenagers, one of them mentally handicapped, sentenced to life ...
Les Wright
The protagonist of The Contortionist's Handbook, John Dolan Vincent, Jr., began life as an abnormally gifted child, in a chaotic and violent blue-collar household. His puny size and his remarkable, fully-formed sixth digit on one hand have contributed to ...
Emma French
Sidra Stich's guide to contemporary art, architecture and design in Britain and Ireland offers an accessible, reasonably full overview of the national cultural scene. The London section is the largest and the most useful, ensuring that the London art ...
Bob Wake
First-time mystery novelist D.S. Saunders succeeds like a seasoned pro at grabbing her readers and keeping them guessing until the final pages of The Rule of Two. There are enough genuine surprises and plot twists to satisfy the most ...
Phil Freeman
It’s possible to argue that the lifestyle depicted in Irvine Welsh’s breakout novel Trainspotting was so dead-end that a sequel could only prove depressing and, ultimately, useless. Who wants to read about a bunch of hapless, scamming junkies, ten ...
David Fear
It’s been called by the second golden age of Hollywood, that brief period between 1969 (post-Easy Rider) and 1980 (pre-Heaven’s Gate) when the American film industry seemed to be exhaling out masterpieces every other weekend. Liberated by an old-world ...
Phil Freeman
This book is both literally and figuratively unreadable. First, the literal problems: many (presumably) important lines are in Italian, Hebrew or Latin. Further, Tosches bogs his narrative down to dwell, at mind-numbing length, on numerology and etymology. Second, the ...
