Tag Archives: Spring 2013

FATALE: Book One & Two

FATALE Book One: Death Chases Me Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips Image Comics ($14.99) FATALE Book Two: The Devil’s Business Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips Image Comics ($14.99) by Spencer Dew There’s a line from Lovecraft in the 1926 story “Call of Cthulhu”: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability […]

HOW CHILDREN SUCCEED

Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character Paul Tough Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ($27) by Shawn Patrick Doyle Although the title of Paul Tough’s recent book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, suggests either a parental advice guide or a nostalgic call for a return to the Protestant work ethic, it […]

THE WILDNESS WITHIN

Remembering David Brower edited by Kenneth Brower Heyday Books ($20) by Ryder W. Miller David Brower, the first executive of the Sierra Club in 1952, was probably the most famous and successful environmentalist of his time. He wore many hats: a father, husband, editor, activist, publisher, soldier, mountain climber, writer, speaker, and countless other simultaneous […]

WILL OLDHAM ON BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY

Edited by Alan Licht W.W. Norton ($16.95) by Amy Wright Will Oldham’s past reticence in interviews makes the release of Alan Licht’s book-length interview Will Oldham on Bonnie “Prince” Billy a welcome disclosure. Reading this dialogue it is clear that Oldham has long been ready to converse about his work, as long as it doesn’t manufacture a […]

SHOPPING FOR A BETTER COUNTRY

Josip Novakovich Dzanc Books ($15.95) by Ned Randolph I have a giant globe I inherited from my grandparents. My grandfather had it made in the 1960s, arresting its color-coded boundaries at the height of the Cold War. Much of its Northern Hemisphere is awash in pink, marking out the Soviet Union and providing a visual aid […]

ON A FARTHER SHORE:
The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

William Souder Crown ($30) by Eliza Murphy Midcentury America was a time of economic prosperity, innovation, and optimism, despite the Cold War, McCarthyism and the insidious hazards of nuclear fallout and DDT unleashed on the world. Once Rachel Carson blasted on the scene with her buzz-killing book, Silent Spring, the world changed. The public, initially intoxicated […]

DERRIDA: A Biography

Benoît Peeters translated by Andrew Brown Polity ($35) by Brooke Horvath In Derrida, the 2002 documentary film devoted to the famed philosopher, he insists that “someone who reads a tiny paragraph and interprets it in a rigorous, inventive, and powerfully discerning fashion” is “more of a real biographer than one who knows the whole [life] story.” […]

ZOO STATION:
The Story of Christiane F.

Christiane F. translated by Christina Cartwright Zest Books ($12.99) by Allie Curry Zoo Station is a paradoxical of coming-of-age story. As Christiane F. grows up in housing projects of divided late 1970s Berlin, this intelligent young woman grows increasingly degraded by heroin addiction and prostitution. By the end of the book, Christiane is fifteen and has […]

MOON-CHILD

Derek Walcott Farrar, Straus and Giroux ($16) by Isaac Butler Who the heck reads plays for pleasure anymore? Even for those of us who work in theatre, buying a play and reading it for pleasure is a rare occurrence. After all, a script is an incomplete thing, made up of dialogue on the page, lacking […]

PARK SONGS

A Poem/Play David Budbill Exterminating Angel Press ($14.95) by Lynette Reini-Grindell A collection of dialogues spoken by sixteen different characters, Park Songs opens up the intersections of poetry and performance, reminding us that “play” is a verb. The setting is an urban park—R.C. Irwin’s delightfully freakish accompanying photographs show people in concrete, paved environments, and even the duck […]