Maybe we expect too little of children. Some adults write simple sing-song rhyming verse for kids that is painful to review. In contrast, this book puts the pen into the childrens hands, and the poems they write are small, clear windows... Read More

"Digging" collects eighty-four essays and reviews in which the poet, playwright, and critic Amiri Baraka makes an impassioned case for jazz as a central achievement of American culture. Baraka’s 1963 book, Blues People, is a seminal... Read More

With subtitles like the above, book reviewing might become obsolete. Be that as it may, this overwhelmingly successful book is a worthy recipient of all the positive press it serves to generate. Once again, Weinstein and Scarbrough, the... Read More

"The End of the West", Michael Dickmans exuberant first book, is lit by all varieties of conflagration. The speaker describes brain, eyes, and lungs making up a “burning chandelier” inside him. And no wonder: His memory is full of... Read More

The terms “peak oil” and “climate change” have been a part of the national mindset for a few years, but they have been examined in isolation from one another. Books such as James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency and Al... Read More

Its the tritest of academic cliches, of course: the professor/student affair. While Rackstraw only suggests that she and Vonnegut may have been intimate, she leaves absolutely no doubt that their relationship was, more than anything... Read More

Peaches and Daddy: A Story of the Roaring 20’s, The Birth of Tabloid Media, & The Courtship that Captured the Heart and Imagination of the American Public.* Real estate multi-millionaire Edward West Browning married Nellie Adele... Read More

“Talking honestly about sex is a GOOD thing…And bro, feeling less nervous and more confident is going to help you make smarter deci-sions,” the authors write. It’s easy to be smart with "The Little Black Book for Guys" at hand.... Read More