Book Excerpt

 Almost immediately after its founding in 1955, the Village Voice became the most raucous, irreverent and important alternative newspaper in America. At one point the Voice was the most read weekly in the country, serving as Andy Warhol put it “the entire liberal thinking world.” In her excellent new book The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, Voice veteran Tricia Romano has compiled an oral history of the seminal alt-weekly. Romano’s…

In 2017, I ended my marriage of almost 12 years. It wasn’t one big betrayal. No one was a villain, not really. What happened was the oppressive weight of being a wife and mother and the burden of heterosexual marriage broke me. Three years later, in 2020, I realized I wasn’t alone. That the cultural weight of society keeps slipping onto the shoulders of mothers and wives. We are breaking. My book This American Ex Wife examines the way marriage is inherently unequal, and the way our culture defines love as misery, and…

Let’s say you want to go on a walking tour of San Francisco at its warmest and most energetic. You want to see the port town after the rush for gold swelled the foggy backwater into the largest city west of the Mississippi—back when it was home to the West Coast’s tallest buildings and beautiful brick architecture. You want to see San Francisco as it was before the Golden Gate Bridge sutured California’s great gap, back when escaping the peninsula meant waiting for the ferry.So you travel back to April 18, 1906, and with…

Some NBA legends become sports announcers. Other become movie stars. But only one has branched out into writing mystery novels starring Sherlock Holmes’ older brother. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s second book in this series, Mycroft and Sherlock, is out October 9, and we’ve got an exclusive sneak peek.Mycroft and Sherlock is the follow-up to 2015's acclaimed Mycroft Holmes (both books are co-written by Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse). As the title suggests, this new novel features both Holmes brothers—in this take on the…

In the early 2010s, brands began phasing out the plastic microbeads they’d been adding to toothpaste and face scrubs to boost their scrubbing power. Some of these products contained hundreds of thousands of microplastics, which washed off of your face and out to sea. It turned out that consumers weren’t particularly happy when they realized what was happening—President Barack Obama made that displeasure into law by signing the Microbead-Free Waters Act in 2015, four decades after microplastic scrubbers were patented in…

Sophie Papp and her family had a ritual for the recently departed. Whenever a relative died, she and her brother and cousins would all squeeze into a car and drive to Koksilah River, an hour north of their homes in Victoria, British Columbia. There, they would spend the day swimming in the glassy jade water, letting the current drag them along the squishy riverbed and gazing at the native arbutus trees, whose red bark peeled like crinkly snakeskin. After her grandmother passed away, Sophie—a sweet, reserved 19-year-old…

There was once an orangutan named Ken Allen at the San Diego Zoo who was notorious for carrying out complex escape plans. He found every nut and bolt in his cage and unscrewed them; in his open enclosure he threw rocks and feces at visitors. On one occasion, he constructed a ladder out of some fallen branches, carefully testing his weight on the rungs. After that, the zoo raised his enclosure walls and smoothed them to remove handholds.Hoping to distract Ken, the zoo introduced some female orangutans. But Ken enlisted…

If you are a fan of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's film, Bajirao-Mastani, you might want to read Ram Sivasankaran's The Peshwa: War of the Deceivers. This book begins seven years after Peshwa Bajiro defeats the Nizam's armies at Fort Mandu and depicts the battle between the Mughals and the Marathas. Here's an excerpt from Sivasankaran's latest novel, which is the second book, in his historical fiction saga. Battles Under Sunshine and Moonlight September 5, 1727—Present Day … Bajirao Bhat, Peshwa of the Maratha…

By Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balaji Vittal Note: On the 89th birthday of Lata Mangeshkar, here is an excerpt from S. D. Burman: The Prince-Musician, where we see Mangeshkar fondly remembering her practice sessions with Burman. The book gives you a glimpse of yesteryears Bollywood as it chronicles the rise of S.D. Burman in the film industry. Burman, when he first arrived in Bombay, was an outsider who didn't speak much of Hindi or Urdu, but the music director -- as we all know -- soon won over the Indian…

Editor's note: Haruki Murakami pens another surreal tale called Killing Commendatore which is now out in the market and is available for purchase. For all the fans of this Japanese novelist, Killing Commendatore is about a thirty-something portrait artist in Tokyo, who lives a lonely life after being abandoned by his wife. In the story, the portrait artist finds himself living in another famous artist's home and accidentally discovers a strange painting in the attic. That painting open a circle of unusual situations and…