Thursday, August 19th, 2010

The Passage by Justin Cronin

What happens when a literary author goes renegade and rewrites the vampire novel playbook? With The Passage, Justin Cronin leaves the literary arena behind (he won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Stephen Crane Prize for his past novels) and leaps (bat like!) into the world of speculative fiction. But this is no teenage love [...]

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Annie Leibovitz: At Work

Part memoir, part biopic, At Work allows the photographer Annie Leibovitz to speak through and about her work…simultaneously. Instead of separating photography from commentary, the artist from the art, At Work allows both to tell their tale. At Work follows a straight biographical timeline, and pairs Leibovitz’s photographs with her own words and interpretations-which reads [...]

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009

Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-code Hollywood

Mark Vieira’s book Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood, published in 1999, offers a fascinating window into a Hollywood era that many people know little about.  It focuses on films made between 1929 and 1934 when studio filmmakers often ignored what became known as the Hays Code. This was basically an attempt by the major studios to head off government [...]

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009

Outliers: The Story of Success

Why are some people super-successful–and other just drift along in obscurity? Does success require brains, opportunity, luck or some other unidentifiable trait? Is the idea of the self-made man a myth or a reality? What real goes in to becoming an outstanding success–an Outlier? Malcolm Gladwell explores the making of successful people through a series [...]