Runner
After taking a lengthy—and presumably enlightening—hiatus, Thomas Perry returns to his best-selling series featuring his popular favorite Jane Whitfield.
Robert Birnbaum
Get Lit
Though it may be cause for painful decisions about your reading queue, this selection of literary magazines could be your victory garden: Plougshares, A Public Space, Glimmertrain, and Open City.
Conason on Paine
To commemorate the Jan. 21 birthday of Thomas Paine (Common Sense, The Rights of Man), the Center for Inquiry annually hosts the Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture. Paine has languished outside the pantheon of American demigods and the reverential and hagiographic biblio-avalanche that celebrates the white men known as the
American Rust
Philipp Meyers debut novel is a crime drama focusing on a rust-belt town in decline and its human inhabitants, a microcosm for the economic hardships being played out all around our country.
The Americans
Once deemed too “anti-American” to be published here, Robert Frank’s landmark black-and-white monograph has become an important part of our cultural history. An exhibition of these pictures will be traveling the country all year.
Movies: The Ultimate Insider’s Guide to Cinema's Hidden Gems
Another entry in Robert Kahn’s series offers suggestions on unknown classics from big names in movie-making, proving once again that it’s better to be well-read than expert.
You
Freelance book missionary and publishing insider Lauren Cerand has made publicizing Jonathan Baumbach’s overlooked second-person narrative her business on the web. Will you give “You” another look?
Carla Bley & Charlie Haden
How I became a literary omnivore remains as much a mystery to me as having the same predilections in the musical realm—I have always gravitated to music and musicians whose influences were an ever-expansive wellspring of sounds and composers: Charles Mingus, early Frank Zappa, Harry Partch, Tom Zé,
The Jive Talker
Malawi-born Samson Kambalu’s refreshing new memoir focuses on his father’s time as a hospital administrator, a playful take on African autobiography, and a holy football.
Lawrence Weschler
Inclement weather or no, Lawrence Weschler’s oeuvre is well worth discovering—be it his recently republished and updated early works on Hockney and Irwin, or his recent study of convergences, “Everything That Rises.”