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Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties by William Hackman

Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties by William Hackman

Hackman, William. Out of Sight: The Los Angeles Art Scene of the Sixties, Other Press, New York, 2015 (308pp.$27.95) A forty thousand year continuum separates the Cro-Magnon shaman painting ochre-and-earth pigment aurochs on the walls of Lascaux cave from the billionaire collector purchasing a mediocre…

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Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge by John Gimlette

Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge by John Gimlette

Gimlette, John. Wild Coast: Travels on South America’s Untamed Edge, Alfred A.Knopf, New York, 2012 (358pp.$28.95) The ungodly thrills and horrors of the wild coast—a stretch of 900 miles between the mouths of the Orinoco and the Amazon rivers in South America, first came to…

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The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by H.W. Brands

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace by H.W. Brands

Brands, H.W. The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, Doubleday, New York, 2012 (736pp.$35) General Grant, for a long time, was the lone northern officer who understood and accepted the dire consequences of modern, industrialized warfare, among which were hundreds…

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Two Books About Capitalism

Two Books About Capitalism

Alperovitz, Gar. What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution, Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Vt. 2013 (205pp. $27.95)  Crouch, Colin. Making Capitalism Fit for Society, Polity Press, Malden, Massachusetts, 2013 (192pp.) Something terrible is happening to our country and its…

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Sex and the River Styx by Edward Hoagland

Sex and the River Styx by Edward Hoagland

Edward Hoagland. Sex and the River Styx, Chelsea Green Publishing, Vermont (272 pp. $$17.95) Edward Hoagland is one of my favorite writers and a beloved figure in American letters. He is my review of one of his latest books. Biologists worldwide warn that we are…

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Missoula:  Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by Jon Krakauer

Krakauer, Jon. Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Random House, New York, 2015 (367pp.$28.95) Missoula is a college town in the beautiful southwestern part of Montana where you can fish for brown trout off a bridge on busy 5th Street. The…

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Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert

Empire of Cotton: A Global History by Sven Beckert

Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2014 (615pp. $35) These days cotton as a capitalist commodity traded globally reveals itself mostly as a sales channel to WalMart and other massive retailers, branded and organized world-wide by huge “apparel”…

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Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age, by Susan Neiman

Why Grow Up? Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age, by Susan Neiman

Neiman, Susan. Why Grow Up? (Subversive Thoughts for an Infantile Age), Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2014 (231pp.,$25) Philosophy, in all its daunting simplicity, seeks answers to humble questions that turn out to be puzzling when our assumptions, biases, predispositions and laziness get jettisoned….

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Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane

Crow Fair by Thomas McGuane

McGuane, Thomas. Crow Fair: Stories, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2015 (267pp. $25.95) Tom McGuane lives on a ranch outside McLeod, Montana where he raises horses and is an accomplished trainer and rider. He’s lived there for many years, having purchased the property after a…

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Huck Finn’s America by Andrew Levy

Huck Finn’s America by Andrew Levy

Levy, Andrew. Huck Finn’s America: Mark Twain and the Era That Shaped His Masterpiece, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2015 (342pp.$25). In tandem with Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass” and Melville’s Moby Dick, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn stands as the oft acknowledged foundation…

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