The Chicago Blog

In yesterday's New York Sun Harvard economist Edward Glaeser reviewed Derek Hyra's new book The New Urban Renewal: The Economic Transformation of Harlem and Bronzeville. Hyra's book looks at urban gentrification in two neighborhoods—Chicago's Bronzeville and New York's Harlem—and its impact on various socio-economic groups, revealing a sharp divide between middle-income and less affluent residents in benefiting from such transformations. As Glaeser explains:

A dynamic private sector… has made New York and Chicago increasingly prosperous places over the last 15 years.… As these cities have done well, demand for space has exploded. We see rising demand in the skyrocketing price of space in Manhattan and in the cranes that seem to be a permanent feature of Chicago's Lake Shore Drive skyline. Booming demand has also increased the desire among middle-class people to move to formerly poor areas such as Harlem and Bronzeville: Upwardly mobile urbanites, priced out of more expensive areas, have become urban pioneers "gentrifying" areas that used to be poor. But just as the real pioneers weren't always such a blessing for the American Indians on the frontier, gentrifiers aren't always a boon for the established residents of an area.…

Continue reading the article on the New York Sun website.

Archived in Black Studies | Chicago | Economics | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
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The comedic duo of Tim Reid and Tom Dreesen bear the unique distinction of having been the first—and only—interracial comedy team in the history of show business. Getting their start in Chicago nightclubs during the 1960s, the pair took their show on the road, from the North to the still simmering South, developing routines that helped Americans confront their racial divide: by laughing at it.

And in their forthcoming book, Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, they tell the fascinating tale of their groundbreaking careers together touring across America, inspiring both laughter and controversy.

Tim and Tom will reunite this September to promote the book at various locations across the States. Check our author events page for details. In the meantime, find out more about Tim and Tom by watching our YouTube book-trailer above, or visit the Tim and Tom website.

Archived in Author Events | Biography | Books for the News | Chicago
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Tropic Thunder—a recent comedy starring Robert Downey Jr, Ben Stiller and Jack Black—has been at the center of a storm of controversy lately for the film's abundant use of derogatory epithets aimed at the mentally disabled. Recently NPR's All Things Considered broadcast several stories on the issue including a piece by Lennard J. Davis, professor of disability studies at the University if Illinois and author of the recent Obsession: A History. In the interview Davis argues that films like Tropic Thunder capitalize on cruelty, and result in the exclusion of mentally disabled individuals from a society into which many must already struggle to fit in. Listen to the archived audio of the interview on the NPR website.

Archived in Commentary
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An interesting review of Maria Wyke's new book Caesar: A Life in Western Culture appeared in the August 18 edition of the Wall Street Journal. In the review, Peter Stothard praises the book for its insightful exploration of the various ways in which modern culture has invoked and appropriated Caesar and his legacy—from Mussolini, seeking a Caesarian mandate for this own grand ambitions, to Caesars Palace, Las Vegas:

Ms. Wyke's concern is how we have created and adapted Caesar's image and historical importance over the past 2,000 years… The principle behind this kind of study is known as "reception theory." Its typical proponent is skeptical of how much we can know of what someone like Caesar and his contemporaries did and thought; a reception theorist is much more confident of how we have come to use and think about them ourselves. A comic book can thus be as important as a commander's campsite. A bust loudly but unconvincingly proclaimed by its discoverer to be authentic is as significant as a newly interpreted paragraph from "De Bello Gallico." The skill of a reception theorist such as Ms. Wyke lies in what she chooses to include and what she chooses to leave out.…

Ms. Wyke, however, is a sophisticated practitioner of her craft, a professor of Latin at University College London and a graduate of the British Film Institute. She is the pre-eminent British authority on the relationship between modern film and classical history. She wittily describes how Bernard Shaw's distaste for the "deification of Love" in his play "Caesar and Cleopatra" was overridden for the 1945 movie version—and for all later movie attempts on the same theme. She also notes that the Caesars Palace Casino, built in 1966 and inspired by the sword-and-sandal movies of the era, came deliberately without apostrophe: Everyone could be a Caesar.…

Read the rest of the review on the Wall Street Journal website.

Also read an excerpt.

Archived in Biography | Classics | History | Reviews
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The August 21 edition of the Times Higher Education includes a review of Regina Kunzel's new book, Criminal Intimacy: Prison and the Uneven History of Modern American Sexuality. The THE's Lynne Segal writes:

Being a product of "situational" aberrations, same-sex activity in prisons is of little interest to historians of sexuality, the psychiatrist and historian Vernon Rosario believes. He is quite wrong, according to feminist historian Regina Kunzel. In her latest book, Criminal Intimacy, Kunzel argues persuasively that the increasingly open secrets of prison life, although usually officially buried, expose the perennial fault-lines of many of our understandings of modern sexuality. As she illustrates, the hallmark of modern discourses of sexuality is the move from sexual acts, seen as decent or indecent, to sexual identities, seen as normal or perverse, generated from within. Sex behind bars, however, has always provided evidence that fails to mirror this account, leaving its occurrence apparently cut off in some anachronistic space all its own.

Read the review on the THE website.

Archived in Gay and Lesbian | History | Reviews | Sociology
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This week's edition of the Chicago Reader is running an interesting review of Frank Kusch's Battleground Chicago—an unconventional look at the 1968 'police riots' at the Democratic National Convention. The event has become infamous for the brutality of the police in attempting to control the groups of anti-war protesters demonstrating at the convention. But Kusch's book goes beyond this stereotypical image using seldom heard accounts of the event from the police's point of view to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of how and why they acted as they did. The Reader's Barry Wightman writes:

Kusch… constructs his narrative from interviews he conducted with 80 former Chicago policemen who were on the street during the convention. These are regular guys who fought in World War II and Korea, lived in the bungalow belt, and found themselves on the fault line during one of the tectonic shifts of the period. And every time one of them is quoted, the story comes alive.…

Read the review from the Reader. Also read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Chicago | History | Politics and Current Events | Reviews
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Conventionally, people tend to thing of maps as useful tools with which to physically orient ourselves within a landscape, yet in their recent book, Maps: Finding Our Place in the World, editors James A. Ackerman and Robert W. Karrow demonstrate that throughout the ages maps have had a much greater range of utility. The August edition of the The Art Book features a review of Maps that praises the editors for their insightful exploration of maps' varying purposes—from maps that orient us geographically, to those that orient us historically and even culturally. From the Art Book:

[In Maps] essays by distinguished contributors break the boundaries of chronology and the limitations of conventional Western geography to consider instead a cluster of maps' varying purposes.…

The extensive first essay, 'Finding our way' by Akerman (organiser of a splendid Newberry exhibition on American road maps), addresses most observers' experiences of maps, i.e. as instructions for directed travel.… Allegorical pathways, clearly charted for religious or fantasy realms, are reserved for a fine later essay, 'Imaginary worlds', by Ricardo Padron. Another fascinating essay, on the conceptual or thematic use of maps (including geological or astronomical maps), often with statistical graphs to convey data, is provided by Michael Friendly and Gilles Palsky.… More particular maps of cities or regions, including property or military maps, are surveyed by Matthew Edney, who links their spatial uses to 'expansive' societies with expansive economic activity and social stratification. He notes that 'social needs, power relations, and cultural conventions underpin the production and use of all maps'.…

Ultimately, Maps:Finding Our Place in the World shows clearly how interdisciplinary and visual the study of maps can be.

Read the article or see a collection of unusual maps from the book.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Cartography and Geography | History | Reviews
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The August 16 edition of the Guardian published a short but positive review of John D. North's Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology. The review praises the book for its comprehensive exploration of these two sciences, and their integral role in helping mankind to define his place within the universe. From the Guardian:

At nearly 900 pages, this is a suitably monumental book about the biggest subject of all: the cosmos.… From Stonehenge and ancient China, where sunspots were first recorded in 28BC (European astronomers didn't spot them until the 17th century), to today's search for dark matter, Machos and Wimps, this remarkable work brings together the global history, theories, people and technologies of astronomy to tell a story that "has very few intellectual parallels in the whole of human history."

See the review on the Guardian website.

Archived in History and Philosophy of Science | Mathematics and Physics | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yesterday's Financial Times ran a positive review of Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips' psychoanalytic exploration of human intimacy in their new book, Intimacies. Summarizing the work the FT's Salley Vickers writes:

Taking the form of a conversation between this congenial but not necessarily like-minded pair, Intimacies explores the pitfalls and possibilities of human intimacy and the damage that a zeal to know ourselves and others can wreak. The exchange of views reflects the authors' philosophies: differences are the source, not the stumbling blocks, of intimacy; distance should enhance not diminish pleasure in others' company; and it is disastrous to take things personally.

Read the full review on the Financial Times website.

Archived in Literature | Philosophy | Politics and Current Events | Psychology | Reviews | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After pulling apart the peonies and deadheading the last of the mums, gardeners will take a long look at their backyards and head indoors to plan for next season. And as the hostas yellow and wilt outside, nature enthusiasts can take shelter with—and inspiration from—the stories in Cathy Jean Maloney’s beautiful new book, Chicago Gardens: The Early History.

Maloney has spent decades researching the city’s horticultural heritage, and her latest book reveals the remarkable story of Chicago’s first gardeners. Challenged by the region’s clay soil and harsh winters, Midwestern pioneers were forced to find imaginative uses for prairie plants, pounding salsify into gravy and grinding grain into coffee. Innovative nurserymen and florists would later develop a market for local fruit and flowers, in part by naming their varieties after Chicago’s well-known: the Mrs. Potter Palmer Carnation, for example, as well as the well-grown: the Bridgeport Chicago Drumhead Cabbage, in honor of the neighborhood’s Irish inhabitants. Gardening was no longer simply a way to fill one’s belly, but also a way to line one’s pockets. By the late 1880’s, Chicago had become the nation’s produce hub.

Today, Chicago earns the limelight as a leader in “green” cities. Chicago Gardens unveils a tradition of horticultural innovation—a story too long hidden under a bushel basket.

Read the press release.

Also see a special web feature for the book, five Chicago gardens.

Archived in Biology | Chicago | Economics | History | Press Releases
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The August 16 edition of the Wall Street Journal ran a short but positive review of Gail Fenske's new book, The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York. Fenske's book uses an in-depth architectural analysis of New York's Woolworth building as a lens through which to view the city's distinctive urban culture. As WSJ reviewer Nicholas Desai writes: "The building's style, inside and out, is hybrid, almost a pastiche, offering Tudor, Byzantine and Gothic elements—modern but not modernist," and Fenske's book insightfully connects this unique eclecticism to the cultural contradictions that defined New York City's modernity.

Desai's review continues praising Fenske's prose as "academic but clear, enlivened by her interest in the cultural moment" and calls her work "a definitive take on a 20th-century classic."

Read it online at the WSJ website.

Archived in Art and Architecture | History | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Eugene G. Schwartz offers an excellent review of Susan Bielstein's guide through the labyrinthine world of visual image copyright law, Permissions, A Survival Guide: Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property, for his latest posting on ForeWord magazine's Publishing Matters blog:

Before the internet, and especially before desk top publishing, you pretty much had to work with physical copies of things.… This imposed a variety of practical barriers that kept the leakage of rights to a minimum and concentrated its more substantial flow in the hands of professional thieves.

All of that has changed—and with the low cost and ubiquity of scanners, [and] cell phone cameras… gate-keeping the rights of images is like keeping a safe deposit box in a room with an open window.

Nonetheless, the publishing industry still relies on copyright law as the foundation of its economic viability. As all who read ForeWord well know, publishers have struggled to cope with establishing rights in an electronic world, and authors and agents have been pushing back while warily going with the flow.

All of this leads to a book I'd like to recommend to any of you who are interested in the subject, and especially if you deal with pictures as well as intellectual property and copyright in general: Permissions, A Survival Guide. Blunt Talk about Art as Intellectual Property, by Susan M. Bielstein.

The author is the executive editor for art, architecture, classical studies and film at the University of Chicago Press.… The practical value of this work is that it draws on the author's experience and she takes you through the details of everything from choosing the size and format of digital files that you may be ordering to how to negotiate on price with museums. There is also a useful bibliography and a short list of image banks and artist's rights organizations.

The real meat on the bone of this work, however, is the author's blending of anecdotal experience, procedural advice and a critical effort to point the way out of the box that electronic reproduction and increasing layers of rights control are putting the users of creative assets—adding thickets of procedural obstacles and barriers of cost that lead either to shrinking use and availability or increasing use without permission.

Read the rest of the review on the Publishing Matters blog.

Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Law | Literature | Reference and Writing | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest edition of Time Out Chicago is running an article about Kelan Phil Cohran—whose notable work as a jazz composer and multi-instrumentalist once landed him a spot in Sun Ra's Arkestra and, more recently, a central role in George E. Lewis's new book A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. Lewis's book is the definitive history of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, an important and influential Chicago jazz collective which Cohran helped to found in 1965. But as Time Out's Jake Austen notes, Cohran not only played an important role in organizing the association and establishing Chicago as a mecca for avant-garde jazz, but continues to be a major force in the jazz scene today:

After settling in Chicago in the mid-'50s, Cohran became an integral part of the South Side's cultural fabric during the next half-century, forming the AACM and turning a Bronzeville movie house into the Afro-Arts Theater (home base of Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Oscar Brown Jr. and Gwendolyn Brooks, among others). He also became a fixture in public schools, teaching and demonstrating his musical ideas from 1965 until the '90s.… But Cohran is best known for his stint with Sun Ra's Arkestra from 1959 to 1961.…

Yet what makes Cohran's work so compelling to contemporary audiences may be the ways he veers away from Sun Ra and his AACM colleagues. While Ra explored the spaceways, Cohran… studied his own planet.… Cohran's interest in folk, as well as an activist's desire to serve the people, makes his music more populist than most experimental sounds. "My music is an expression of my community," he says. "That's why it lasts: because it wasn't for me."

And tonight starting at 6:30 you can catch Cohran at the Pritzker Pavilion in downtown Chicago where he headlines a concert titled "Made in Chicago: Kelan Phil Cohran and the Legacy of Sun Ra." To find out more about Cohran, his stint with the Arkestra, and the role he played in forming the AACM, check out this excerpt from Lewis's book. To find out more about the show navigate to the Time Out Chicago website.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Music
Posted by TXM at 01:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Donald E. Westlake (aka Richard Stark) published The Hunter, the first book in his long-running series about the master thief Parker, in 1962. Since then The Hunter has been adapted for film twice and become a classic amongst fans of hard boiled noir. But until recently the book has been neglected by publishing houses, going in and out of print, while used copies fetched high prices. Now, the Press has brought the Parker novels back to life with the republication of the first three books in the series including, The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit—and word is getting out. Recently the Independent Crime blog posted about the books' resurgence, hailing Westlake as "one of the best crime writers to ever put pen to paper, and… [maybe] one of the best writers of the last century period." The post continues:

It's a long way from the paperback racks in drugstores to the world of academic presses, and U of C Press' decision to pick up Westlake's series certainly goes a long way toward validating the opinion of many that Westlake, with his Parker novels, has earned a place in hard boiled fiction up there with Hammett or Chandler, both of whom have been considered worthy of academic attention for some time.

More recently drama and literary critic Terry Teachout also praised the press's re-issue of Westlake's novels on Commentary magazine's Contentions blog, writing:

I'm delighted to advise readers in need of tough-minded vacation fare that… the first three [Parker] volumes are now available.… The Hunter, The Man with the Getaway Face, and The Outfit are handsomely designed, tightly bound trade-paperback volumes that have been freshly set from new type rather than reprinted from older editions. All of this strongly suggests that the University of Chicago Press is in it for the long haul, which is a good thing, since the uniform Parker is a multi-year project whose subsequent installments are to be published at unspecified intervals. Be patient.

Read an interview with the author.

Archived in Fiction | Reviews
Posted by TXM at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The arts and culture website Trickhouse.com is currently featuring an online exhibition of the collages of William Davies King, professor of theater at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of the recently released Collections of Nothing. King's book is a profound meditation on his habit of gathering miscellany—what many would consider junk. But through the careful organization and presentation of his collections, King demonstrates how even the most humble objects are able to accrue new, individualized value. And King's collages, accompanied by an insightful curatorial essay by David Banash, are a particularly interesting example of this phenomenon. Navigate to www.trickhouse.org and click on door #3 to visit the online exhibition.

Also read an excerpt and an essay by the author.

Archived in Art and Architecture | Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | Literature
Posted by TXM at 01:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Kieswetter, the Cincinnati Enquirer's TV/Radio/Media reporter heralded the arrival of one of Cincinnati's favorite TV personalities, comedian and actor Tim Reid, with a nice post to his blog last Thursday. His posting touches on Reid's historic career in comedy, and details his recent itinerary, which brought him back to the city he once fictionally inhabited as radio DJ Venus Flytrap on the late 70's sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. According to Keiswetter, Reid was scheduled to host the local Emmy Awards dinner and to throw out the first pitch at the Reds-Astros game. In his post Kieswetter remarks: "I bet he's surprised at how often he's recognized here, and how fondly so many of us remember 'WKRP.'"

But while most people recognize Reid from his hit TV show, fewer remember his earlier work in the pioneering stand-up act "Tim and Tom" with comedian Tom Dreesen—the first interracial comedy team in the history of show business. Now with Reid's forthcoming book, Tim and Tom: An American Comedy in Black and White, co-authored with Dreesen and Ron Rappaport, the fascinating story of this ground-breaking comedic duo is revealed—from their beginnings in the nightclubs of Chicago to to their acrimonious breakup after 5 hard years on the road.

The book is set to publish this September and Dreesen and Reid are scheduled to make quite a few appearances in support of the book's release. Navigate to the Tim and Tom book page to find out more about the book or to place an advance order. Also, see our author events page to find out more about the upcoming events.

Archived in Black Studies | Books for the News | Chicago | History | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Erin Hogan's Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip through the Land Art of the American West was honored in the "Books Briefly Noted" section of the New Yorker:

Standing in Walter De Maria's Lightning Field, in the high desert, amid four hundred stainless-steel poles, Hogan ruminates on how the work affects our sense of time, space, size, and scale. She is at her best when she re-examines the precepts of modernism in the changing light of New Mexico, and shows how the human body is meant to be a participant in these grand constructions.

Read an excerpt and an interview with the author.

George E. Lewis's A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music received a favorable review in Frieze Magazine this past Sunday that praises Lewis's account of the rise of the AACM as a "thoroughly engaging" scholarly study that nonetheless remains in touch with the people and music it seeks to explore. Read an excerpt from the book.

William Davies King new book Collections of Nothing was reviewed today by Chicago Tribune cultural critic Julia Keller. Keller praises the book not only as an engaging autobiographical account of the author's habit of amassing unusual collections, but for the insights it offers on American materialism. Read the review on the Tribune website. Also read an excerpt and an essay by the author.

The NYT's Freakonomics blog posted this week about the the American public's lack of financial literacy drawing on the expert knowledge of economist and author Annamaria Lusardi, who edited the forthcoming book on the subject, Overcoming the Saving Slump: How to Increase the Effectiveness of Financial Education and Saving Programs. Read the posting featuring a Q & A with Lusardi.

Also, the August 7 edition of the Detroit News ran an article on Detroit's "festival of combustivity" Crusin' MotorCities, which begins Friday with various automobile-related events spanning the next ten days. The article draws from Brian Ladd's forthcoming book Autophobia: Love and Hate in the Automotive Age to explore American's changing relationship to the automobile, especially in light of the nation's current environmental, energy, and economic crises—factors which have already deeply affected American's attitudes towards autos. Read the article on the Detroit News website.

Archived in Commentary
Posted by TXM at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Author William Davies King was interviewed yesterday on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show about the "art of amassing detritus"—a topic thoroughly and insightfully explored in King's newest book, Collections of Nothing. Listen to the archived audio from the program on the WNYC website.

Also, read an excerpt and an essay by the author.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts
Posted by TXM at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Michael F. Robinson, author of The Coldest Crucible: Arctic Exploration and American Culture has written an interesting piece for the Space Review that draws on his cultural analysis of polar exploration in the nineteenth century to comment on NASA's recent space exploration initiatives. In the article, Robinson notes that sensationalism was often used to justify early polar expeditions rather than their scientific value, and argues that NASA's recent plans to send astronauts to Mars might be an analogous situation. Robinson writes:

A manned mission to Mars, if it happens, will be a dazzling event guaranteed to keep us glued to our televisions. But symbolism alone cannot carry the US space program forward. One hundred years ago, Americans faced the same dilemma on the Arctic frontier. In their relentless pursuit of the North Pole, explorers had abandoned science. After Robert Peary claimed the discovery of the North Pole in 1909, American scientists breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, scientific exploration of the Arctic could begin in earnest. Franz Boas, professor of anthropology at Columbia University, expressed the mood of scientists then, but he could have been expressing the opinion of many scientists now. "We must not forget that the explorer is not expected merely to travel from one point to another, but that we must expect him also to see and to observe things worth seeing."

Read the article on the Space Review website.

Archived in Author Essays, Interviews, and Excerpts | History and Philosophy of Science | Politics and Current Events | Sociology
Posted by TXM at 01:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In remembrance of Nobel Prize winning novelist, dramatist, and historian Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn who passed away last Sunday, the Boston Globe blog Off the Shelf has posted a short piece excerpting from Ha Jin's forthcoming collection of essays about literary exiles, The Writer as Migrant. Solzhenitsyn lived much of his life in exile from his Russian homeland due to his sharp criticism of the government and the publication of his writings about the Soviet Gulag. In the opening essay of his book, Jin explores Solzhenitsyn's life in exile and the reception of his writings in his Russian homeland and in the Western world to which he was forced to flee.

Navigate to the Off the Shelf blog to read the excerpt.

Ha Jin's The Writer as Migrant is currently scheduled for publication in November of 2008.

Archived in Books for the News | Literature
Posted by TXM at 03:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

New in paperback—Jonathan Silvertown here explores the astonishing diversity of plant life in regions as spectacular as the verdant climes of Japan, the lush grounds of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, the shallow wetlands and teeming freshwaters of Florida, the tropical rainforests of southeast Mexico, and the Canary Islands archipelago, whose evolutionary novelties—and exotic plant life—have earned it the sobriquet “the Galápagos of botany.” Bringing the secret life of plants into more colorful and vivid focus than ever before, Demons in Eden is an empathic and impassioned exploration of modern plant ecology that unlocks evolutionary mysteries of the natural world.

Read the press release. Read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Press Releases
Posted by TXM at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The August 2008 issue of National Defense is running an article about the military's acquisition and use of unmanned drones that quotes James Hasik, aerospace and defense industry consultant, and author of the forthcoming Arms and Innovation: Entrepreneurship and Alliances in the Twenty-first Century Defense Industry. Read the article "Drones in the Military: Infatuation or True Love" on the National Defense website.

On a related note, earlier this week, the Guardian's Dan Kennedy wrote an interesting op-ed piece on the American media's coverage of the war in Irag, criticizing the U.S. military and government for "preventing the public from seeing photographs that depict the true horror of the Iraq war." But Kennedy also takes note of Ashley Gilbertson's recent Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: A Photographer's Chronicle of the Iraq War praising the book for its authentic portrayal of the war. Read the article at www.guardian.co.uk or see our WTF website featuring a video interview with the author.

The July 30 edition of the New York Sun ran a review of Cyril Connolly's 1938 Enemies of Promise, which we recently reprinted. Part memoir, part literary criticism, and part writing guide, the Sun's Marco Roth praises Connolly for the adaptability of his approach to writing and the continued relevance of his work to writers today.

William Davies King's new book Collections of Nothing received yet another glowing review by Linda McCullough Moore in the July 28 edition of Chiristianity Today's Books & Culture. McCullough writes "As much as this (at times almost surreal) examination catalogues the things that King and other people stockpile and amass, it is more truly an examination of the spaces so in need of something, of the emptinesses a life will try to fill. One strength of this compendium, so stark and strong and honest, is that it does cause us to consider whether the existence of the empty spaces might just posit the existence of something meant to fill them." Read an excerpt and an essay with the author.

It was posted a few weeks back, but we also shouldn't neglect to mention an interesting interview with William H. Calvin, author of Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change on David Houle's Evolution Shift blog. In the interview Houle and Calvin discuss climate change and the threat it poses, as well as what can be done to mitigate its potentially disastrous effects.

Last but not least, Robert Bruegmann, author of Sprawl: A Compact History wrote an interesting article for Forbes magazine called "Driving Works." In his article Bruegmann delivers some interesting insight into the future of our automotive culture. Read the article on the Forbes website. Also, read an excerpt from the book.

Archived in Commentary
Posted by TXM at 02:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)