Out-of-print records, suddenly reissued, can serve as a kind of secret history. The paradigmatic example is the Nuggets garage-rock compilation,…
Books & CDs
In his ninth novel, Forever, Pete Hamill tackles a number of classic themes: the longing for eternal life, the sins…
Jazz is all about making personal statements. The introspection which earns surprised plaudits in pop is routine in jazz. A…
100% Cotton dyed Noren. Handmade in Japan. a limited production noren for the serious noren enthusiast This study forms an…
It’s gratifying to find an author who investigates a subject from first principles. Such studies are not only illuminating, they…
Street with No Name: A History of the Classic American Film Noir Andrew Dickos spins a good web for film…
It’s not uncommon for chapbooks to grow out of literary festivals at all, so Sonny Brewer has done nothing new…
The story of the West Memphis 3 is the kind of perversion of justice that fuels East and West Coast…
The protagonist of The Contortionist’s Handbook, John Dolan Vincent, Jr., began life as an abnormally gifted child, in a chaotic…
Sidra Stich’s guide to contemporary art, architecture and design in Britain and Ireland offers an accessible, reasonably full overview of…
First-time mystery novelist D.S. Saunders succeeds like a seasoned pro at grabbing her readers and keeping them guessing until the…
It’s possible to argue that the lifestyle depicted in Irvine Welsh’s breakout novel Trainspotting was so dead-end that a sequel…
It’s been called by the second golden age of Hollywood, that brief period between 1969 (post-Easy Rider) and 1980 (pre-Heaven’s…
This book is both literally and figuratively unreadable. First, the literal problems: many (presumably) important lines are in Italian, Hebrew…