I knew scarcely anything about Judy Garland before I read Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland; I don’t know much more about her now.

If you only have time in your life for one Elvis Presley biography, and can’t commit to the diaristic detail of the two-volume Guralnick, you could do worse than Down at the end of Lonely …

Alas, I can’t do a live chat after all; so sorry! Deadlines have intruded, as they tend to do.
I did finish And I Don’t Want To Live This Life, though, and I really felt for …

UPDATE! The discussion thread will open Monday 25 February. Vote below on whether/when you could do a live chat — and add any scheduling issues (i.e., “I’m west coast and couldn’t do it at 7:30 …

Or, “Time to hack this pile of Christmas books down to a manageable size.” It’s a fiction/true crime/pop culture fest…with some overlaps there (Bourdain is the first and last things; Spungen is the last two …

On The Blotter, I talked about the ambiguity of Zodiac‘s ending with Matt Zoller Seitz and Mike D’Angelo, and reviewed an excellent Jack the Ripper book. (Coming soon: a “compleat Betty Broderick” line-up from me and …

“Bruno was the consummate racketeer. Scarfo, on the other hand, was a gangster.”
The crime
It’s about the self-destruction the Philly mob, so: pick your felony. But implied also is a metaphorical crime, an affront to the …

It’s written too well, Half a Life. And that’s understandable. Darin Strauss’s “memoir” — a poor fit, that word, but the closest available — concerns the death of a girl half (his) lifetime ago; Celine …

I apologize for not posting the discussion thread sooner, but 1) I spent the morning writing what feels like half the content on the internet and 2) I haven’t finished the book yet, because every …

Update, 11 October, 3 PM: We’ll be at the Sackett, unsurprisingly located at 661 Sackett St. between 4th and 5th Aves., Brooklyn. It’s the shortest of hops from the outbound R train, or take anything …