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Wednesday, April 6,2011
Books

Understanding 'The Last Days of the Working Class'

Jefferson Cowie provides back-story to current political maneuvers

By Michael Carriere
As the assault on organized labor continues in Madison, protesters and observers alike have had great difficulty in explaining why many members of the state's working class voted for Scott Walker back in November—and why some still support him even...
Wednesday, April 6,2011
Books

Literary Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Literature (Skyhorse Publishing), by Alex Palmer

Book Review

By David Luhrssen
The novels of Jane Austen and other authors of that time period were denounced by the era's cultural elite, including poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who claimed that reading their work "occasions in time the...
Saturday, April 2,2011
Books

Up Against the Wall

Desperate Times in the Territories

By David Luhrssen
The "security barrier" Israel erected during the past decade to separate itself from West Bank Palestinians has diminished terrorist strikes and thwarted the opportunity for lasting peace. Aside from its physical ugliness, the wall violated internationally recognized boundaries by zigzagging across the land to protect...
Monday, March 28,2011
Books

Boswell Book Co. Goes 'Beyond DiMaggio'

Baldassaro explores Italian Americans in baseball

By Jenni Herrick
Just in time for Major League Baseball's Opening Day, retired UW-Milwaukee faculty member Lawrence Baldassaro provides readers with a story of America's national pastime by exploring the role that Italian Americans have played throughout the history of the game. Casual baseball fans, and probably even...
Monday, March 28,2011
Books

Focusing on 'The Never-Ending Revival'

Scully examines the role of Rounder Records

By Martin Jack Rosenblum
The revival of traditional music in America by young, urban singer/scholars began in the postwar years and peaked in the early to mid-'60s. Even as we have come to another revival...
Monday, March 28,2011
Books

The Eerie Silence: Renewing Our Search for Alien Intelligence (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Paul Davies

Book Review

By David Luhrssen
Astronomers have been sweeping the sky with radio telescopes since 1960, listening for signals from alien civilizations. In his provocative study The Eerie Silence, astrobiologist Paul Davies asks probing questions about the preconceptions behind SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence): Why would we assume...
Saturday, March 26,2011
Books

Remembering SXSW

Chronicling a Great Music Festival

By David Luhrssen
Austin is well situated as the site for one of the world's most important music festivals. The weather is warm, the students are numerous and PBS's "Austin City Limits" called attention to its thriving outlaw country scene. But the South By Southwest festival had no assurances of success in its early years. As recounted...
Tuesday, March 22,2011
Books

UWM Hosts Poet, Dance Critic Jack Anderson

Book Preview

By Jenni Herrick
Jack Anderson, witty and sharp-eyed poet and dance writer, has childhood roots in Milwaukee. Anderson was born in 1935 and, though he has long been a resident of New York City, often writes of his boyhood...
Tuesday, March 22,2011
Books

To Improve Memory, Go 'Moonwalking With Einstein'

Joshua Foer explores 'The Art and Science of Remembering Everything'

By Roger K. Miller
Forgetting is easy. But not forgetting lies in a curious and complex place, journalist Joshua Foer tells us in Moonwalking With Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Penguin), a beguiling exploration of the manifold aspects of memory and memorizing...
Tuesday, March 22,2011
Books

American Tempest: How the Boston Tea Party Sparked a Revolution (Da Capo), by Harlow Giles Unger

Book Review

By David Luhrssen
The original "Tea Party Patriots" have entered American folklore as defiant rebels against tyranny, striking a blow against taxation without representation. Harlow Giles Unger is not entirely impressed. In American Tempest, the prolific biographer of America's founders finds much to criticize about the Boston merchants...
Monday, March 21,2011
Books

Maritime Milwaukee (Arcadia Publishing), by the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society

Book Review

By David Luhrssen
Maritime Milwaukee (Arcadia Publishing), by the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society
Monday, March 14,2011
Books

'Oatmeal' in Book Form

Web cartoonist Matthew Inman to visit Boswell

By Jenni Herrick
"Unique," "unusual" and "hilarious" only begin to describe TheOatmeal.com, where wry observations and innocent-looking drawings on the absurdities of life have garnered millions of laughs since the site's debut in 2009. Site creator Matthew Inman, a 28-year-old web designer turned web cartoonist, has seen...
Monday, March 14,2011
Books

Examined Lives: From Socrates to Nietzsche (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by James Miller

Book Review

By David Luhrssen
Even if part of the fault lies with the abstruseness favored by some of its practitioners, the decline in respect for philosophy during the last century leaves an unfortunate gap in social discourse. We live in times when practicality and productivity are valued above all else, and the search for meaning is often relegated to...
Monday, March 7,2011
Books

Milwaukee's Rich History of Movie Theaters, Bowling Alleys

Book Preview

By Jenni Herrick
Two fresh entries in Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America" series give readers a peek into Wisconsin history through vintage movie theaters and turn-of-the...
Monday, March 7,2011
Books

Leonard Cohen's 'Remarkable Life'

Anthony Reynolds chronicles one-of-a-kind poet, novelist and musician

By David Luhrssen
Leonard Cohen may be the only important singer-songwriter who arrived on the music scene already recognized as a significant poet and novelist. But as shown in Anthony Reynolds' biography, Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life (Omnibus Press), the singer-songwriter label, suggesting saccharine...
Wednesday, March 2,2011
Books

Cecil B. DeMille's 'Empire of Dreams'

Scott Eyman reviews life of iconic filmmaker

By Steve Spice
Cecil B. DeMille gave us the Ten Commandments by grace of Charlton Heston's descent from Sinai. He parted the Red Sea for us, as graphically pictured on the dust jacket of Scott Eyman's carefully detailed new...
Wednesday, March 2,2011
Books

Driven West: Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears to the Civil War (Simon & Schuster), by A.J. Langguth

Book Review

By David Luhrssen
With a lifelong career of cruelty to American Indians and his role in the genocidal Trail of Tears, which forced the Cherokees from their towns and farms in Georgia to the badlands of the West, Andrew Jackson is perhaps the U.S. president most likely to face a human rights tribunal had he lived today. And yet he still...
Tuesday, March 1,2011
Books

Lori Horbas on Aldo Leopold, 'Land Ethic'

Book Preview

By Jenni Herrick
Decades before environmentalism emerged as a leading social issue, wilderness preservationist Aldo Leopold was professing his "land ethic" philosophy that encouraged the public to live in harmony with the physical world through greater reverence toward the land. Leopold's innovative ideals of eco-protection and...
Saturday, February 26,2011
Books

Outcast Blues

Tom Waits and Michael O'Brien on the Homeless

By David Luhrssen
It wasn't but a few times after seeing his face that he became etched in the mind of Michael O'Brien. The year was 1975 and O'Brien's job as photographer for the Miami News was to circle the city in a company car with a police radio until he found a story to snap. While on his work errands he became...
Tuesday, February 22,2011
Books

Civil War for Children

Heroes from the Badger State

By David Luhrssen
The Civil War wasn’t fought in Wisconsin but the Badger State contributed many men—and some women—to the Union cause. The latest titles in the Badger Biographies Series for young readers, published by the Wisconsin Historical Society, focus on two prominent state residents from that era.
Tuesday, February 22,2011
Books

T.C. Boyle to Appear at Boswell Book Co.

Best-selling author talks ‘When the Killing’s Done’

By Jenni Herrick
When the Killing’s Done is a timely and socially conscious look at 21st-century idealism and the asperities people surmount in order to live up to the values they espouse. This powerful new novel by T.C. Boyle spotlights...
Tuesday, February 22,2011
Books

‘Soul Mining’ With Daniel Lanois

Famed music producer offers engineering, compositional insight

By Martin Jack Rosenblum
Producer culture in American popular music took off with Rick Rubin, who restored or recreated Johnny Cash as the folk-singing Man in Black. Rubin failed to entirely reinvent Neil Diamond and Kris Kristofferson, but with his imprimatur those artists received some kind of renewed pretense regarding...
Tuesday, February 22,2011
Books

Alan Arkin: An Improvised Life (Da Capo Press), by Alan Arkin

Book Review

By Heather Zydek
The title of Academy Award-winning actor Alan Arkin's new memoir, An Improvised Life, is slightly misleading. The book isn't so much about Arkin's life as it is about improvisation, a theatrical art form he encountered upon landing a gig at the nascent Second City in Chicago. It's clear that Arkin is, well, smitten...
Monday, February 14,2011
Books

Lisa Paul Talks ‘Swimming in the Daylight’

The gift of hope in Cold War-era Soviet Union

By David Luhrssen
In 1983 Lisa Paul, a Russian studies major, accepted a job in Moscow as a nanny for an American executive with Caterpillar. She looked forward to an exciting, yearlong paid vacation...
Monday, February 14,2011
Books

‘Frank: The Voice’ a Stylish Sinatra Biography

James Kaplan covers first 40 years of iconic singer’s life

By Steve Spice
Frank: The Voice (Doubleday), James Kaplan’s terrific new look at the most iconic singer of the 20th century, is a refreshing example of how an upscale celebrity biography can remain stylishly objective—reading like good fiction while capturing the vernacular pungency that humanizes...
 
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