Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original
By John Kehe | 11.12.09
Miles Davis made more money. Duke Ellington was more prolific. CharlieParker was more revered. But no one had a more profound impact on modern jazz than Thelonious Monk. The legendary pianist/composer with the strange hats and even stranger moniker (his given name) has finally become the subject of the kind of meticulously researched biography that lesser lights were afforded long ago. The enigmatic Monk is a tough nut to crack, to be sure, but what fascinating and delicious rewards await inside Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Robin D.G. Kelley’s illuminating biography. (more…)
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Egg on Mao
By Terry Hong | 10.21.09
Denise Chong has built an award-winning career capturing ordinary people living extraordinary lives. “The Concubine’s Children” (1994) told of her own family’s fractured journey from China to Canada and “The Girl in the Picture” (2000) detailed the harrowing story of the young girl whose screaming, naked image became a devastating symbol of the Vietnam War. (more…)
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The Secret Wife of Louis XIV
By Carmela Ciuraru | 10.19.09
She was born into ignominious circumstances – in a French prison in 1635, to a 50-year-old father whose wife was the warden’s 24-year-old daughter, and who was a murderer, a national traitor, and an incorrigible con man. But despite her bleak beginning and itinerant childhood, Françoise d’Aubigné proved adept at navigating the most elite social circles of 17th-century France, eventually marrying royalty. (more…)
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The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
By Kate Vander Wiede | 10.15.09
If you thought physics was tough to grasp in high school, William Kamkwamba will seem like a hero to you. And really, he is. Forced to drop out of secondary school when his family couldn’t afford school fees, 14-year-old Kamkwamba used his free time to build a windmill that operated on principles of physics he managed to teach himself. (more…)
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Where Men Win Glory
By Erik Spanberg | 10.07.09
Many Americans who watched the 9/11 attacks from afar insisted their lives would never be the same after that day, that they could never go back to the way things were before Al Qaeda killed 3,000 people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Few, if any, lived up to that vow with the conviction of Pat Tillman. (more…)
