Books

Book Review: “Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras” — Celebrating Blaxploitation Cinema

January 26, 2024
Posted in , ,

“Black Caesars and Foxy Cleopatras” celebrates Blaxploitation as a positive as well as a necessary turning point in American cinema.

Read More

Book Review / Jazz Essay: A Complicated Matter — Stephen Provizer’s “As Long as They Can Blow”

January 24, 2024
Posted in , , ,

This is a story about jazz that we only think we know: the book challenges our preconceptions with admirable restraint, and generously invites others to build on its work.

Read More

Book Review: “Master Lovers” — An Inventive and Intelligent Fictional Memoir

January 18, 2024
Posted in , ,

“Master Lovers” is written in a lucid, personable style, and the fictional scenes —  David Winner’s recreations of history and imagined trysts — are deft, believable, and vividly imagined.

Read More

Book Review: Jack Kerouac’s “Pic” — Last But Not Least

January 17, 2024
Posted in , ,

In “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac voiced a longing to be “other.” He achieves this transfiguration in “Pic.”

Read More

Book Review: “Hedged” — How Private Equity Destroyed the Newspaper Business

January 16, 2024
Posted in , ,

Newspapers are still our most reliable source of local journalism. Private equity, though, is squeezing the life out of newsrooms as greedy owners cash in.

Read More

Book Review: “The Geography of the Imagination” — Longing for Something Lost

January 14, 2024
Posted in , , ,

Touted as “perhaps the last great American polymath,” Guy Davenport had a singular mind; never was an artist more deserving of the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius grant.”

Read More

Book Review: “The Soundies” — A Definitive Study of the Musical Film Shorts of the ’40s

January 13, 2024
Posted in , , , ,

Author Mark Cantor has been the go-to guy for jazz film for decades: this authoritative book solidifies his position.

Read More

Children’s Book Reviews: A Grief Out of Season

January 10, 2024
Posted in , ,

The holidays and their aftermath are not always a time of cheer for families. Two recent children’s books provide empathy and understanding.

Read More

Book Reviews: The Novels of Argentine Author Claudia Piñeiro — More Than Mysteries

January 8, 2024
Posted in , ,

A death is routinely at the center of Claudia Piñeiro’s fiction, but the corpse sparks provocative questions about the way things are, not just an investigation into finding the murderer.

Read More

Book Review: “Yves Montand: The Passionate Voice” — An Activist Entertainer

January 7, 2024
Posted in , , ,

Singer/actor Yves Montand’s life and career is particularly fascinating because they illuminate a telling difference between the mid-20th century political-cultural milieus of France and America.

Read More

Recent Posts