ANGRY WIND: Through Muslim Black Africa by Truck, Bus, Boat, and Camel
Jeffrey Tayler
This engrossing narration of crossing the Sahel—the Saharan borderlands of Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Mali—by tortuous and frequently hair-raising local conveyances finds a barren, Continue reading »
Murderers in Mausoleums: Riding the Back Roads of Empire Between Moscow and Beijing
Jeffrey Tayler
Tayler (Siberian Dawn
) takes readers on an extraordinary adventure across the largest landmass on earth, from Russia through the Caucasus into South Ossetia and Continue reading »
The ideal readers for this book would be World Bank advisers drawing up credit agreements in their five-star Moscow hotel rooms as they dine on German beef. Yet anyone seeking an understanding of Continue reading »
In this Heart of Darkness-revisited tale, Tayler (Siberian Dawn) sets out to retrace the steps of British explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who in the 1870s, accompanied by a crew of hundreds of Continue reading »
In Putin?s Footsteps: Searching for the Soul of an Empire Across Russia?s Eleven Time Zones
Jeffrey Tayler, Nina Khrushcheva
Khrushcheva (The Lost Khrushchev), Russian-born professor of international affairs at the New School, and Tayler (Siberian Dawn), a Moscow-based American journalist married to a Continue reading »
In this pulsating work, Coscarelli, a culture reporter for the New York Times, traces the growth of the legendary Atlanta rap scene, crafting an epic of music history. Delving Continue reading »
Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change
W David Marx
Critic Marx (Ametora) takes an ambitious and invigorating look at how the pursuit of social status drives cultural change and innovation. Setting out to explain why people Continue reading »
I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to Survive: On Trauma, Persistence, and Dolly Parton
Lynn Melnick
Poet Melnick (Refusenik) delivers a riveting blend of cultural criticism and memoir in this paean to Dolly Parton, “an icon of feminine strength.” Melnick first heard Parton at Continue reading »
The Godmother: Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women
Barbie Latza Nadeau
In this engrossing account, Nadeau (Roadmap to Hell: Sex, Drugs and Guns on the Mafia Coast) combines diligent research, hours of personal interviews, and vivid prose to immerse Continue reading »