Elvis Presley’s Unlikely Comeback
Eric Wolfson’s Elvis Presley’s From Elvis in Memphis examines the greatest accomplishment of Elvis’ career: a comeback album that reinstated his relevance.
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Memoir ‘Kiss Myself Goodbye’ Dims the Brightest Subject
Ferdinand Mount's gripping family memoir, Kiss Myself Goodbye, paints a calamitous picture of one of its supporting characters, Georgie. But I knew her closely for over 40 years. She not only transcended tragedy but helped me do the same.
24-Carat Black’s ‘Ghetto’ Is the Most Sampled Album Never Heard
33 1/3 book 24-Carat Black's Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth, is a refreshing outlier in the series in that it's about an influential yet barely known album.
Flip It Over: An Ode to the B-Side
We determine what song is worthy of the "A" or "B" side -- not the music industry. On Will Stockton and D. Gilson's 33 1/3 B-Sides.
Hashtags: Can’t Live with ’em, Can’t Live without ’em
How are humans regulating the internet through hashtags? What kind of algorithms are generating the content in your feeds? Best read Elizabeth Losh's Hashtag.
Object Lessons’ ‘Email’ May Already Be Obsolete – That May Be the Point
Before there were dashed-off emails, there were dashed-off postcards. Randy Malamud laments the loss of a romanticized notion of letter writing that few actually practiced in his installment of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons, Email.
Summer Brennan’s ‘High Heel’ Combines Memoir and Epic Poetry
The lovely cadences in Summer Brennan's High Heel stack up like so many sand castles that sift iconic examples of high heels into a finely grained pile of pros and cons that each reader will sift through quite differently.
David Ireland’s ‘Ulster American’ Satirizes Oppressive Double Standards
Winner of the coveted Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award in 2018, Ulster American is primed to contribute to societal narratives while lampooning contemporary injustices.
‘Don’t Be a Snob’ and Other Things I Learned from Anthony Bourdain’s ‘Les Halles Cookbook’
Les Halles Cookbook isn’t so much a narrative as it is a harangue delivered in what would become Bourdain’s trademark blend of insolence, irreverence, and profanity.
On the Hidden Lives of Souvenirs in ‘Souvenir (Object Lessons)’
Rolf Potts explores why and how we collect souvenirs, what they have represented to us through the ages, and how we use them to narrate our lives.
Metatextual Games Stamp Out Thriller Conventions in ‘Based on a True Story’
French author Delphine de Vigan is very successful at setting up an original mystery, but she gets bogged down in overly literary reflections.