David Katz Payback Press ($22.95) by Mark Terrill Reggae music was just one evolution in the colorful genesis of Jamaica's post-war musical history, which also included ska, dancehall, rock steady and other genres. But reggae was more than just pop music; it was also a part of the culture, and no extensive discussion of reggae […]
Clara Claiborne Park Little Brown & Co. ($23.95) by Thomas P. Kalb There are quite a few books which detail the lives of autistic people. Some of them tell tales which are heart rending. Some of them relate stories of victory. Both of these types are useful in their own way, I suppose, but as […]
Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics Norman Lebrecht Birch Lane Press ($24.95) by Richard Kostelanetz Scarcely dead, Norman Lebrecht is a prolific British writer who is a "music columnist" for the London Daily Telegraph, which isn't the London Times, and the author of a desultory Companion to Twentieth-Century Music (1993), among other earlier books. His real […]
Rick Bragg Knopf ($25) by Jonathan Shipley Family—it's all we are and all we really have at the end of the day. The people that make up your family can come and go quietly or they can explode into your life, and as the family history is passed on generation to generation, the stories become […]
edited by John King, Sheila Whitaker, & Rosa Bosch Verso ($20) by Brian Aurand An Argentine Passion is a thorough and rewarding study of the life, politics, films, working relationships, and critical receptions of the highly successful and influential director, María Luisa Bemberg. It combines background into Argentine culture, history, and politics, highly detailed and […]
Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña, and Richard Fariña David Hajdu Farrar, Straus & Giroux ($25) Song and Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan Michael Gray Continuum ($35) by Chris Fischbach Earlier this month, Bob Dylan released Love and Theft, an album saturated with […]
Lisa Robertson New Star Books ($12) by Jen Hofer It felt like dense fog. What is fact is not necessarily human. Memory anticipates. Authority flows into us like a gel. We cross the border to confront the ideal. Streaky cloudy at the top of the sky. The weather is a condition, an atmosphere, a reflector, […]
Edwin Honig Xlibris ($16) by Henry Gould Edwin Honig has a flair for drama. His multidimensional poetry manages a speaking voice with a large, fluent vocabulary, both slangy and erudite. His poems are often staged: a dramatic situation leaps to the fore. Here are the concluding lines of "The Gift": Free! Free! The round voice […]
Carl Thayler Pavement Saw Press ($10) by Reno Lauro The poetry of Carl Thayler has been largely ignored for the past 30 years, but what a mistake that has been. A man of diverse talents and concerns, Thayler grew up in Southern California. During the '50s he acted in several B-movies—the Hollywood press even touted […]
Standard Schaefer Sun & Moon Press ($10.95) by Jeffrey Julich A stem cell from the fertilized embryo of a clone has replicated and spawned and given birth to a book of poetry: Nova, by Standard Schaefer. Aristotle and the pre-scientific world used to believe in "spontaneous generation," that mosquitoes literally sprang up out of swamps, […]