Most authors aren’t good at reading their own books. This maxim, delivered so astutely and simply (and hilariously) by Adam Gopnik during his delightful appearance Thursday at megafest Miami Book Fair International, really can’t be stressed enough. Gopnik is probably an exception, judging from his storytelling — though I can’t be sure since he didn’t [...]
Last March, a week after the murder of Trayvon Martin, HarperCollins released Gilbert King’s Devil in the Grove. As we said in our review at the time, this tremendous, impeccably researched book, which tells the story of Thurgood Marshall’s defense of the Groveland Boys — four young black men who were accused of raping a white [...]
Don’t call Stephanie McMillan a Democrat. Don’t call her a liberal, either. The winner of the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights Journalism Award — and native South Floridian; she penned her first lefty piece, a review of Jonathan Schell’s Fate of the Earth, as a student at the frou frou Fort Lauderdale high school [...]
Christopher Beha’s debut novel What Happened to Sophie Wilder has received rave reviews from publications ranging from New York Times Book Review to Vogue. In this meditative story, Beha, who is an associate editor at Harper’s and previously published the memoir The Whole Five Feet, brings us Charlie Blakeman, a floundering writer living with his [...]
Pop culture addicts who loved the original incarnation of VH-1′s Pop-Up Video prized the show for its irreverent, half-serious running commentary balloons. While, say, a hair metal ballad blared away onscreen, you might have read a comment on the vintage price of Aqua Net, or statistics on Spandex. The concept proved so beloved, in fact, [...]
Adam Gopnik’s most recent book, The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food, centers, like so many other recent volumes, around food. But rather than spend the chapters waxing ecstatic about obscure ingredients or pushing for specific notions of health, Gopnik, appropriately for a New Yorker staff writer, takes a headier tack. [...]
Naomi Wolf’s latest, Vagina, has gotten mixed — sometimes very mad — reviews both in seasoned critical circles and the blogosphere. Wolf, veteran feminist and Beauty Myth author, will appear at the Miami Book Fair on Saturday, so we caught up with her to chat about the book, which has performed steadily according to several [...]
While everyone loves a good mystery, it’s a genre overrun with writers, which makes it hard to decide who’s worth your time. To assist you, we’ve compiled a list of five mystery writers, both debut and established, who are participating in the Miami Book Fair this weekend and worth checking out. No matter what you’re [...]
Bestselling author and Floridian William Heffernan will not be deterred. Hurricane Sandy hit the New York metro area while he was promoting his latest book. On top of that, his flight back to Florida was delayed, wasting valuable time he had intended to volunteer to the Obama campaign. (Tuesday’s victory must have been a bright [...]
You already know this: while earning your college degree was informative and pleasant enough, plenty of us head in a different direction. Or maybe the experience wasn’t so awesome or helpful, but we’re sticking, steadfast and stubborn, to what we set out for in the first place. Joshua Miller, the executive director and founder of [...]
Venezuela has been in the media lately: following the death of Hugo Chávez, his chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, beat challenger Henrique Capriles in the current election for presidency. It was a miniscule margin of a win—about 50.7%–and as of this write-up, a contested verdict. But if you’re the average United Statesian, you are less aware [...]
