‘Famous People’ Splashes in the Puddle of a Shallow Pop Star
When our protagonist is calm and reflective in Justin Kuritzkes' Famous People, there's a sense of potential intelligence beneath the shiny surface.
Christopher John Stephens
Jim Marshall: Photographs and Legends
From civil rights protests to the greatest rock festivals, the tender and fierce perspective of a classic American photographer is captured in Chronicle Books' Jim Marshall: Show Me the Picture.
Powerful Testimonies and Unique Perspectives in ‘PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019’
PEN America Best Debut Short Stories brings readers a dozen new voices and some relief, for a while, from the darkness of these troubled times.
‘Art Rebels’ Squeezes Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese into the Same Box
Paul Lopes's Art Rebels is a study that tries (and only partly succeeds) to fit two great artists -- Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese -- into clearly defined categories.
American Dreams, Schemes, and Delusions: On Norman Rockwell’s Art and Social Consciousness
Tom Rockwell's Afterword in the reissue of Norman Rockwell's My Adventures as an Illustrator takes pains to suggest that the awakening of his father's social consciousness was probably only possible after leaving The Saturday Evening Post.
There’s No Comfort, No Smooth Summer Breeze in ‘The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty’
There are a great deal of positive and memorable passages to be found in Eudora Welty's stories set during the pre-Civil Rights United States -- for those willing to swim through the problematic waters.
All but One Speak up in Julia Alvarez’s ¡Yo!
In a new edition to the sequel to How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, ¡Yo!, Julia Alvarez structures the story of a writer and her voice by allowing everybody but the writer herself to have a voice.
The Plight of Itinerant Educators
Critic Herb Childress exposes some uncomfortable truths in The Adjunct Underclass that are both painfully difficult for adjunct professors to admit and essential reading for those concerned with the cultural and intellectual future of America.
Alvarez’s ‘In The Time of the Butterflies’ Returns with Undiminished Intensity
The lure of beautiful beaches might make the Dominican Republic among the most popular tourist destinations in the Caribbean, but the ghosts of its troubled history, as captured in Julia Alvarez's In the Time of the Butterflies, stalk the living.
Catnip for Completists: Bob Dylan’s ‘The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings’
Even at its mammoth length (ten-plus hours) Columbia's 14-disc boxed set is still not an exhaustive account of Bob Dylan's The Rolling Thunder Revue.
Scorsese and Dylan: A Match Made in Fantasy
In Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story, a cinematic genius and a Nobel Prize-winning musical icon pair for a magical and purposefully deceptive look at rock 'n' roll life in the mid-'70s.
‘How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents’ Holds Particular Relevance in These Times
Julia Alvarez's How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents is more relevant in America in 2019 than Alvarez might have imagined her debut novel would be in 1991.