Books and Publishing Stories

355 stories found. Showing page 1 of 18.

Written on the Mind and the Body: John A. Rich argues that homicide statistics don't tell the whole story when assessing urban violence in Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Books | 1/27/2010 | By Michael Corbin

"But man that ain't nothing." Tayvon pulls his shirt back down after showing me the scar that extends below his waistband to his groin and up to his sternum. About an inch-wide, raised, milky shee...[MORE]

Friend or Feast?: Jonathan Safran Foer focuses his literary moral compass on the meat industry

Books | 1/13/2010 | By Phyllis Zhu

Thanks to journalists such as Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma), buried somewhere deep in Americans' meat-loving unconscious is the vague knowledge that the ground beef grabbed from the superm...[MORE]

Christian Siriano: The fashion phenom talks about success, style, the industry, and ferocity

Books | 1/6/2010 | By Raymond Cummings

Prior to evolving into the gravity-defying-coif-sporting, catchphrase-spouting enfant terrible who walked away with Project Runway's fourth season title, Christian Siriano was a self-described "littl...[MORE]

Stupid Book, Be More Funny: Simpsons history is long on process, short on zazz

Books | 12/16/2009 | By Andy Markowitz

What's that line? Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. It popped into my head a lot over the first 289 pages of John Ortved's The Simpsons: An Uncensored, Unauthorized History, and...[MORE]

Overlapping Dialogs: Robert Altman as remembered by the many, many people who knew--and sometimes liked--him

Books | 12/16/2009 | By Lee Gardner

Of course Robert Altman gets an oral biography. What better way to tell the life story of a filmmaker whose trademark was overlapping dialog that offered many levels of information and occasional com...[MORE]

Terry Teachout Speaks at Enoch Pratt Main Branch Dec. 9

Arts and Minds | 12/8/2009 | By Lee Gardner

Renowned writer and critic Terry Teachout has some fairly serious Maryland ties. Not only did he attend St. John's College, but he wrote 2002's The Skeptic: The Life of H.L. Mencken, an esteemed biogr...[MORE]

Keeping Up: Nearly 20 years after his death, Arthur Russell finally gets the biography he deserves

Books | 12/2/2009 | By Jess Harvell

In 2001, info on Arthur Russell--the nearly forgotten disco/folk/minimalist auteur just then being reintroduced to the post-rave generation via retro-focused compilations such as Strut's 2000 Disco ...[MORE]

Tennessee Titan: Madison Smartt Bell brings the Civil War to your doorstep through the enigmatic Southern general Nathan Forrest

Books | 12/2/2009 | By John Barry

Devil's Dream's frontispiece includes a photograph of the small-eyed, dark-bearded Civil War general Nathan Forrest. He looks like he's daring you to tell him that his side lost the war. Prepare to f...[MORE]

In Praise of Push: The movie adaptation of Sapphire's 1996 novel opens this Friday but, please, read the book

Books | 11/17/2009 | By Michael Corbin

As a teacher I never made anyone read Sapphire’s 1996 Push. I never promoted it. I just had it available in the classroom, lying around. It’s a book that would never be officially assigned, a book tha...[MORE]

Cool Hunting: Jazz writer Ted Gioia bites off more than he can chew

Books | 11/18/2009 | By Michaelangelo Matos

On page one of The Birth (and Death) of the Cool (Speck Press), jazz historian and corporate consultant Ted Gioia writes that the word cool has become "a verbal tic expressing approval of any sort ....[MORE]

Teen Slate: Natalie Standiford's new young-adult novel brings her back to Baltimore

Books | 11/4/2009 | By Lee Gardner

"When I was in college, one of the TAs of one of my writing seminars asked me, 'Why are all your stories about kids?'" Natalie Standiford recalls. At the time, she says, "I thought, Well, I'm 18, wha...[MORE]

Remembering Donald Goines

Arts and Minds | 10/22/2009 | By Bret McCabe

Thank you, BET, for reminding everybody that it was on this day that 1970s crime fiction lost one of its most immediate storytellers: Detroit's Donald Goines and his common-law wife were murdered 35 y...[MORE]

Total Conflicts of Interest: Pimping City Paper Alumni

Arts and Minds | 10/20/2009 | By Bret McCabe

Erstwhile City Paper contributor Violet Glaze becomes a full-fledged writer today, and not a mere ink-stained hack like the rest of us here in alt-weekly journalism. Her debut paranormal erotic e-book...[MORE]

The Tenth Annual F. Scott Fitzgerald Conference Takes the Bus

Arts and Minds | 10/9/2009 | By Chris Landers

The crowd at the 10th annual conference of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society that gathered in Baltimore Sept. 30-Oct. 3 was older, but not uniformly so, and perhaps a bit tweedy, but not entirely. The s...[MORE]

Every Story Paints a Picture: With the publication of The Elements, long-running Baltimore duo the Tinklers return to their spry narrative roots

Books | 10/7/2009 | By Bret McCabe

Consider: One morning Mary sees her husband Steven off to his first day at an aluminum beverage-container manufacturer. He returns looking broken, a shell of the man who left that morning. The next da...[MORE]

Q & A: Jessica Hopper: A conversation with the music writer, This American Life consultant and author of The Girls' Guide to Rocking

Books | 8/19/2009 | By Raymond Cummings

A music writer whose bylines have appeared everywhere from Spin to the Chicago Tribune, Renaissance woman Jessica Hopper is also a music consultant for This American Life and has logged serious ti...[MORE]

The Bong Goodbye: Thomas Pynchon skewers America's political history in his endlessly entertaining variation on the detective yarn

Arts and Entertainment | 8/19/2009 | By Bret McCabe

Let's get one thing nice and sparkling clear: Thomas Pynchon's new Inherent Vice (Penguin Press), his seventh novel, isn't the best work of his career. That honor goes to 1997's verbally ambitious...[MORE]

Yakety Yak: Songwriting duo Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller remember redefining postwar pop music

Books | 8/12/2009 | By Geoffrey Himes

Jerry Leiber once told me that joining the board of the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 1985 was one of the highlights of his life. After years of being dismissed for writing rock 'n' roll hits for Elvis...[MORE]

I, the Jury: Former prosecutor and law professor Paul Butler advocates jury nullification in Let's Get Free

Books | 8/5/2009 | By Michael Corbin

When former federal prosecutor Paul Butler appeared on 60 Minutes in 1996 to explain his critique of America's criminal-justice system in The Yale Law Journal, he was introduced portentously by one ...[MORE]

Human Architecture: The protagonist isn't the only one obsessed with capturing life in two dimensions in Asterios Polyp

Books | 7/29/2009 | By Jess Harvell

The "literary graphic novel" has been both a boon and a bane to comics as an art form, given that so much of what's been produced under the banner rarely works as comics. A comic's narrative pleasure...[MORE]