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The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood: by James Gleick
Journalist and science writer James Gleick’s The Information takes many shapes, much like its slippery subject. It’s in parts a biography of symbolic logic, a history of the bit and an introductory course in
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The Marriage Plot: by Jeffrey Eugenides
In our post-modern, post-structuralist, post-feminist, post-damn-near-everything era, is the concept of “love” antiquated, an artifact from a time when people spoke in totalizing terms about truth and human happiness? This question is central to
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Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War: by Tony Horwitz
In the span of a few years between 1856 and 1859, the abolitionist John Brown led a raid that left five pro-slavery men dead in Pottawattamie, Kansas, staged a takeover of the federal armory
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Art-Toys: by Brian McCarty
There is much cultural commentary to unpack in regards to the Art-Toy movement. It was in the ‘90s that designer toys became a “thing,” as aspects of comics, graphic design, graffiti art and DJing
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The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories: by Don DeLillo
Few active writers have done more to uphold the novel as a preeminent form of human expression than Don DeLillo. Like filmmaker John Ford, with his famously blunt introduction, “I make Westerns,” DeLillo has
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There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America: by Philip Dray
Taking its name from a song by writer, IWW activist and labor martyr Joe Hill, Philip Dray’s There is Power in a Union is a comprehensive history – and, at times, a celebration –
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100 Posters, 134 Squirrels: A Decade of Hot Dogs, Large Mammals, and Independent Rock: The Posters of Jay Ryan
On October 1, 2004, the Wrens played Chicago’s Logan Square Auditorium. Imagining a poster for that event, you might be thinking: birds, Sears Tower, guitars, big block letters, exclamation points. You probably aren’t thinking:
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Once Upon a River: by Bonnie Jo Campbell
Bonnie Jo Campbell is fast becoming one of America’s most notable contemporary authors. A 2009 National Book Award finalist for American Salvage ― a hardscrabble collection of short stories from meth country ― Campbell
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Role Models: by John Waters
I was in eighth grade when I first discovered John Waters’ Pink Flamingos in the Cult Classics section of my Hollywood Video. After watching it one weekend and reveling in the over-the-over-the-top-ness of its
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Bob Dylan in America: by Sean Wilentz
The very first page of Bob Dylan In America is filled, front and back, with praise for Sean Wilentz from Dylan associates and otherwise recognizable names such as Philip Roth, Al Kooper and Martin
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