My new book, “On Being Human,” has been published (in both ebook and handmade hardcover versions) by the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography. You should go out and buy a copy right now! Continue reading CCLaP: “On Being Human,” by Karl Wolff, on sale now!
“Gold Rush in the Jungle” is a book of opposites, discovery vs. extinction, economic development vs. environmental devastation . . . Continue reading Gold Rush in the Jungle by Dan Drollette, Jr. @ NYJB
I. Burial of the Dead April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade, And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarden, And drank coffee, and talked for an hour. Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch. And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s, My cousin’s, he took me out … Continue reading Commonplace Book: April is the cruelest month …
In this penultimate installment of Mondays with the Supremes, I cover the tenures of three Supreme Court justices who were on the Court for decades. Continue reading Mondays with the Supremes: Part VIII: Longrunners: Hugo Black, William O. Douglas, and William Rehnquist
This week, Karl Wolff reviews a mystery set in a small town in Washington state involving designer drugs, a Native American social worker, and a suspicious computer hacker. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: Dire Salvation, by Charles Neff
Masters of the Planet by Ian Tattersall is a fascinating exploration of the always controversial topic of human evolution. Continue reading Masters of the Planet, by Ian Tattersall
My introductory essay to my series, “On Being Human” has been posted on CCLaP. Continue reading CCLaP Fridays: On Being Human: An Introduction
The history of the Atlantic Monthly is also the history of America. Susan Goodman’s Republic of Words: the Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857 – 1925, traces the intellectual and editorial history of the magazine. Conceived by luminaries including Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Greenleaf Whittier, and James Russell Lowell, the Atlantic began with an adamant pro-Union perspective. Lowell, the first editor, brought together numerous contributors associated with the Abolition and Transcendentalist movements. Goodman excels at bringing American history to life, charting the course of the magazine and the nation through the Civil War, … Continue reading Republic of Words: the Atlantic Monthly and Its Writers, 1857 – 1925, by Susan Goodman
The world is a scary place. Roz Chast latest book, What I Hate: from A to Z, is her alphabetic exploration of her panaphobic panoply of paranoia-inducing pictures. Her fears run the gamut of the familiar (heights, getting lost, and nightmares) to the unusual (spontaneous human combustion, balloons, and Jello 1-2-3). Each entry has a short introduction opposite the illustrated page. There are single panels and other pages cluttered with details. In one introduction, she explains her fear of rabies originating in children’s literature. She writes, “On an ideal planet, children’s books wouldn’t be censored for references to sex, but … Continue reading What I Hate: from A to Z, by Roz Chast
Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Savage Detectives chronicled a literary movement named “the Visceral Realists.” Crow: from the Life and Songs of the Crow by Ted Hughes offers the reader a kind of visceral realism. The poetry cycle recounts the life and times of Crow, a folkloric character, comedian and trickster. The collection ranges across various types of poems: fairy tales, lullabies, legends, comedic shtick, and parody. Like the crows one sees everyday, Crow scrabbles in waste, carrion, and garbage. He is a scavenger, appropriating things, a collector of junk. The poem titles bear this out, “Oedipus Crow,” “Crow Tyrannosaurus,” and … Continue reading Crow: From the Life and Songs of the Crow, by Ted Hughes
The Driftless Area Review 