http://www.expressmilwaukee.com/articles.sec-29-1-books.html Since 2001, political books penned by American liberals have flourished, but most have been critiques of the Bush-Cheney administration, the attacks on 9/11 and the Iraq War, interrupted briefly by the 2004 Kerry campaign. The 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama, however, gave hopeful writers a new topic...]]> A trio of local literati will visit bookstores across the city this week. Valerie Laken, author of Dream House, moved to Milwaukee in 2006 and served two years as the writer in residence at Carthage College before...]]> Britain's literary tradition of fine writers has left a legacy rich in classic storytelling with timeless characters that have become common names. Marley's ghost makes an annual appearance at Christmastime, thanks to the genius of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol. Published in 1843, Dickens’...]]> In 1988, no one expected the East Bloc to disintegrate within a year. In Russian historian Constantine Pleshakov’s cheeky, sharply worded account of the last days of the Evil Empire, none of the key players—not Reagan, Bush or John Paul II—had any idea where events would lead. Pleshakov’s...]]> Long before Oprah started her signature book club, readers all over the country would gather in groups to discuss their favorite books. Milwaukee Area Technical...]]> It was the little car that couldn’t, and the most enjoyable part of Jason Vuic’s book, The Yugo: The Rise and Fall of the Worst Car in History (Hill & Wang), is the jokes that were made about it: Q: What’s the difference between a Yugo and a golf ball? A: You can drive a golf ball 200...]]> Sir Roger Casement is remembered chiefly as an Irish patriot, hanged by the British for treason for his part in the rebellion of 1916. As Jordan Goodman reminds us, Casement had previously been known as a British diplomat with a conscience, “the most universally lauded investigator of human rights abuses of his...]]> One of the daunting problems for casual or novice fans of classical music comes down to the embarrassment of variety. Simply put: how to chose from the hundreds of recordings of Beethoven’s 3rd, assuming you don’t want to own them all?]]> Most everyone loves to receive postcards from family or friends traveling abroad on fantastic adventures. Postcards sent from an ex-girlfriend you haven’t heard from in a year, however, are a different story entirely. It’s this second scenario that is happening to Sid Higgins, the mainl...]]> David Suisman’s Selling Sounds (Harvard University Press) accurately and with remarkable insight traces the rise of the modern music industry at a time when it is...]]> E.M. Forster was one of Britain’s best-selling literary authors a century ago, and is known nowadays to art house lovers from film adaptations of Howards End, A Passage to India and Maurice. In his perceptive and critical analysis, Frank Kermode writes that Forster “wanted to write books that would please creative...]]> Nina Simone was a bewitchingly powerful singer, infusing her material with emotional nuance as well as dusky drama. Record companies marketed her in the late 1950s as a jazz singer but as her new biography spells out, Simone never wanted to be a jazz artist. A classically trained pianist...]]> Patti Smith is known for making mediocre poetry and music that exposes the sound of poetry in a furious rock ’n’ roll setting. It’s a pleasing shock to find that her prose is evocative, finely structured and elegantly delicate. In Just Kids (Ecco/HarperCollins), she is more than a mere...]]> History inspires great fiction, and tales of young heroes who succeed against insurmountable odds often top best-seller lists. In the collection The Five Ancestors, history and heroism come together in seven captivating young adult novels by Jeff Stone. Set in 17th-century China, these legends bring to life a very real and interesting period of world history in a narrative...]]> When the financial tailspin of 2008 forced Alan Greenspan to confess that he was mistaken about the unshakable rationality and self-correcting nature of the economy, it was as if a Roman Catholic cardinal publicly doubted the divinity of Christ. As The New Yorker’s John Cassidy argues so well in How Markets Fail, Greenspan was the gnomic...]]> From 1989 through 1995 Lincoln T. Beauchamp, Jr., an African-American musician and writer, published a thick journal called the Original Chicago Blues Annual. OCBA included poetry and fiction but focused on interviews with blues and jazz artists along with cultural essays on the black experience in America...]]> According to George Case, one of the most significant dates in the chronicle of the 1960swas that day in August, 1964 when Bob Dylan shared his stash of pot with the Beatles. At their first meeting, the distance between the pop sensations and the esteemed folksinger was crossed on the rope bridge of cannabis...]]> The old adage says that with age comes wisdom. In the autobiography Footsoldier for Peace and Justice, John Gilman shares the wisdom that has come as a result of his life experiences...]]> Judging a book by its cover could not be more gratifying than with a quick glance at the imposing coffee-table book Bette Davis: Larger Than...]]> Jay Bergman argues that policemen and scientists “were the Soviet citizens the Soviet leadership needed most.” Among the latter group, physicists won the greatest autonomy, both for the abstract nature of their work and its practical application in nuclear weapons. In his deeply researched and largely laudatory account of Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet H-bomb turned prominent dissident, Bergman...]]>