Woody ‘n’ Bob

by | Mar 19, 2014 | Book Reviews

March 19: “Listening to [Guthrie’s] records for the first time felt ‘like a million megaton bomb had dropped,’ Dylan would write…”  

William Wells Brown: Clotel & Other Writings

by | Mar 18, 2014 | Book Reviews

Born into slavery and freed to become a force for justice, William Wells Brown (1814-1884) conjured up Clotel, the first novel attributed to an African-American writer.  Alongside his nonfiction, the book speaks to questions about race and equality that still...

Rock She Wrote

by | Mar 18, 2014 | Book Reviews

Where is the female Lester Bangs or Greil Marcus?  Right here, in the pages of an electric collection assembled by editors Evelyn McDonnell and Ann Powers, who’ve pillaged the pages of pop music journals from the 1960s to the present in search of the best...

Updike’s America

by | Mar 18, 2014 | Book Reviews

March 18: “I read and talked into the microphone and was gracious to the local rich, the English faculty and the college president, and the students with their clear skin…”