During the 90s there was something of an arms race to see who could write the biggest deal. That is, the deal with the most money being spent on the band’s behalf. In a singularly painless contest the money would either be paid to the band as a royalty, which would take that money out […]
Category: Nonfiction
Below is a guest reading list from Daniel A. Gross, a journalist and public radio producer who lives in Boston. * * * Fifty years ago, a champion boxer picked up his son from school, a literary critic was tackled by NFL players, and a famed NASCAR racer tended to his chicken farm. Such was the […]
I am the exception, not the rule; I am lucky. The writing I produce garners little to no (negative) attention. When it does, people usually correct my grammar or spelling. This is okay with me, because it’s constructive. To my knowledge, no one has called me ugly, or stupid, or any number of cruel epithets […]
As she neared fifty, determined to keep going, she became almost grotesque, answering her own needs and the wiles of directors eager to exploit her. In Nicholas Ray’s odd, beautiful, impassioned Western “Johnny Guitar” (1954), she’s Vienna, a tough businesswoman who runs a saloon and constantly faces down groups of armed men. Vienna is both an […]
Time carried back to the future, once again seen and understood as it was in antiquity, not only as mortal enemy but also as immortal ally. The counterrevolution against the autocratic regime of uniform, global time (commercially and politically imperialist) was pressed forward by many of the artists and writers of Einstein’s generation unwilling to […]
Modern Farmer appeared in the spring of 2013. After three issues, it won a National Magazine Award; no other magazine had ever won so quickly. According to Gardner, though, Modern Farmer is less a magazine than an emblem of “an international life-style brand.” This is the life style of people who want to “eat food with a better […]
It is worth noting that American students have never received high scores on international tests. On the first such test, a test of mathematics in 1964, senior year students in the US scored last of twelve nations, and eighth-grade students scored next to last. But in the following fifty years, the US outperformed the other […]
Andy is standing in a far corner, examining reels of film. His assistants begin arranging floodlights, setting up the movie camera, waving light meters around. A chair is set down in front of the movie screen. Stephen Shore brings the word to Cass. “Pardon me, Cass. Andy would like you to sit in that chair.” […]
You know who else loved Shakespeare and Company and who wasn’t a writer with skin in the game? Frank Sinatra—according, that is, to Ed Walters, a former pit boss at the Sands, in Las Vegas, who was taken under Sinatra’s wing in the 1960s and offered this account for a forthcoming history the store plans […]
There is more to wheat than gluten. Wheat also contains a combination of complex carbohydrates, and the Australian team wondered if these could be responsible for the problems. Gibson and his colleagues devised a different study: they recruited a group of thirty-seven volunteers who seemed unable to digest gluten properly. This time, the researchers attempted […]
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