Books

Under What Stars
by Ryan J. Davidson
Under What Stars is not exactly a collection of misty-eyed, boozy travelogues, but rather Davidson's attempt at weaving together fleeting moments spent across these disparate continents that would be totally inconsequential to the objective eye.
[Chris Middleman]

Rock On: An Office Power Ballad
by Dan Kennedy
Much of Dan Kennedy's Rock On: An Office Power Ballad is as tedious and ennui-inducing as the mainstream music acts and corporate culture he lampoons throughout the book.
[Eric Dennis]

Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah - A New Biography
by Tim Footman
Footman speaks to us as if we were both Cohen fanatics and absolute know-nothings, granting inclusion into a fan club while also providing unneeded basic information.
[Jesse Cataldo]

R.I.P.: Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Howard Zinn provided an opportunity to relearn US history from the perspective of the underdog.
[Jessica Bari]

R.I.P.: J.D. Salinger (1919-2010)
When J.D. Salinger died last week at 91, it marked the passing of one of the 20th century's most influential, beloved and fiercely private authors.
[Lukas Sherman]

Revisit: Couples
by John Updike
Couples functions as a prescient indictment of the still incipient sexual revolution, as well as a withering piece of suburban satire.
[Jesse Cataldo]

Shoptimism: Why the American Consumer Will Keep On Buying No Matter What:
by Lee Eisenberg
Whether we are buying toothpaste at the grocery store, throwing down an entire paycheck on a designer handbag or ordering eco-friendly hemp clothing online, shopping is an integral component of life in America--recession or not.
[Jessica Bari]

Rediscover: The Last Witchfinder: A Novel
by James Morrow
The Last Witchfinder's strength lies in its depiction of life in the chaos that was the New World.
[Morgan Davis]

Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream
by Steven Watts
Steven Watts has managed to do the near-impossible: turn Hugh Hefner's life into a plodding, monotonous and excruciatingly goddamn boring exercise in academic overkill and professorial tedium.
[Eric Dennis]

(Don't) Revisit: The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still
by Dinty W. Moore
Perhaps one person's religious journey is too personal to be interesting to another.
[Jessica Bari]

Revisit: The House on Mango Street
by Sandra Cisneros
Esperanza becomes the younger voice of Cisneros, explaining the neighborhood of Mango Street, the people who live there and condition of the buildings.
[Aimee Herman]

Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records
by John Cook with Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance
Our Noise is endearingly vulnerable and basic in its exploration of the now two decades old indie stalwart.
[Morgan Davis]

Rediscover: Young Liars: Daydream Believer
by David Lapham
Young Liars is a bombastic punk rock comic: mean, aggressive, and willing to do awful, awful things to its unlikable characters -- with style to spare.
[Danny Djeljosevic]

This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of the Talking Heads in the 20th Century:
by David Bowman
This Must Be the Place is both the best book in existence on Talking Heads and not quite the experience it should be, either in terms of a David Bowman work or as a document of such an essential band.
[Morgan Davis]

In My Father's Shadow: A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles
by Chris Welles Feder
In Chris Welles Feder's new book, it is Orson Welles the father -- a figure rarely seen, and a role to which the actor never fully warmed -- that we are invited to view through the intimate lens of a child's eyes.
[Lauren Westerfield]

The First Fall Classic: The Red Sox, the Giants, and the Cast of Players, Pugs, and Politicos Who Reinvented the World Series in 1912
by Mike Vaccaro
Even if the 1912 Series wasn't as classic as the author would have us believe, Vaccaro's colorful account is an engaging read that tells the story of a sport and a nation battling through one of the most deceptively volatile periods of the 20th century.
[Marcus David]

Revisit: The Rape of Nanking
by Iris Chang
Originally published in 1997 on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre during the second Sino-Japanese War, the book has the distinction of being the first English-language non-fiction account of one of the 20th century's darkest moments.
[Eric Dennis]

Rediscover: Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon
by Joe Queenan
Joe Queenan's Red Lobster, White Trash, and the Blue Lagoon is a snapshot of the terror and malfeasance present in the mainstream of '90s America, an America with her feet planted firmly in Culture Wars.
[Chris Middleman]

Revisit: The Worst Hard Time
by Timothy Egan
The overwhelming majority of people who experienced the Dust Bowl actually never pulled up their stakes and instead simply did their best to survive this country's worst environmental disaster, as Timothy Egan points out in his stunning and heartbreaking The Worst Hard Time
[Eric Dennis]

Rediscover: CREEM: America's Only Rock 'n' Roll Magazine
by Robert Matheu & Brian J. Bowe
Creem was a magazine that understood that no one need be assigned to any sort of hall of fame status but rather that a loud, fast, rockin' single, no matter how trashy or forgettable, might do more in three short minutes than reunion tours would for the world in 30 years.
[Chris Middleman]

The Death of Bunny Munro
by Nick Cave
As an exercise in vulgarity, The Death of Bunny Munro is a masterpiece, so full of ridiculously explicit sexual detail that it continually drifts over-the-top. Of course, this is coming from a man who generally sings about babies born without brains and "No Pussy Blues," so that's not a shock.
[Nathan Kamal]

R.I.P: Jim Carroll
Sam Jacobs of The Flying Change eulogizes the recently departed author of The Basketball Diaries.
[Sam Jacobs]

Interview: Valerie Martin
"I'm interested in the past but I don't like the past very much. I think that's why I'm interested in it. I think that when you write about the past, you can't really be honest and you can't know what it was like to be there."
[David Harris]

Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits
by Barney Hoskyns
That's right: another fucking Tom Waits biography.
[Eric Dennis]