… I was a few months out of college and had gotten a job at Borders, the new bookshop that had just opened on State Street in Ann Arbor. I pinched myself all day long to make sure I was not dreaming. It was too good. After all those... Read More
The subject of travel is known to be an evergreen in magazine circles: readers never tire of it and their interest is largely unaffected by the economy or world events, neither of which have much hold on the imagination. Whether we’re... Read More
In 2008, the election of Barack Obama sparked claims of a post-racial society. Shortly after he was sworn in, Eric Holder was tapped as the nation’s first black Attorney General. Subsequently, Holder, in a speech to the Justice... Read More
Each writer of these books heard a personal call to act in defense of a particular natural landscape and offers a unique response to our tremendous environmental crisis. Through their actions, each offers hope—seeds to nourish the... Read More
Like the expectations students have of universities, readers have expectations of academic books—they must provoke and answer questions. Indeed, they must both excel at nurturing creativity, word craft, and truth-seeking through... Read More
Autustralian-born, Brooklyn-based illustrator Sophie Blackall’s Missed Connections envisions the characters in the messages she finds in the popular classifieds section of Craigslist. Her book is reviewed on page 53. How do you choose... Read More
On a warm October night I arrived at Occupy Wall Street in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park to provide free jazz sax accompaniment for a slide show by radical comics artist and Understanding the Crash author Seth Tobocman. Amid the forest of... Read More
Logodaedaly, or, Sleight of Words: A Dictionary of the Imagination is published by Wolverine Farm. Its author, Colorado native Erzsébet Gilbert, now tends a vineyard in Hungary. Aren’t there enough dictionaries in the world? Some of my... Read More