Philip Roth’s last novel, Everyman, chronicled a man’s descent into death after a life that taught him very little. His new one is far sunnier: It’s about another man’s descent into a state in which everything he knows about his limitations is painfully reconfirmed through a spate of poor judgment. Exit Ghost, the last great […]
John Dicker
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Jeans: A Cultural History of an American Icon
No one who’s reconnoitered a bookstore these last few years can be ignorant of a trend in nonfiction that might as well be called microhistory. Now firmly established, the trope finds authors pushing in on seemingly ubiquitous matter (Salt, Rats, etc.) for the investigative close-up. Embedded in a seemingly small story is a much larger […]
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Point to Point Navigation
by Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal has had as many lives as any public intellectual might want: activist, novelist, expatriate observer, and celebrity whore. In his prime, he was celebrated for his historical novels and his literary criticism. Today he’s known for his political writing, which falls somewhere between far left and far nutty. Point to Point Navigation is […]
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The Greatest Story Ever Sold by Frank Rich
Being a cultural critic for The New York Times is sufficient reason for many Americans to dismiss you on partisan principle. Moving to the op-ed page from the theater section probably won’t help push copies of your book in Provo either. But Frank Rich’s perspective as a theater critic is germane to The Greatest Story […]
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Queens Reigns Supreme: Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip- Hop Hustler
In “The Bridge is Over,” rapper KRS-One issued a fatwa against fellow emcees from the borough of Queens: “Manhattan keeps on making it, Brooklyn keeps on takin’ it, Bronx keeps creatin’ it, and Queens keeps on fakin’ it.” Oh snap!… or not. By today’s standards it seems, what’s the term, mad quaint? And yet the […]
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Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music
Music has long flirted with social reality. Even if love songs will always outnumber
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Bait and Switch
All Barbara Ehrenreich wants is a white-collar job at 50k a year plus benefits. And so, in Bait and Switch this veteran social critic deploys the same undercover approach as her bestselling Nickel and Dimed to explore life in Dilbert country. Her goal is simple: Land a corporate job and report from within.
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Wrecking Crew
John Albert’s oddly joyous new book Wrecking Crew profiles what may or may not be an emerging subculture: The Born Again Jock. These are the guys who shied from sports as teens because the coach
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Garbage Land
Garbage Land by Elizabeth Royte (Little, Brown) In Garbage Land, author Elizabeth Royte tackles a subject that’s as complex as it is fetid. What drives her story is the answer to a seemingly simple question: Where does her trash go? The answer leads to waste treatment and trash compacting centers in the metro New York […]
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Chasing The Rodeo
Chasing The Rodeo by W.K. Stratton (Harcourt) W.K. Stratton’s Chasing The Rodeo makes the sport seem familiar even if it defies easy categorization. It’s both a memoir and a travel narrative with lengthy digressions into rodeo culture and folklore. Chasing is full of fascinating historical nuggets. Take African American cowboy Bill Pickett who invented bulldogging, […]
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Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness
Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness by Hunter S. Thompson (Simon & Schuster) Hunter S. Thompson’s Hey Rube is first rate-bathroom reading for the sporting intellectual who remains as loyal to the (name of NFL franchise here _______) as he is to the waning cult of the Grand […]