Ishmael Reed Baraka Books ($19.95) by Spencer Dew For six decades, Ishmael Reed—a writer of novels, plays, poems, and essays—has been offering critiques of American culture. As editor of Konch, the online literary journal, Reed has sought “to publish those voices that are ignored by the American media,” as he writes in a recent issue, declaring Konch in […]

A.T. Mann Sterling Ethos ($19.95) by Gerard Malanga I’ve been giving a lot of thought to trees lately, especially now that we’re nearing the end of autumn and the leaves have turned and are falling to the ground. It’s a subject that has always fascinated poets. I’m reminded of Robert Lowell’s precise and focused imagery, […]

David Eagleman Vintage Books ($15.95) by Scott Vickers Since the dawn of the natural sciences, when Galileo first gazed into the heavens and surmised that Earth was not the center of the universe, humans have been anxiously trying to understand some basic questions: “Who are we? Where did we come from? Why are we here?” […]

Aatish Taseer Graywolf Press ($16) by Spencer Dew In this memoir and travelogue, a son wrestles with his father’s absence by travelling for eight months from Europe to Pakistan, through Syria and Turkey and Iran, compiling notes for a book. This book, tragically, was used to defend Taseer’s father’s assassination by one of his bodyguards, […]

Jason Weiss Wesleyan University Press ($24.95) by W. C. Bamberger ESP-Disk was a short-lived record company that in some ways typified the independent and progressive spirit of the 1960s—with, as was most often the case, both its idealistic and its darker sides simultaneously present. ESP was begun by Bernard Stollman, a lawyer who in the […]

In which Ted Pelton (publisher of Starcherone Books) and Davis Schneiderman (“an American innovative writer and academic”) discuss Kent Johnson’s A Question Mark Under the Sun (Starcherone Books, $16) TED: Davis, my good friend, here we are. Yet of course you will say, where is here? I can say there is a bottle of Pernod on the table and a sign […]

Why Lee Child’s Stoic Man of Action Has Clung On for 17 Books   by Peter S. Scholtes A hero ain’t nothin’ but a sandwich, but imagine one packed with fat and vitamins for a cheetah’s metabolism, protein for the garbage furnace of your heart. Like the diner food and coffee savored by Jack Reacher, scruffy […]

An Interview with Alexander Theroux by Paul Maliszewski In Estonia, as Alexander Theroux observes, post offices sell shampoo, dish detergent, and sanitary pads, used-book stores pencil in their prices at the back of books, fisherman play pan-pipes to attract fish, and doors always swing out. Theroux, the author of four novels, includingDarconville’s Cat (Doubleday, 1981) and Laura […]