Erik Darling, who is best known for replacing Pete Seeger in the Weavers, died only a month ago. A virtuoso banjo and guitar player, Darling also founded and performed with two other leading folk groups, the Tarriers (with Alan Arkin, then just a little-known singer) and the Rooftop Singers. In 1956, the Tarriers had a hit with "Cindy, Oh Cindy." Keep in mind that all this was going on when rockabilly was evolving into rock 'n' roll. Even before founding these famous folk groups at the dawn of the 1950s, he formed the Folksay Trio. They recorded only four songs, but one was "Tom Dooley," which the Kingston Trio later nabbed for a hit during the Mighty Wind commercialization . . .

Who knew that in 1889 an anti-Chinese riot broke out in Milwaukee after a pair of laundry workers were arrested for "enticing" adolescent white girls for "immoral purposes"? It's just one of the many interesting stories collected in Chinese Milwaukee, a slim but photo-packed account of Chinese Americans in the city from the . . .

The deployment of smear tactics and sex-centered propaganda in the run-up to the November election has helped eclipse some of the issues that genuinely deserve primacy on the public agenda. Speculation over Sarah Palin's ability to govern a region more populous than Alaska (not to mention concern over her shaky knowledge of the Jurassic period) has momentarily crowded out issues like immigration rights and border control . . .

Today's neocons would love it: Terrorists disturbing the peace and security of the United States are hunted down, not at taxpayer expense, but by a private agency for personal gain. The free market rules! Well, sort of. It was attempted a century ago, when enterprise was not so much private as it was wild and woolly, and concern for such minor legal details as individual rights was even less than it has become in our day. Eventually, of course, the government had to step in to arrest the bad guys and put them on trial-and when it did, the attendant early-20th-century corruption sounds as modern as in a John Grisham novel . . .

It's been written that there's nothing new under the sun, and the axiom has been proven over and over in the history of rock 'n' roll. Sounds Like Teen Spirit compares and contrasts dozens of familiar songs that bear resemblance to one another. Some of them are obvious thefts, such as the transformation of Chuck Berry's. . .

Why did the chicken cross the road? What do you get when you cross a llama with a lampshade? It doesn't take a genius to work it out… or does it? In their new book, Harvard-educated philosophers Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein show unsuspecting readers the myriad philosophical concepts craftily concealed within jokes. Never again will you dismiss a lame gag without pausing to consider the metaphysical truths buried within it. And never again will you make the errant assumption that philosophy can't be a hoot . . .

The United States is lamentably behind the Western and Eastern nations that have already elected powerful female leaders. And despite the dogged perseverance with which she attempted to earn a victory, Hillary Clinton's defeat in the presidential primaries earlier this year helps continue this embarrassing legacy. When Vermont's former governor Madeleine Kunin published her book Pearls, Politics & Power: How Women Can Win and Lead more than four months ago, not only was Clinton very much in the race, but she seemed set to win. Instead of dealing a decisive blow to the glass ceiling that keeps women in America . . .

How to Be Single by Liz Tuccillo, co-author of He's Just Not That Into You, is a book that attempts to tackle the massive conundrum of single life for women: It's important to be happy while single, but who wants to spend time working on being happy and single when you can spend time finding a man to make you happy? And that, quite frankly, is the downfall of this book for me, though it might serve as satisfying chick-lit for the masses. Tuccillo, one of HBO's Emmy Award-winning executive story editor's for "Sex and the City," puts her personal spin on the single . . .

Concert pianist and critic John Bell Young sets out to describe and explain Beethoven's nine symphonies with minimal technical jargon. His Guided Tour largely succeeds. Young offers solid summations of the structure, emotional content and intellectual background of each symphony. He also touches on subjects as various as Beethoven's celebrity status, the role of conductors in interpreting the score, the political backdrop . . .

Any publisher will tell you that poetry-that music of the soul, that sublime agent of universal values-relies as much on successful marketing and distribution as it does on the inspirational muses if it stands any hope of reaching an attentive ear. For its summer program, ArtWorks for Milwaukee, a local nonprofit organization that provides teens with paid apprenticeships in the arts to teach them critical employment skills, attempted to familiarize students with the personal and pragmatic ends of poetry publishing. Eight high-school students from Milwaukee Public Schools were . . .